Much has been written about the illegal payments/Mr Smith scandal that resulted in chairman Bill Ditchburn and director Bill Martin permanently suspended from football by a joint FA/League commission in December 1957. Vice-chairman Stan Ritson and director Laurie Evans were suspended indefinitely. The club were ordered to pay the cost of the inquiry and were fined an unprecedented £5,000.
Fourteen players were also censured with loss of benefits and suspensions.
Long-time manager Bill Murray was fined
£200 for his part in the affair, the inquiry recognising that he was working under instruction from his board. Five weeks after the inquiry’s verdict, Murray resigned. The club was a mess, off the pitch and arguably on the pitch too, with little to show for what appeared to have been a decade and some of illegal payments and expensive signings that earned Sunderland AFC the label “the Bank of England Club”.
What was left of the board (Syd Collings, Colonel J Turnbull, J Reed and J Parker), under the leadership of Syd Collings and club secretary George Crow (who emerged individually untarnished from the enquiry), were of the firm view they needed a figure above and beyond reproach to take up the manager’s role and lead the club forwards from the scandal.
They turned their attention to Burnley’s manager Alan Brown. A man with an unblemished reputation in football and a local lad, born in Corbridge and a Sunderland fan.
Brown had been a fit, strong, hard centre-half who had taken two years out of football to become a policeman. He returned to captain Huddersfield and Burnley, where he led the club to promotion from the second division and runners-up in the FA Cup final in 1946/47. He finished his career at Notts County as a player.
Upon retiring from playing aged thirty-four, he returned to Burnley and opened a restaurant, but was encouraged back into football by Stanley Rous, who was secretary of the Football Association for many years. Brown took up a coaching role at Sheffield Wednesday and developed his skills and experience over a three-and-a-half-year period.
His former team Burnley came calling in 1954, looking for him to take the manager’s role at a crucial time in their history. Brown’s reputation as a strict, honest, disciplined character went before him. His ethics of hard work, physical fitness and scrupulous honesty were not to everybody’s liking at Burnley.
He oversaw the building of a new training centre at the club and had a leading input in the design and scope of the building. He often “volunteered” the players and himself for all sorts of labouring duties as the building went through its various stages of development (a habit he would repeat with players when Sunderland manager and the Charlie Hurley Centre was being built).
Alongside all of this and enlisting the support of Burnley chairman Bob Lord, he formulated an aggressive youth development structure with the assistance of chief scout Charlie Ferguson, whom he brought to the club. This system would unearth many talents over the years that would serve Burnley very well, including a plethora of young talent from the North East of England. Brown was notoriously contemptuous of the practice of illegal payments (bungs) being paid to parents of young potential players for their signatures, as well as the practice of “under-the-table” payments to established players for their signatures and stamped out this practice at Burnley in his time there.
He kept Burnley in the top half of the first division for three seasons, until Sunderland came calling in July 1957.
The national press expressed their shock at Brown’s decision to take up what they generally described as “the hardest job in football”, especially as he was regarded as the “master-builder of a brilliant young Burnley side” and once described as “one of the happiest managers in football at Burnley”.
The regional press were a tad more positive about the appointment, his local roots and Sunderland allegiances to the fore, as well as the reputation he had fashioned for himself at Burnley, not just as a scrupulously honest, hard-working, disciplined character, but an innovative coach and developer of young players. He seemed like the perfect fit for the dreadful juncture the club found itself at!
Brown quickly set about getting his ‘backroom team’ sorted and made key appointments in coach George Curtis, a like-minded character who had England and club coaching on his CV. He also persuaded Charlie Ferguson to come and join him from Burnley, with a view to establishing a youth development and scouting structure to see Sunderland into the next century!
One of Ferguson and Brown’s first collaborations was to see the signing of young Irish centre-half Charlie Hurley from Millwall. Hurley did not get off to the best of starts but went on to be voted Sunderland’s player of the century, not a bad first buy for the manager.
