Old Baggies - WBA Former Players

You hear plenty of talk around the game about “the old  fashioned centre-forward”, the battering ram number nine who lead the line, knocked the living daylights out of defenders and banged in more than his fair share of goals with feet and head. The Baggies have been fortunate in having more than fair share of such men down the years, but few have been better at the job than Derek Kevan.

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Even the man’s nickname made it perfectly clear just what his game was all about, because “The Tank” rarely let anything get in between him and the ball, no matter what.

“They called me “The Tank” because when I used to run at goal, they said that defenders would just be bouncing off me, like a tank, because I’d just shoulder charge them out of the way! It was a more physical game in those days, no doubt about it, you could challenge for the ball, shoulder to shoulder, it was fair enough and it was a good spectacle for the supporters to see.”

Like many of Albion’s great strikers, Derek Kevan didn’t fight his way through the ranks, but was brought in from humbler surroundings. Just as Ronnie Allen came from Port Vale, Jeff Astle from Notts County, Cyrille Regis from Hayes, Bob Taylor from Bristol City, Lee Hughes from Kidderminster and Jason Roberts from Bristol Rovers, so it was the lower divisions that equipped The Tank with the qualities necessary to earn his stripes. The story began in his native Yorkshire.

“I was in the Harrogate & District League Under-16s League and I was invited for a trial by Bradford Park Avenue, and I told them I’d have to ask my Dad whether I could go! I mainly followed Leeds, not Bradford, but it was nice to get a trial. Then they took me on, I got a few games in the first team and then it was time for me to go and do my two years of National Service. If I got a couple or three games in for Bradford in those two years, that was as many as I managed.

“Vic Buckingham was the manager there and he left to go to West Bromwich Albion, and when he went, he said, “Would you like to come with me if I can get you?” So I said, “I’ll have to ask my Dad!” I had to ask my Dad everything or he’d have knocked me block off! That’s the way things were in those days. I was 18 or 19 by then, done National Service, but I had to ask him.

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“He’d been a Sergeant in the Royal Artillery Commandos and he was a real hard man, always was, right to the day he died. He’d put men down without blinking, and I always used to say, “Thank God I’m not like that!” But he was a good man for all that, employed a hell of a lot of people, not directly by being in business, but by working for top companies in the pipe laying business. Men would be queuing up to see him and he’d always get them some work, like a tallyman. Great darts player as well. Blokes would see him in a pub and reckon they could take him on because he was getting on a bit but he’d have a game and give them a good hiding!

“So when Albion came in for me, all Dad said was, “Wherever you go, and whatever you do, always give of your best. No matter what. Always. You can’t do any more than that and people will see that you’re doing everything you can.” So even if I was having a tough time in a game, I’d always give it the works, even if I was playing terrible! I’d always be in there mixing it with the defenders, and if they gave you a belt, I’d always get up and say, “I hope you can take it like you can give it out! Because if you can’t, you’re going!” No niceties! That was how we played the game then. Billy Wright, Eddie Clamp, blokes like that, they’d kick their own grandmother if they had to! Jim Langley at Fulham was another, give you a clattering then smile at you, ruffle your hair, say, “You alright son?” I wouldn’t say I knew no fear. I knew what it was, but I just took no notice of it!

“So after I’d asked my Dad, I agreed to come to the Albion and Bradford transferred me for £3,000! I was in cuckoo land. From Bradford Park Avenue to one of the top six clubs in the country was unbelievable. It was very hard to accept at first. Once I got used to how they trained and played I was ok. Vic Buckingham was a great manager, very well spoken, a bit of a toff, but he knew how to run the team.”

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It’s ironic in many ways that Kevan was Buckingham’s first signing at The Hawthorns, for in many ways, he was the antithesis of the Buckingham style of play, which was continental in approach, and which prized finesse above the more earthy English values which were such an integral part of Derek’s own game. But there was no instant elevation to the first team for The Tank. As Albion steamed to the brink of the double in 1954, Derek was left to play in the reserves, learn his trade and grow into the Albion way of doing things. Off the field though, he stepped straight into the Black Country way of life without missing a beat.

