Forty-one years on, and still we wait for the Throstles to walk up the steps at Wembley Stadium and lift the FA Cup for the sixth time. It’s that long ago, they’ve even replaced the steps – and the stadium - but they can’t ever replace the FA Cup, however much the authorities and certain clubs try to give it a good kicking. Those men that win the cup achieve a rare immortality, become names in a roll of honour that will forever be recounted, however long the game is played by West Bromwich Albion.
Photo from WBA archive
Among that celestial number is Ian Collard, a midfielder whose use of the ball, work ethic and dedication to the team cause, even to his own detriment, remain examples to any footballer of any era. From joining the Albion straight from school, right through to his departure in the wake of that cup final success, Collard was a member of a special Albion team, and yet he might easily have been lost to football altogether, as he recalls.
“I was born in a village called Easington and my parents lived at Horden. I was born in my grandmother’s house, First Street, next to the pit. It was a close community, went to the local school and I left there at 14 because I had a job to go to – at the Albion. Actually though, I could easily have been living in Canada by then.
“My dad went off to Canada when I was 9, he went off to better the family. He got offered a job in Hudson Bay and went over to settle things, we were going over later. He was there six months, the winter came, he couldn’t get out of the cabin, out of the town and he just wrote to us, “Don’t come!” By then, my mom had sold the house, the furniture, we’d got the boat tickets so we ended up living with my grandmother before he came back and we moved again.”
These days, promising footballers are pretty much signed up by clubs after they’ve given their mother their first kick from inside the womb, but it was a rather more relaxed system that Collard came through.
“I was picked up from school by the Albion. I did all the normal things for those days, played for the school team, the district, the county team, went for England trials, and from there a number of clubs were after me. I could have gone all over the country. Burnley were the first ones. My best friend at school, John Gibson, went to Burnley so that was where I was going. There were 24 Geordies out of 36 players at Burnley, so it was home from home! It was all set up and then another club were interested and another and another and I started to wonder!
Photo from WBA archive
“Manchester United were one, Liverpool another. They’d only just got in the First Division and they weren’t the force they became, so that wasn’t as exciting, nobody knew what Shankly was going to turn them into. And my grandmother, she said, “You don’t want to go to Liverpool, it’s full of dogs!” My family were rugby people, my uncles played for the county, my dad represented England - the English Coal Board! Actually though, when you think of it, most of the rugby players who played for England then did work down the mine, top class players. So when I asked my family for advice about the football clubs, they’d come up with daft advice about Liverpool being full of dogs! Thanks a lot!
“Every club that approached me, I went there because I wanted to have a proper look. I went to Burnley, Arsenal, Manchester United, Preston, Tottenham, Albion. I met the managers, saw the training facilities and so on. Some of them relied on facilities to sell the job. At Arsenal, all I did was walk round the ground and talk to the manager in his office. I’m 14 years old, talking in the offices at Arsenal, thinking, “This is a nice office, but what’s it got to do with football?” I wanted to see players.
“When I got here, I walked in with Paddy Ryan. He picked me up from the station, drove me here, giving me advice: “If you’re in the wall, cover yourself up, and face the front because if you turn your head and get hit in the ear, you can’t hear any more!” I had this big lecture from him. We arrived at The Hawthorns, I was with my mom and dad, and it was the last day before the players went off for the summer break. The whole staff was out there having a laugh and a joke and I just thought that this was the environment that I wanted to be involved in. When I went home, we talked it over and between us, we decided I was going to join Albion. I think my mom took a shine to Derek Kevan!”
Leaving the north-east for the Black Country was a big change, even more so back in the early 1960s when transportation wasn’t so good, when people, kids especially, weren’t so worldly wise. Ian found the transition tough to take.
“I was very young and I don’t mind admitting that the first two years away from home were really hard. Really hard. I think I had five or six different digs because I just couldn’t settle anywhere. I was comparing everything with home. It wasn’t until I was 17, started going to dances or snooker halls or whatever, all go around together, that I started to settle. That first year, I’d have gone home in a second. My deal with the club was I could go home every month because they knew it was going to be a problem.
“Wherever we played on the Saturday, I got the train home from there and got back to the Albion on the Tuesday morning. That helped because otherwise, I don’t think I’d have stuck it. It was hell coming back those first two years, my mother would be crying her eyes out, dad would be nearly in tears! I can remember getting in to Durham Station at one and two in the morning loads of times, being picked up, because that’s what you did. One year I went home in the snow, it was a surprise visit, and I got to Durham and there was two feet of snow. No traffic, no buses, no taxis, nothing. I lived seven miles away and I had to walk with my suitcase to get home because I didn’t want to worry my mother and father. I got about half a mile from home when a little car stopped and offered me a lift – where was he five miles ago!? But in saying all that, it was still exciting to be a part of the football club. I used to break Alec Jackson’s boots in for him. I used to think it was great just to wear a professional player’s boots for training!”
By the time Collard was getting close to a first team place, Jimmy Hagan was in the manager’s chair. There are easier taskmasters to have cut your teeth on…
“When Hagan was gaffer, I was 17 or 18 at the time, and he would take 13 players on away trips. I think I had a period of 13 or 14 games where I just sat on the bench and watched, because he wanted me to travel as insurance because he saw me as a utility player really, left-back, left-wing, midfield. I even played on the right sometimes, so I was there in case of illness or injury I suppose. In my eyes, I felt like I was punished because I wasn’t getting a game.