Like Hurley, Brown did not get off to a good start. His plan was to replace the “old guard” with keen young players and he set about this task with gusto. Within three years, Stan Anderson was the only player left in the squad of the team that finished the 1956/57 season. Anderson, in his biography Captain of the North, looked back on this period and felt the plan was not a bad one, Brown just got rid of the experienced players too quickly, relying too heavily on inexperienced youngsters.
In 1957/58 Sunderland were relegated for the very first time in their history. Don Revie was one of the experienced players to find themselves on the way out of the door. He and Brown came to blows after a match at Rotherham and that was that. Revie would not be the only player who would feel Brown’s iron will during his two spells at the club!
Despite the relegation, young players were making their mark.
John ‘Ralphy’ Goodchild was one of these youngsters. Already at the club when Brown arrived, the forward was given a debut in September 1957 and went on to score twenty-one goals in forty-five appearances, used primarily as an inside-forward, before being transferred to Brighton, where he is still regarded warmly for his forty-five goals and many assists in one hundred and sixty-two appearances, primarily as a left-winger.
The Brown/Ferguson youth conveyor belt produced a host of cracking young players who went on to have good careers at Sunderland (and other clubs) during Brown’s first period with the club from 1957–64.
Len Ashurst, Cecil Irwin, Jim McNab, Colin Nelson, Martin Harvey, Nick Sharkey, Willie McPheat, Brian Usher, Ian Lawther and, of course, Jimmy Montgomery would all make significant contributions to the club, having been given their debut by Brown. Dave Elliott, Tommy Mitchinson, Joe Kiernan, John Dillon and Dickie Rooks would debut during Brown’s first spell but go on and make their names at other clubs.
The younger/new players took a while to adapt to life in division two and it was season 1960/61 that sixth place was achieved and a thrilling cup run that saw Arsenal and Liverpool beaten, as well as a fantastic tie at Roker against the double champions that season, Spurs. The big crowds were back and Roker Park was buzzing with hope and anticipation heading into the 1961/62 season.
Apart from developing the youth system, Brown (and Ferguson) proved no mean judge of a good young player at other clubs. Players such as Ambrose Fogarty, Reg Pearce, Peter Wakeham, ‘Rhino’ Kitchenbrand, Jack Overfield, Harry Hooper, and Harry Hood would all provide useful service to some degree or other.
Four of Brown’s more expensive outlays in his first spell could easily be regarded as fantastic signings.
In April 1961 Brown spent a whopping £42,500 on George Herd from Clyde; his three hundred and fifteen games, fifty-five goals and many assists would mark him as one of Brown’s very successful buys. Brian Clough was persuaded to join the effort to get Sunderland back to the first division in July 1961; his sixty-three goals in seventy-four appearances until a career-ending injury are the stuff of legend and ‘if only’. Johnny Crossan and George ‘Bullet’ Mulhall were signed in 1962 to form a potent left-sided attack. Crossan scored forty-eight goals in ninety-nine appearances and Mulhall sixty-six goals and countless assists in two hundred and forty-eight games. These four represent some of the best value for money of that era.
In 1961/62 Sunderland had a very good tilt at promotion but finished third, despite the addition of Clough and the arrival of Jimmy Montgomery. They repeated their third position in heart-breaking fashion in 1962/63, pipped on goal difference by Tommy Docherty’s Chelsea, having lost the services of Clough to the injury that would eventually end his playing career in December ’62.
In 1963/64 Sunderland finally won promotion back to the first division. Youngster Nick Sharkey had stepped into the breach created by Clough’s injury and eventually convinced Brown to play him on a regular basis. He played one hundred and seventeen games in total, scoring sixty-two goals between 1960 and 1966, but crucially, in that promotion year, played thirty-nine games and scored twenty goals.
This season too brought a thrilling FA Cup run that saw Everton knocked out at Roker Park in front of 62,851 fans and a blockbuster three games against Manchester United that saw a total of 163,384 fans watch, enthralled.
The good times were back and Sunderland’s fine young team were playing some very effective football and heading back to the first division; what could possibly go wrong?
On 31st July 1964, just three weeks before the start of our first season back in the first division in six years, Alan Brown resigned!
