Les Wilson Cascadian Soccer Pioneer – Meeting legends at Wolves

 

In the first part of Charlie Bamforth’s article on Cascadian legend Les Wilson’s story, he charted how the young Vancouverite made it from Canada to Wolverhampton as a youth.

In Part 2, he looks at Wilson’s rise and fall at Wolves.

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Part two – Les Wilson Part 2 – A Cascadian meeting legends at Wolves

Les Wilson: A North American Soccer Pioneer

Part Two – Wolverhampton

By Charlie Bamforth

Les Wilson started his Molineux career in the club’s fourth team in the Worcestershire Combination, but was a regular component of the youth side that lifted the Midland Intermediate League championship trophy in 1964-1965, the season that the club lost its Division One footing for the first time in over 30 years. The young Wilson was coming on by leaps and bounds.

He continues the story:

“What an honor to be training alongside the likes of England internationals Ron Flowers, Peter Broadbent and England Under-23 international Gerry Harris. How inspirational to see Ted Farmer visiting the physiotherapist George Palmer every day and doing everything he possibly could to get back to playing. He couldn’t, but what a lesson about determination and never, ever give up attitude.

“In the pre-season of 1965-1966 I was so proud to be the only Wolves youth team player in the senior squad that went to play Kaiserslautern in Germany, selected by the then Wolves manager and former Scottish World Cup team manager, Andy Beattie. Then in December 1965 I was twelfth man for the first team up in Middlesbrough.

“On the morning of the game Joe Gardiner came to me to say that Ron Flowers had failed a fitness test and that I would be making my debut. My job would be to mark Ian Gibson. What a task that was! Things were happening a thousand times faster than I was used to from the reserve team. The way that the opposition closed you down, the niggling and ferociousness from two teams eager to win. Fantastic.

“On the Monday I was summoned to Jack Howley’s office. I was told that the Wolverhampton coaches and directors had instructed him to pay for me to fly home to Vancouver for a Christmas holiday as a reward. What a club, so good to me in so many ways.”

It is of course salutary to remember that in those times air travel was not quite so swift as it is these days, and Les Wilson’s journey comprised train to London and then successive flights London to Toronto and Toronto to Vancouver.

This wouldn’t be the last time that the club footed the bill for their young Canadian to traverse the Atlantic. Wolves looked after their young charges. On two occasions that was with Les being a key component of the Wolves squad that competed in the summer of 1967 in the United Soccer Association in the guise of Los Angeles Wolves and then again in the summer of 1969 as Kansas City Spurs in the North American Soccer League.

 

In these North American and United States top flight professional football championship tournaments Les gave further demonstration of something that the club had long realized: here was a player who could play anywhere except in goal (and as someone who recalls the passion that Les Wilson put into his job as a professional footballer I feel sure he would have agreed to don the green jersey had he been asked).

“We were playing at Dallas in 1967 and it must have been 103^oF. Our center half ‘Duggie’ Woodfield was injured and his replacement Graham Hawkins had gone home to England to get married. So I lined up alongside John Holsgrove at the back. Mike Bailey got sent off but we did enough to draw and go on to win the North American Championship tournament.”

Les pulled on every shirt at Wolves from 2 to 11. But what was his preferred position? He does not hesitate.

“Right full back. But remember that Wolves were well-blessed with fullbacks. There was Gerry Taylor, a very good player. Bernard Shaw, an England Under-23 international. And of course Derek Parkin, who was signed as a right back and who has to be the best uncapped fullback ever. So I was just honored to play in any role for the Wolves.

“When selected as the Wolves twelfth man, I would study my playing colleagues closely to try to learn some of their skills: Bobby Thomson and his overlapping, for example, as well as try to pick up whatever I could from watching the likes of Mike Bailey, Peter Knowles, Derek Dougan, Peter Broadbent and Ron Flowers.

“What an honor to be a colleague to these and others. I had the versatility and was blessed with quickness, athleticism and tenacity but I needed to learn what I could of the various positions that I was expected to play in. I knew I could never be any one of those players – I realized my limitations.

“For instance, Mike Bailey would say ‘Reverend, just get that ball and give it to me and I will make it happen’. I usually came back to the ground in the afternoon for extra training drills with the ball, along with the likes of Peter Knowles and Derek Parkin.”

‘Reverend’ was the name bestowed upon Les by his closest friends at the club; notably Derek Dougan, David Burnside, Bobby Thomson and John Holsgrove, the five of them being collectively known as ‘The Tea Set’ on account of their predilection for sharing that beverage wherever they traveled.

Dougan was, and is, a Wolverhampton sporting legend. In 18 years in the English League, the Northern Irish midfielder turned forward scored 294 goals in 685 matches, including 95 in 258 games for Wolves. He scored hat-tricks in the First Division, the Second Division, the Third Division, the FA Cup, and the League Cup, a record so far never equaled. He played 43 times for his country.

“I certainly did not get the name for any religious tendencies! I think it was because I always believed in fair play and cared about people, including always trying to help the younger players.”

This attitude of social responsibility led to Les succeeding Derek Dougan as the Wolves representative at the Professional Footballers Association, valuable experience that, as we will see, stood him in good stead for his later career back in North America.

Even more so, he benefited from the various coaches and managers that he worked with which included a man named last in Les’ list, who broke racial barriers by becoming England’s first Asian manager.

