West Midlands Turf Wars by Steve Tongue

Author:Steve Tongue
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

After six modest post-war seasons in the middle of the Third Division South, Port Vale’s fortunes suddenly took off when they were moved to the northern section in 1952 against the directors’ wishes.

Under the former Liverpool forward and Lancashire fast bowler Gordon Hodgson, and with star forward Ronnie Allen sold to West Brom, they were playing by then in a ground originally supposed to be ‘The Wembley of the North’. But the more grandiose plans for the new stadium in Burslem were slowly dropped as costs expanded. The proposed capacity of 70,000 at Vale Park (for a club whose average crowd in the first post-war season was about 10,500) was reduced to a more realistic 40,000 and three-quarters of that number came to the opening game against Newport on 24 August 1950.

Persistent drainage problems were an issue and denied the club what would certainly have been their best gate of the season after drawing an exciting FA Cup third-round tie 2-2 away to Stoke. The replay also had to be played at the Victoria Ground, where in front of another 40,000-plus crowd, Bowyer’s last-minute goal took the Potters through. ‘Port Vale, rugged, full of fight and great hearted triers, took most of the honours,’ said the Birmingham Gazette.

The league game against Bristol Rovers over Christmas also had to be moved to Stoke’s ground, and so many other home games were postponed that Vale were forced to play five of them in the space of 11 days, the match against Exeter attracting only 2,630. A typical finish in 12th place was followed by a summer tragedy when manager Hodgson died of cancer, aged 47.

After an unhappy interim period under Ivor Powell in the new season, former Stoke City hero Freddie Steele returned to the Potteries from Mansfield Town as player-manager. He lifted a floundering team from bottom of the table to 13th and after stopping playing began to construct the ‘Steele defence’ or ‘Iron Curtain’ that would bring the club to national prominence.

In 1952/53 they had the second-best defensive record in the country and missed out on the Third Division North championship to Oldham Athletic by only one point. Allowing Oldham a late equaliser at Vale Park on Easter Saturday turned out to be the key moment.

The extraordinary season that followed, however, became the greatest in the club’s history as the defence tightened up even further, taking Vale to the championship by 11 clear points and an FA Cup semi-final. To put the achievement of goalkeeper Ray King and his defenders into perspective, the champions of the other three divisions – Wolves, Leicester and Ipswich – conceded 56, 60 and 51 goals respectively; Vale let in 21, while playing four games more than the top two leagues.

If Vale Park was not, after all, the Wembley of the North, it deserved the old cliché of ‘fortress’. By the end of February, Hartlepools were the only one of 14 visiting teams to score a goal there. The final tally was five conceded at

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