“When I did come here, I started off by living in digs in Smethwick. I lived in the same place, with the same landlady for about five or six years and then they went off to Bournemouth and I got married and moved into a club house. I never bought a house at the Albion or after, because in football, you never know where you’re going to be, so there never seemed a lot of point! Maybe I’ve been daft on that score, but it never bothered me.

“I joined Albion, worked hard in training, and waited for my chance to come. It took a little while, I’d stay afternoons to try to improve and then eventually got a chance and made my debut, against Everton, I scored twice and we won 2-0, August 1955 – Don Howe’s first game for Albion as well. A few days after that, we played Manchester United at Old Trafford, and I scored again but we lost 3-1. They were a great team. Hard men as well as good players. Duncan Edwards was a smashing player, Billy Foulkes was hard as nails. Duncan was a friend, but not on the pitch! Great tackler, lovely footballer. But I didn’t become a regular until the following year, 1956/57.

“The Albion team was pretty handy as well in those days, just after they’d won the Cup and come second in the league. I ousted Paddy Ryan who was a great forward for Albion and the forward line then was me, Johnnie Nicholls and Ronnie Allen. Paddy scored a lot of goals, and he was great company, especially when we went away from home and stayed in places like Whitley Bay before games at Newcastle. Paddy had an eye for the ladies, so I left him to it! Johnnie Nicholls was the liveliest, funny lad, he knew how to enjoy himself! It was a very happy camp, different sorts of people, but we all got on really well.”

In that 1956/57 season, Kevan’s first full season in the first team, he set about proving that Vic Buckingham’s decision to bring him to The Hawthorns had been the correct one, ending as Albion’s top scorer with 20 goals in 44 competitive games, a pretty useful return for a rookie, and five more than even the great Ronnie Allen managed, though by that stage, Allen had turned as much provider as goalscorer, as Derek admits.

“Once I got in the side, I was there to stay, and I had great times there, because we played some brilliant football. Ronnie Allen was a wonderful player, he could hit a ball with either foot, perfect striker of it. He played either wing, inside or centre-forward. And if you caught anybody on the halfway line and Ronnie was the provider, I knew the ball was coming, I knew it’d be perfect so I just went! And he was a great crosser as well, scored a lot of goals from headers from balls from him, George Lee and Frank Griffin.”

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Albion ended the season in respectable mid-table, but in the end it was a season tinged with sadness as the Baggies missed out on a second FA Cup Final in three years when they went out at the semi-final stage to Aston Villa of all teams. Following a 2-2 draw at Molineux, where Brian Whitehouse got both Albion goals, we slipped to a 1-0 defeat in front of 58,067 spectators at St. Andrews. Typically, there’s no trace of sentiment nor rancour when Derek looks back on that game.

“It was very disappointing not to win the game and go to Wembley, but the simple fact is, it doesn’t matter how good you are, if you don’t perform on the day, doesn’t matter what anybody says, you’re not going through. Villa did better on the day and they went on and won the cup.” For the last time in their history, incidentally.

But there were compensations for Derek, even in that season, when he received his call-up papers to play for England against the oldest of enemies, Scotland, at Wembley Stadium. Where today’s players get the news in well media managed fashion, for Derek, the whole thing came as a complete shock.

“I heard about my call up in West Bromwich. I was in the picture house at Carter’s Green and I came out and I bought a paper and got on the bus to go back to Smethwick. I looked in the paper, and my name was in there, picked for England! And when I got back to my digs, there were two or three blokes hanging around there, and I couldn’t understand it. Never even thought they’d be press, and they all wanted a story about me being called up, and to take some pictures! I was in cuckoo land again, to be picked for your country, to play alongside Tom Finney, Billy Wright, Duncan Edwards, all them players, I couldn’t believe it, it was incredible. And then to score was just unbelievable really. It was one where you get put through and I just tickled it home, just inside the post, from a Bobby Charlton cross – pick that one out son!

“I remember lining up for that game and looking at their centre-half, George Young. I was 5 feet 11 and he must have been 6 feet 5 or something, and I just thought, “Look at the size of him!” But I managed to get one past him. I had a pretty good scoring record for England all told, and they can never take that away from you, no matter what anybody tries to say about you.