“I played 133 first team games for the Wolves in all competitions but countless others saw me sitting on the bench.

“What a learning experience! To sit and listen to the wisdom of the likes of Andy Beattie, Ronnie Allen, Gerry Summers, Ron Bradley, Bill McGarry, and Sammy Chung.

“I was very fortunate: it was picking up coaching as well as tactical ideas by osmosis.”

Although Les looks back with gratitude to learning much from the fierce Bill McGarry, it was the latter, McGarry’s coach Sammy Chung, that was a key player in the lowest point of the Wilson career at Molineux in 1969.

“We were playing Manchester City at Molineux. I had scored our equalizer and I was marking Colin Bell out of the game. Suddenly our coach Sammy Chung yelled across at me ‘Reverend, you’re coming off’. I screamed back ‘you’re joking’ but sure enough I got the shepherd’s crook.”

As a spectator I can see it as if it was yesterday, for I was on the paddock terracing in between Les and his gaffer who, for home games, would sit alongside the Chairman in the Waterloo Road stand behind me. Everyone was astonished to see Les raise two fingers in stereo to the manager as he made his way straight to the dressing room.

“I changed and headed straight home. It was one of the longest weekends of my life. On the Monday morning Sammy Chung collared me. ‘Don’t bother getting changed; the gaffer wants to see you’.

“In his office, Mr. McGarry looked up from his papers. ‘Reverend, what came over you? You, of all people. How do you think it made me look in front of the directors? You will now train with the youngsters and you’ll be playing in the third team on Tuesday’.

“What a come down – but he was excellent, considering what I had done. I was out of the first team for a couple of weeks. It was probably the beginning of the end for me at Wolves, though.

“I was substitute in a game against Ipswich Town and their sub (there was only one substitute per team in those days) was Charlie Woods. As we warmed up, Woods called out to me ‘do you realize that our gaffer (future England manager Bobby Robson) wants to sign you, but McGarry’s not going to let you go at any cost’?

“David Burnside told me the same thing, so too Derek Dougan. And my fellow Canadian, Bruce Twamley,who played with Ipswich and with whom I trained back home in Vancouver in the summer, confirmed it.

“A few months after the City game I went in to see Mr. McGarry and asked him if anyone had been in for me. ‘Who the hell would want you?’ was his response!”

The strong likelihood is that McGarry did not want Les to go to Ipswich specifically, as it was the club that he left to manage Wolves. However he did have something positive to say to Les:

“He told me that if I signed a 2 year contract that would put me at 10 years as a Wolves player and I would get a testimonial game. But by now I was certainly not a regular in the side and I told him that I really wanted to start concentrating on playing right back. He told me that Bristol City wanted me on loan and that if I went there on that deal it would not affect my 10 years’ service.

“So I went to Ashton Gate (home of Bristol City) for the last 12 games of the 1970-1971 season and we turned things around and stayed in the Second Division. I enjoyed working with Alan Dicks and especially John Sillett who was an excellent coach. Mr. Dicks told me that they wanted to sign me permanently but I told him that I wanted another crack at displacing Bernard Shaw at Wolves.

 

“The following season I had come on as a substitute in a game at West Ham United and on the way back I took Derek Dougan’s advice and had a word with Mr. McGarry. I told him that I would take the permanent transfer to Bristol. Dicks had promised me right full back – I ended up playing all over!

Bobby Robson was the then very young and dynamic manager of unfashionable East Anglian club Ipswich Town. East Anglia was hardly a hotbed of footballing passion. In the 1970s, Robson was to take them to the UEFA Cup Final and a famous FA Cup win.

He was then the man England turned to when Ron Greenwood left in 1982 after the Spanish World Cup.

“Anyway, I did now get to chat with Bobby Robson and he confirmed that he was interested in signing me – but as a utility player. He said ‘Look, I have a youngster here by the name of George Burley and he is a far better full back than you’ll ever be’.

So when I got a call from Ron Saunders I signed for Norwich. We moved to a lovely home in Brundall, with the Norfolk Broads and all its wonderful bird life at the bottom of the garden. And then one day I am with Duggie Livermore getting my haircut and pick up the evening paper: Ron Saunders is on his way to Manchester City!

“Oh no! John Bond came in, with his assistants Ken Brown and my old Wolves colleague, the goalkeeper Fred Davies.

“Not long afterwards I’m playing in a practice game against the reserves at our training ground and went down to slide tackle the winger. As I was running back a little later one of my team mates said ‘are you okay, Les? Your shorts are full of blood’. I had an 18 inch gash on my thigh caused by a sharp pebble on the pitch.

“A lot of stitches – and out for six weeks. In the meantime Bond signed another right back, 32-year-old John Benson. John Bond asked me if I had a coaching qualification.

“I affirmed that I did, having taken it at the West Bromwich Albion ground in 1967-1968 alongside Peter Knowles, Dave Burnside, Dave Woodfield and David Cooke. Bond told me that Fred Davies was headed off on a scouting mission and would I like to take the reserve team for a couple of weeks. I soon realized that this is what I wanted to go on to do.”

It was to become his ticket home to Canada, as we will find out.

Also See:

Les Wilson Part I: The Cascadian who played in the EPL

The Schedule’s Out – What Can The ‘Caps Look Forward To

Gallery: Vancouver Whitecaps Best of 2014