There appears to have been a dispute between himself and the board about the clubhouse he was renting in Roker. Brown wanted to buy the house and allegedly had been given some kind of verbal assurance this could happen. It’s hard to comment on something that has so little verifiable fact attached to it, but the kind of character Brown was, it’s unlikely he was making his understanding of this matter up. Whatever the right or wrong of this, he resigned and took the vacant manager’s job at one of his previous clubs, Sheffield Wednesday.
Wednesday had been mired in a match-fixing scandal and Brown’s scrupulously honest reputation would be Sheffield Wednesday’s gain and Sunderland’s loss.
Alan Brown would stay at Hillsborough for the best part of three-and-a-half seasons, leading them to eighth in division one 64/65, runners-up in the FA Cup final against Everton in 1966 and eleventh in 1966/67.
In the meantime, George Hardwick was eventually appointed to the manager’s post for a season initially, but not before we found ourselves at the wrong end of the table and heading for a season of fighting relegation. Hardwick eventually rallied the team and we finished fifteenth. Youngsters recruited by the Brown/Ferguson strategy, Derek Forster, Gary Moore, Mel Slack and a particular favourite of mine, John O’Hare, made debuts during this season. It was looking like George Hardwick would take us into the 1965/66 season, and, if he is to be believed, he would have Brian Clough as his right-hand man. The board, though, had other ideas and ex-Scotland manager and Rangers player Ian McColl was appointed.
Despite the arrival of the very good Neil Martin for £50,000 and the enigma that was Jim Baxter for a record £72,500, this was not a successful period for the club. Behind the scenes, there was a divided dressing room and an ineffectual manager, unable to curb the excesses of the wayward Baxter.
In 1965/66 we finished in nineteenth position and looked like relegation candidates for most of the season. In 1966/67 we managed to collect the same points and finish seventeenth without ever looking like we were going to trouble the top half of the table. One bonus in this season was that five more youngsters recruited by the Brown/Ferguson strategy would debut; four of these would go on to have stellar careers. Colin Todd was pound for pound the best Sunderland youth player I have ever seen come through to our first team. This was a golden year, though, as Colin Suggett, Billy Hughes and Bobby Kerr would also debut; what a foursome these were and a great testament to the youth development strategy Brown/Ferguson had developed. Jimmy Shoulder would also debut and go on to have a more than handy career in the lower divisions.
Season 1967/68 saw us languishing again at the wrong end of the table and, with Ian McColl unable to effect any positive change, Baxter was sold and McColl sacked in early February 1968. Just as his departure was a shock, Alan Brown’s return to Sunderland was something of a surprise, to say the least. Nonetheless, he got stuck in and, despite losing his first four games, Brown led the team to only two defeats and six wins in the last sixteen games of the season to finish in fifteenth position.
Our league placing following our 63/64 promotion had been disappointing, to say the least, but the youth development strategy implemented by Brown/Ferguson was incrementally paying dividends.
The youth team got to the semi-final of the FA Youth Cup in 64/65 and then were beaten finalists in 1965/66. In 67/68 they went one better and won the cup against Birmingham in a two-legged final. They repeated this feat again in 1968/69 with victory against West Bromwich Albion.
Some fantastic young players came through to the first team in Alan Brown’s second spell with the club. Todd and Suggett would make a fantastic impression upon the first team before being sold, as was the case with John O’Hare. Hughes and Kerr, Dennis Tueart, Richie Pitt and Mickey Horswill. Mick McGiven, Keith Coleman, Bobby Park, John Lathan, Brian Chambers, Joe Bolton and Jackie Ashurst would all debut in Brown’s second spell and provide good to excellent service to Sunderland.
Brown proved he had not lost his touch with bought players (even though he was only able to buy three). Joe Baker was not a great success, but Dave Watson (£100,000 from Rotherham) and Dick Malone (£30,000 from Ayr) in December 1970 were both fine players and excellent servants to the club.
