Icarebecauseyoudo said:
Didn't you write a book about this
I did. 8 years ago. Just looking back through it tonight and it was an eventful tournament.
Rupert The Fridge said:
There's a ( sort of ) feature about it in the latest Legion . It's more related to our links with Toronto ( in light of the Defoe transfer) but interesting , nevertheless .
We also played in the States in the Shack era. He writes about it in his autobiography.
We did but that was just an end of season tour. Went there twice if memory serves me correctly in the 1950's.
The final (video above) was an eventful game:
The Washington Whips duly won the replayed game against the Los Angeles Wolves and they would face the same team in the Presidents Cup Final.
Wolves’ skipper, Mike Bailey sustained an injury in the game against the Whips and flew home to England for treatment two days later. He would not play in the final. A bitter blow. The LA Wolves squad was now down to fourteen fit players, including two goalkeepers. One of these was Fred Davies who had already scored a goal against local Californian rivals San Francisco Golden Gate Gales! Of the other two players outside the recognised first eleven, Alun Evans, later to be a star at Villa Park and Anfield, was only 17. Hardly ideal preparation for a showdown where the reward would be the overall championship of North America.
The only game that one observer could liken the final to was the infamous World Club Championship play off between Racing Club and Celtic in Montivideo later in 1967. In a match that should have been billed a Boxing contest, a football match broke out. The Whips Shewan and Wolves Dougan’s continued their feud from the previous game. The supremely-gifted, but temperamental Dave Wagstaffe was involved in a running battle with Whips’ full back Chalky Whyte.
One witness claims that at one point Wagstaffe committed such an outrageous indiscretion on the Whips’ number 2 that Whyte chased the Wolves’ player across the perimeter track and part way up the terracing. During the first half, twenty fouls were awarded against the Whips alone. Many more than twenty were committed by both sides, some going unpunished by an inexperienced referee, others being committed in places where he could not have seen without the aid of all-round vision. The outrageous fouling continued - Paddy Wilson went eyeball to eyeball with the much bigger Thomson after a scuffle when the Whips’ forward was on the ground. When Jimmy Smith went to Wilson’s aid, he was pushed over by Dave Wagstaffe. A well-placed long ball from the Knowles caught Tommy McMillan out as he was turned by Dougan and the Irishman was hauled down.
The game not only had extreme violence but also 11 goals! At half time the game was 1 v 1. At 63 minutes the game was 1 v 1. By 67 minutes it was 3 v 3! Four goals in 4 minutes. At 4 v 4 the final whistle sounded. There would be 30 minutes extra time. With 2 minutes of extra time to play the score was 5 v 4 to Wolves, just 120 seconds later it 5 v 5; there would be sudden death. Just 6 minutes into the period it was all over as the Whips Shewan, unbelievably put through his own net to hand Wolves the title, as the ball cannoned off the defenders legs. A spectacular end to a fairly violent tournament.
There was quite a bit of violence in some of the games. One involving the Brazilians ended up in a pitch battle. Houston v Detriot was abandoned with 17 minutes to play but the result stood!
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