“I’ve got some great memories of playing for England. I went on a tour to South America, and things didn’t go very well, but we played in the Maracana against Brazil and I scored against them, a diving header. Incredible stadium and Pele was playing for them. To get on to the pitch, you had to go across a moat – that was there to stop the supporters invading the pitch. We’d never seen anything like it. That was a great trip. I’ve had a few moments!”

The goals continued to come thick and fast over the next few years as The Tank laid waste to defences and defenders up and down the land – 23 goals in 1957/58, 28 the next season, 29 the season after that. And he knew how to put teams to the sword to if the chance came, amassing nine hat-tricks in his Albion career, against the likes of Arsenal, Birmingham, Bolton, Fulham, Ipswich and, on one special day, March 19^th 1960, one against Everton.

“Not a bad day, that one. I got five goals in that game, that’s the game that sticks in my mind the most. There were a couple of headers in there – I wasn’t bad with my head to be honest.”

Given that Derek  Kevan could head the ball with as much power as many could kick it, we’ll leave that as one of the game’s greatest understatements, but it’s typical of a modest, unassuming man who still has no airs nor graces – “no niceties” as he often says. “I live in Castle Vale now and I’ve enjoyed it immensely there. I go to the Jaguar club for the bingo, which I love, go to a club on the estate for a drink, I’ve been very happy there.”

But even in his Albion years there were sadder times, among them an FA Cup date with Manchester United in March 1958, just days after the Munich air disaster.

“We went to Old Trafford and that was terrible, we didn’t want to play really, it was a very sad day. The match programme, you looked at it and all the names in the Manchester United side were blank because nobody knew who would play. We all had friends in the accident, Duncan Edwards, Tommy Taylor, he was a great player, so it was hard to go out there.

“They were well supported by football to get them through that period after the accident, and so they should have been, but it was very difficult playing against them, because it was hard to have the heart for it and we lost in a replay. It was heartbreaking as you were lining up, you had thoughts of all those boys who should have been lining up against us, how the lads playing must have felt, their supporters, it was horrible really, a terrible thing to go through.”

As the focal point of Albion’s attack, Kevan was kingpin at The Hawthorns, but once his mentor Vic Buckingham resigned in the summer of 1959, things were never really the same for The Tank.

“Gordon Clark took over as manger and he used to run us into the ground and that was no use to me, I wanted to train with the ball, to train to play football, like we always had. I told him that there was no way I was changing my ideas on the game for him, and then when he left, Archie Macaulay was the same sort, so there was no choice but to leave in the end, and he decided he wanted to sell me.”

Derek signed off his Albion career in the grand manner, playing his final League game at The Hawthorns on 9 March 1963 in front of 10,759. Albion beat Ipswich 6-1 and The Tank registered his ninth and final hat-trick for the club, leaving just before Albion slumped to a 7-0 hammering at Molineux the following Saturday.

Kevan was bound for London, signing for Chelsea in a move that went badly wrong for him.

“It was just a horrible time at Chelsea. Over the years since then, a couple of times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and not been able to get back to sleep thinking about that time, it was that bad. Tommy Docherty was the manager and it just never worked out between us. I’d played against him when he was at Preston, and when I left, I told him, “You were no good then and you’re still no good!” Actually, he wasn’t a bad player, but he could be a proper hard man when he wanted to be. We never got on, simple as that!

“At Albion, if anybody gave me the ball over the top, I was on my way, or if the wingers got to the by-line to cross it, I was in the middle ready for it. But at Chelsea, I didn’t get that sort of service and I couldn’t get many goals. So I moved on to Manchester City and the first few games, I couldn’t score, and I was thinking, “Docherty’s right, I’m missing silly chances, perhaps I am finished.” But then they started going in, I was voted Player of the Year and I got 35 goals in one season so that turned out to be a good move for me.”

Crystal Palace and Macclesfield also benefited from his talents – “I ran a pub on the corner of the ground, so if I wasn’t busy, I’d turn out for them!” – but it was as a Hawthorns Hero that Derek Kevan will be best remembered. 173 goals in 291 appearances? As Derek says, “That’s not too bad, is it?”