Middle row (l-r);
Front row (l-r);
By Jim Brown
The 1960s started with a miserable and desolate season. The team went backwards after a good first season in Division Three and finished a disappointing 15th, only six points above the relegation zone. Manager Billy Frith started the season with an experimental 4-2-4 formation which was a disaster with 19 goals conceded in six games. By the time he had abandoned the new ‘continental’ system in September with one win from nine games, City were already in the bottom six and never recovered from the poor start. Frith got a settled side in November and the team were on fire and lost only twice in 18 League and FA Cup games and one of those was at Anfield.
Ray Straw and Ron Hewitt were in dazzling form and the team crept up to just above halfway. FA Cup wins at Worcester and QPR earned a high profile Third round tie at Second Division Liverpool and a battling display saw them narrowly beaten but won them many admirers. The run came to an end in March when the team lost in successive weeks to the promoted teams, Bury and Walsall, and the rest of the season fell flat. Frith used end of season games to experiment with some youngsters and two 17-year olds Colin Holder and Dietmar Bruck made their debuts.
The home form was excellent and only three sides lowered the flag at Highfield Road but gates were under 10,000 before the end of September and the final average of 11,996 was 4,500 down on the previous season.
A new competition was instituted, the Football League Cup, a knockout competition played in midweek and specifically geared to the growing interest in floodlit football. There was as usual some resistance, especially from the bigger clubs who foresaw fixture congestion, and six clubs, including Wolves and West Brom, declined to play in the first season.
City’s first League Cup game was at home to Fourth Division Barrow on Monday 10 October and a small crowd of 6,643 watched City roar into a 4-0 half-time lead. They ran out of steam on a ‘pitch in which players often sank ankle-deep in the mud’, and allowed Barrow to pull two goals back. Crowds for the new competition were low around the country and the Cup had little credibility. In the Second Round there were only 4,500 at Portsmouth’s Fratton Park to see City knocked out by their Second Division hosts.
Off the field there were changes in the board-room with Walter Brandish standing down as chairman and replaced by local businessman Derrick Robins. Robins, who had been on the board since 1954, talked of the club’s financial difficulties, exacerbated once again by poor crowds, and was prepared to ‘bridge the gap’ – presumably meaning he was lending the club money or guaranteeing an overdraft. In his first interview with the local newspaper heaped praise on Billy Frith: ‘I am absolutely convinced he is among the best six managers in the country’.
In January 1961 Jimmy Hill’s influence was first felt at Highfield Road when the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) of which Hill was chairman threatened strike action over wages and freedom of contract. Strike action was averted at the eleventh hour and the players got many of their demands met including the removal of the maximum wage of £20 per week.
