Middle row (l-r);
Front row (l-r);
By Jim Brown
In August 1946 competitive league football recommenced after a seven-year break following World War Two. The 1946-47 fixture list was the same one that had been in place for the aborted 1939-40 season so City kicked off with a trip to Burnley and followed up with home games with West Brom and Barnsley. City’s first post-war goal was Fred Bett, an inside-forward signed that summer from Sunderland. He scored in his first three games for City as the team replicated their 1939 points total of four. For that first game Bett was the only player who had not been on the club’s books in 1939. Then players like Warner, Barratt, Wood, Coen, Snape, Frith and Roberts were promising young fringe players. Now seven years on they were the backbone of the side but in their late twenties and arguably with their best years behind them.
A good home record – they lost only once (to Burnley) at Highfield Road – meant they finished in 8th place but patchy away form (only four away wins) stopped them from ever being in contention for promotion. The major event of the season was the sudden death of manager Dick Bayliss. Never the most healthy man, Bayliss’s health took a turn for the worse around the turn of the year. During February in the worst winter for many years Bayliss had driven to Scotland on a scouting mission. On his return journey he had become stranded in his motor car on a Yorkshire moor and on his eventual return had gone to bed with a chill. It was diagnosed as an incurable kidney complaint and he died on the 5 April at his home in the city. That same afternoon for the home game with Sheffield Wednesday the flag was at half-mast and a minute’s silence was observed before the game. Fans and players alike were stunned to hear the news but the players responded with a thrilling 5-1 win. They then put together a run of nine games with only one defeat to lift themselves to the respectable final league position.
George Lowrie, the centre-forward signed on the eve of the war in 1939, fulfilled jis wartime promise and ended the season with 29 goals in league and cup, the highest goalscorer since Bourton’s heyday. Twenty five of his goals came in the second half of the season, including five hat-tricks, three of them in consecutive home games.
The dreadful winter played havoc with the fixture list and City went seven weeks through February and most of March without a home game. When the thaw eventually allowed football to be played the authorities banned midweek games in order to safeguard vital industrial production and all re-arranged games had to be played on Saturdays. As a result, the season was eventually extended into mid-June to recover the backlog, with the First Division title not decided, in Liverpool’s favour, until the 14th June. City’s final game was at Chesterfield on 26 May, a month later than planned.
Gates boomed around the country that first year after the war, with Newcastle, then a Second Division side leading the attendance charts with an average of 49,379, a record high, and six other First Division clubs averaging 40,000 plus. City’s increase was modest, an average of 19,975, 450 more than 1938-39, not surprising really as they had been serious promotion contenders in the last post-war season.
