Hey hey we’re the Monkees! Wilson and his Wolves teammates meet the Monkees
In Parts 1 and 2 of the Les Wilson story, Charlie Bamforth traced Wilson’s journey from being a young football fan autograph hunting to the top tier in England.
Part 3 Les Wilson – a Cascadian comes home
by Charlie Bamforth
Les Wilson was sorely missed at Wolves. Diehard supporters of the Wanderers pined for his tenacious persistence, the very obvious enthusiasm, the heart on the rolled up old gold sleeves that some others did not possess.
Nobody more so than Les projected the message “I love this place”. Most of the club’s faithful followers, massed in the North Bank and the South Bank terraces, would have dearly welcomed his return, should it ever have been possible. Apparently it might have happened.
“Derek Dougan invited me to come down to the Professional Footballers Association dinner in 1974 (it was the first time that it was broadcast on television). Derek was the Chairman.
“When I got there he told me that Bill McGarry wanted me back at Molineux. I was very gratified – apart from that one incident where I had ‘lost it’ with Mr. McGarry, he had been great to me. But there were no guarantees – he wanted me as a utility man, no certainties of playing right back.
Wolves were not the only club seeking his services however.
Two managers destined for greater fame elsewhere were inquiring – Jack Charlton and Ian St John – and there was interest too in bringing him back to Cascadia. Charlton was to achieve global fame as the man who revived the Republic of Ireland international side taking them to World Cup finals. St John went on to become one of the nation’s most famous television hosts, hosting the Saint and Greavsie Show along with Jimmy Greaves.
“Jack Charlton at Middlesbrough and Ian St John at Portsmouth were interested. So, too, though were John Best and Jimmy Gabriel at Seattle. They phoned me at my home near Norwich.
“Two days later, however, the General Manager of the newly formed Vancouver Whitecaps, Denny Veitch, got in touch. He, to be truthful, was not a soccer man (he was an American Football and rugby guy) but I’m a Vancouver lad. Around the same time I got a call from Ken Lind, who was chair of the British Columbia Youth Soccer Association and who, like me, was a previous winner of the Ed Bayley Memorial Trophy.
Les Wilson in the 1974 Whitecaps jersey
“I knew him from my days when I was a guest player (whilst still at the Wolves) of Vancouver Spartans playing against the likes of Newcastle United in 1970 and as their player/coach in the semi-professional Western Canadian Soccer League from May to early July in 1971.
“I respected Ken, the ultimate professional business man, so when he asked me if I would apply to be Executive Provincial Secretary of his organization it decided things for me.
“I would play for the Whitecaps and take this second role alongside. It would work out well: the NASL season only went from late April to mid-August whilst on the lower mainland of BC the season went from September to late April.
“I felt that I could help to build the game in my country. I believed strongly in the youth of British Columbia: great athletes who with the right coaching might be able to achieve their maximum. I wanted to put into practice the coaching skills I had learned in England from the likes of Don Howe and John Jarman. Working with Ken Lind and David Fryatt and others at the BC Youth Soccer Association in those days was very rewarding and I enjoyed the job immensely.
“BC Soccer was producing a number of very talented soccer players at this period of time, many of whom would go on and play in the North American Soccer League for both Canadian and USA clubs.
“As the NASL historical record books of 1974 – 1983 prove, BC was the hot bed of soccer in North America at this time.”
Les received a quick reminder of how different the game could be on the North American continent, from playing surfaces to traveling distances.
“So I started the 1974 season with the Whitecaps. The coach was Jim Easton, a close friend of Alex Ferguson. I made my debut in Miami against the Toros. Imagine that flight! Not exactly like the Wolves playing at West Brom! We drew 2-2 after extra time before flying off for a game two days later in Toronto against the Metros Croatia, which we lost 2-1.
“I still wasn’t playing right back! For the most part I was in midfield and when the ex-Liverpool man Willie Stevenson got injured, I took over as skipper, on many occasions. I enjoyed playing for Jim in those 1974 and 1975 seasons, but then the club let him go. I felt for him. He was a very good soccer man and a decent coach.