In the 1968/69 season, we finished in seventeenth position as the team struggled to acclimatise to the new manager and his coaching/match-play innovations. Charlie Hurley and George Mulhall were freed at the end of this season and George Herd retired; it was a huge loss in terms of experience. Colin Suggett was sold for a record £100,000 to West Brom; with little of this money invested in new experienced players, it was clear Brown was working under strict financial boundaries.
In 1969/70 we were relegated for the second time in our history, and both times with Brown as manager. This was a really tough season to watch. We were a side crying out for some creativity, which was galling, given Ian Porterfield spent the whole season playing in the reserves, having fallen out with Brown on a pre-season tour.
The 1970/71 season did not bring the expected promotion and immediate return to the first division. We finished thirteenth and, whilst there was clearly some ability within the team, we lacked consistency and we could look a little “wooden” in our play with the ball. With economic strife gripping the region and progress on the pitch ‘stuttery’, gates were badly affected. Colin Todd was sold to Brian Clough and Derby County. A ‘what if’ moment in 1971 occurs when Charlie Ferguson recommends a player to Alan Brown, who takes up Ferguson’s advice and attempts to get the board to agree to buy the lad. The board refused and Kevin Keegan signed for Liverpool instead (they could spot a player, though, Brown and Ferguson).
The 1971/72 season saw much improvement in our performances, and we finished fifth, having hovered in the running for most of the season. Mick Horswill, Joe Bolton, Keith Coleman, Jackie Ashurst and Jimmy ‘Chico’ Hamilton all debuted in this campaign. We also lost two youth products to career-ending injuries, Bobby Park at the beginning of the season and Martin Harvey in March. Park’s career was in its infancy, but he was shaping up to be a really good player. Martin Harvey had played three hundred and fifty-four games and was a cultured, hard-working player, highly regarded by fans, teammates and management.
Alan Brown led us into the 1972/73 season, with the fans feeling a degree of optimism, given the indicators from the previous season. Performances, though, were very inconsistent and the team seemed tense, unable to really express itself on the pitch. We slid quickly to the wrong end of the table and, as fans voted with their feet, the board sacked Alan Brown at the end of October. Coach Billy Elliott stepped in as caretaker boss until Bob Stokoe was appointed in December 1972, with the team sitting nineteenth in division two. What happens next is, of course, the stuff of dreams and fantasy, as Stokoe took what in the main was Brown’s team of players and set the shackles loose, unleashing a maelstrom of skill, speed, power and rollicking team spirit that took us to Wembley and the winners of the FA Cup, as well as sixth position at the end of the season.
It’s worth remembering that eight of the cup final team are either Brown buys – Malone and Watson – or products of the youth development scheme – Montgomery, Kerr, Pitt, Horswill, Hughes and Tueart. Bolton, Coleman, Chambers, Lathan, McGiven and Tones all played a part in this season and were youth products.
Alan Brown spent a little time coaching in Norway and assisting at Plymouth Argyle after his dismissal. He then retired from the game and wrote a book encapsulating some of his coaching experience and innovations called Team Coach, supported by a number of coaches that he had influenced over his career, including Lawrie McMenemy and Howard Wilkinson, who he worked with at Sheffield Wednesday, and Brian Clough, who was much influenced by “The Bomber”.
Alan Brown’s legacy at Sunderland is much associated with the great youth players who came through his development system. His relationship with Charlie Ferguson reaped many rewards for the club, long after his departure.
Hurley, Herd, Crossan, Mulhall, Clough, Malone and Dave Watson represent a veritable feast of excellent buys for the club that give testament to Brown’s ability to get splendid value for money spent.
“The Bomber” was a manager who, if not necessarily liked, was respected, even feared, by his players. They say you should never go back, and some will consider his second spell as a failure, but, as in his first spell, the opportunities he created for good young players to get a start in the game cannot be underplayed.
He retired to Devon and passed away in March 1996 at eighty-two years old, following a long period of ill health.
The Bomber’s strategy of youth development, attracting keen young players to the club and selling some on to fund future purchases was not a bad model. I wonder if it might work in this modern era?
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