“But in those days German coaches seemed to be flavor of the month, so Veitch brought in Eckhard Krautzun. Technically he was very good, but he hadn’t really played the game (unlike Easton, who was a Scotland Under-23 international).
“I got on well with Krautzun and in fairness he would consult me in training – remember, it was mostly a very young squad at the time – but he wasn’t very tactful in press conferences and his outspokenness meant that really the club had to eventually let him go.
“As for me, all this training and playing on artificial surfaces – a thin layer of Astroturf on top of cement at the Empire Stadium and elsewhere – was playing havoc with my Achilles tendon. I was advised to quit playing or run the risk of being seriously disabled for the rest of my life. It was 1976.
Change was afoot at Vancouver and the new blood was to Wilson’s taste, including one man still a friendly and beloved face around the Cascadian soccer scene, Alan Hinton.
“The good news was that the Whitecaps replaced Veitch with John Best, moving from Seattle as the General Manager. He told me that he wanted to bring in Tony Waiters as coach and wondered what I thought. I called my friend David Burnside, who of course was now a senior coach in the English FA, for whom Tony had coached the youth international side.
“David raved about Tony, so he came to the Whitecaps and, in late 1978, I started full time with the club as team administrator, staff coach and director of player development.
“Tony hired another ex-Wolves man, Alan Hinton, as his assistant coach. I well remember one day on the bench when Alan was getting frustrated with the winger, Mick Lambert, who we had on loan from Ipswich.”
1976 Whitecaps Coaches – Waiters and Wilson – on the right. Player Derek Possee is leaning forward
“Alan turned to Tony and urged ‘Tony, you’ve got to play me, he’s not doing it!’ In that 1978 season Alan had a fantastic revival of his playing career, setting the North American Soccer League record for assists. That saw me moved up to becoming Tony Waiters’ assistant.
“We brought in several players, the likes of Gordon Taylor who of course now heads the Professional Footballers Association in England. And we brought in my old friend Phil Parkes on loan. He would later join permanently and proved himself the best keeper in the League. I called Bill McGarry about getting him and Bill was great: ‘Reverend, he’s yours’.
“Things went from strength to strength and we doubled the crowds. Alan Hinton moved on to head up Tulsa Roughnecks, so the Whitecaps brought in yet another ex-Wolves (and Arsenal) man, Bob McNab, to replace him.
Now Alan and Bob were both great coaches but very different. Bob was terrific in the drills, and he never pulled any punches when telling players exactly what he thought. He sugar coated nothing. I believe that Tony, Bob and I brought different elements to the leadership.”
Can you spot Liverpool Champions League winner Bruce Grobelaar and Arsenal 1971 Double winner Bob McNab?
“It came to a great head in 1979 when we won the North American Soccer League’s Western Conference, the National Conference and the Soccer Bowl. We beat Rodney Marsh and the Tampa Bay Rowdies 2-1 at Giants Stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey.”
Trevor Whymark scored both goals, but it was Alan Ball who was made man of the match.
“Coming back to Vancouver there were 120,000 people lining the streets. For me and the rest of the BC lads it was a fantastic feeling.”
Les Wilson was immensely proud of the Canadian youngsters that he, his right hand man and Whitecaps coach Alan Errington and his colleagues had brought through at the club.
Over a number of NASL seasons, those players were balanced nicely with several experienced players from overseas, with the likes of Ruud Krol, Frans Thijssen, John Craven, Kevin Hector, Peter Ward and Dave Watson joining Phil Parkes in a formidable squad.
Les was also part of a team of individuals who established a league for reserve teams and Cascadian development sides, the Pacific Northwest Soccer League, as an opportunity for players to get a lot more playing time.
The list of names he collaborated with to grow the sport is like a Cascadian Roll of Honour.
“John Best, Tony Waiters and I from Vancouver, Clive Charles (University of Portland), Mick Hoban (Portland Timbers and Nike), Don Megson (Portland Timbers), Bobby Howe, Alan Hinton and Harry Redknapp (Seattle) and Peter Scott (Pegasus Soccer Club in Vancouver) developed the idea.
“I became the Commissioner for a number of years to add to my other duties. So many young and aspiring Canadian and USA players came through this ad hoc Reserve Team League and played for the Canadian and USA National teams at various levels. They all gained invaluable experience playing and training against the imported players from Europe.”
The list that Les rattles off is seemingly endless, but one might pick out the likes of Clyde Best (Portland), Alan Hudson and Joe Corrigan (Seattle), Steve Kember and Willie Johnston (Vancouver). Former Wolves team mates of Les also came over: Barry Powell to Portland and Steve Daley and Kenny Hibbitt to Seattle.
There are two other well-known stars that cut their teeth at Vancouver before going on to fame and fortune in the English game.
“Ron Atkinson was manager at West Brom at the time and he brought the Albion team over to play us. I took a call from him in advance and he told me that he had a remarkable goalkeeper from Zimbabwe but he couldn’t get him a work permit in the UK.
“I got through to Tony Waiters, who spent several months, each year scouting for the Whitecaps in the UK. Now if anyone can recognize a good keeper it’s Tony, ex-Blackpool and England. So he arranged to take a look at this goalie at a session he was holding at Derby’s training ground alongside his old teammate from Blackpool, John Craven.
“These were training sessions for players that we had signed in Britain, or were interested in signing for the Whitecaps. The keeper was a sensation – he was of course Bruce Grobbelaar. We flew him over to Vancouver for trials and I met him in the morning at the airport. My Mom and Dad had offered him a room so I took him there and over lunch, I said ‘By the way, we’ve a reserve game tonight and you are playing’.
“He looked horrified – ‘I’m knackered’ – but I told him to get a couple of hours sleep and that the Burnaby ground was only a couple of minutes away. Of course, he was brilliant throughout the trial period and we signed him as Phil Parkes’ understudy.
“Now Liverpool were interested in him, but wanted to take a good look, so we loaned him to Crewe Alexandra. Before that the Liverpool manager Bob Paisley and his assistant Reuben Bennett had flown over to Vancouver. Of course, they weren’t recognized in Canada, so they both were able to stay anonymous sitting at the back of the stand at Empire Stadium in Vancouver watching Bruce train.”
Another discovery was Peter Beardsley.
Les credits Verdi Godwin with finding him. Verdi was a former professional player who became a legendary scout as well as being the chief lifeguard on Southport beach in Lancashire, England where one of his first finds had been a young Southport lad called Tony Waiters. Godwin went on to be a key scout for Vancouver, alongside Paddy Sowden.
“Verdi went up to Carlisle with another Lancashire lad, Richard Dinnis, who joined our Vancouver Whitecaps coaching staff in 1980, and Peter Lorimer, one of the ex-Leeds contingent who came over to play for Vancouver. Beardsley was soon on his way to us. We sent him in due course to Ron Atkinson’s Manchester United on loan but they decided they didn’t want him. Newcastle did though…and the rest is history.”
Sadly, life at Vancouver Whitecaps was about to take a downward spiral. It was the decision of John Best to go back to Seattle and Tacoma (indoor) that was the pivotal point. What happened afterwards is something that Les Wilson is leery of discussing.
“It’s a story for another time.”
Clearly, though, there was a change of personnel at the club that Les feels was a key factor in the Whitecaps drifting in the wrong direction and that in part contributed to its folding in 1984.
“There were some people who came in that I could very much relate to and who were excellent, people like Nobby Stiles. But….”
Les sighs.
“I always made a habit of getting into work early during my career and it was no different working with the Whitecaps. I would get into work at 7:00 or 7:30 AM and my first job of the day as the Whitecaps teams administrator would be to check the telexes that had come in. Let’s just say that there were things that came through on the telex that I really didn’t like to be seeing. Let’s just leave it at that.”
Les Wilson’s days at the Whitecaps were numbered, but a far bigger stage was in the offing, as we shall see in Part 4.
Previously in the Series:
Part 2 – Les Wilson Cascadian Soccer Pioneer – Meeting legends at Wolves
Part 1 – Les Wilson: The Cascadian who played in the EPL