“In those days, the reserves also played on Saturday, so I travelled with the first team, didn’t get a game and missed out on the reserves as well. I used to ask him week after week, “How the hell do you think I can perform when I haven’t been on the field for three months?” His answer was that he needed me there and that he could trust me to do a job wherever, which was a backhanded compliment I suppose, and to have that faith at my early age was nice. But he didn’t realise what was going on in my head. My development as a player was held back because of that.
“I made my debut very early, just after I was 17, at Burnley and I remember having a rubbish game! I had one cleared off the line which would have made a world of difference. I was up against Bryan Miller, probably ten years older than me, kicked me all over the field. That’s the learning experience, and like most kids I was in and out of the side for a while as I was coming to terms with it.
“Then at 18, I was marking Helmut Halle of Bologna, one of the best players in the world, running around like a headless chicken, trying to catch this West German World Cup star. He’d get the ball, then it was gone. He was there, then he wasn’t. Now he’s over there. Unbelievable. Their technique was just sensational, so far ahead of us. We were plodding like carthorses and they were thoroughbreds. I was totally lost, they outclassed us. But it’s what they do to you during the game that upsets you. The result is one thing, but to be running after ghosts is soul destroying. Nobody made an impression on me like that. It’s a learning curve. Years later, I was in an Ipswich team that knocked out Real Madrid in the UEFA Cup when Gunther Netzer was there, so in one way I got my own back!”
Few Albion managers polarise opinions like Jimmy Hagan did, but whatever people thought about him as an individual, everyone falls into line when they talk about his ability. Ian is no exception.
“Hagan was the man who built the team that won the League Cup and the FA Cup. He had an awful lot to offer, but he didn’t know how to do that, how to put it across. He had tremendous personal ability as a player, very skilful, even at 50 as he was then. He couldn’t bring that quality out of the players he had. I felt he thought that a player either has a skill or not, it was already there, it couldn’t be taught, he couldn’t give you that. But the physical side was something he could bring out, make you fitter or stronger. If you’re not fit, you can’t play seemed to be his thinking. If you don’t have the physical attributes to produce it, it doesn’t matter how skilful you might be. Get a player fit and if he can play, it’ll come through. He was very stubborn and here was nothing you could do to change his mind. He would never survive in today’s game. Players are as big as the manager now, they have a lot of say and a lot to say, and they wouldn’t put up with him. Jimmy needed to go to school and take some coaching courses and he might have come out a better manger or it. But he could spot a player and he built a very good team that had success, so in his day, you have to respect that.
“He was very inflexible, he had his view and that was it. Very stubborn. I wasn’t really involved in the tracksuit revolt because I was just a junior player and you’re right down the hierarchy. It was all about the weather of course, but also Jimmy’s techniques in training. One session, he just stood there and every time we ran round the track, he’d put a mark in the snow with his foot and shout, “Ok, another lap!” We ended up doing 20 times round the track and that was training. We didn’t see a ball for weeks and I think the attitude of the players at that time was pretty low, they were demoralised, weren’t enjoying it and in the end, they just said, “Stuff it!” That was the root, morale was so low, because if you’re enjoying it, you put up with the cold. It was just the last straw that broke the camel’s back really. “You want to keep warm, run faster!””
The end for Hagan came with defeat to QPR in the 1967 League Cup Final, the Throstles squandering a 2-0 lead at the break to lose 3-2 to Third Division opposition.
“I can remember going in the dressing room at Wembley at half-time in 1967 and Hagan just saying, “Just keep it going, play the same game and we’ll go on and win the cup”. People say there was a bust up, but I don’t remember it. We were totally on top, they weren’t in the game. But little things happen and games change, you concede, it’s 2-1 and suddenly it’s different. It was one of those days, the second goal from Rodney Marsh bounced three times, bobbled, hit the post and went in. It was fate I suppose. Afterwards, it was total dismay. How did that happen? We couldn’t believe it, the goals were ridiculous, farcical, but suddenly everything went their way and that was it. However good you are, you always need a bit of luck as well.”
The departure of Hagan ushered in the next era at The Hawthorns with Alan Ashman leaving Carlisle United to take charge.It signalled a very definite cange in style.
“To be honest, I didn’t have that much to do with Alan Ashman, I was only here with him for a year. If I was to have a criticism of him, it would be that he was too much the opposite way to Jim, that he was led too much by the opinion of the players, players would say they would only play in a particular position and would sometimes get their own way. Under Hagan, you were told and you did the job. And if you didn’t want to do it, you didn’t play again!
“I don’t suppose Alan had the experience that Jimmy had, relatively young, only a couple of years in the game as manager. He was a chicken farmer before he got the job at Carlisle I think, so he was very new to it. He did well at Carlisle, he had a track record there, but managing Albion is a different thing entirely. The time I was here with Alan, he was living off the development of the side that Jimmy had done in my opinion, but in saying that, he was bright enough not to mess with anything just for the sake of it and it worked.”
It worked to the tune of winning the FA Cup, an epic run that Collard played a full part in, starting with the fourth round replay at Southampton. “Down at Southampton I had to mark Terry Paine and on the way down, Graham Williams frightened the life out of me, saying, “That Terry Paine, what a player, fast as well. And he’ll give you a kicking!” By the time I get on the field I was a bag of nerves, but it was good, I was keyed up. I don’t think there’s such a thing as negative advice, all advice is helpful, it’s the way you take it and how you use it and what you reject. That was honing my senses, I was ready, I was prepared for him and I did ok. Then Willie went in goal and we thought we’d had it, there’d be four or five go in, but we came through it, he played ever so well.
“The Liverpool games were the highlight of the run. I remember at one time just thinking, “Is this ever going to end?” Playing at Anfield was always an experience. The crowd and the surroundings intimidate you a little bit, but we always had a decent record there. Beating them in any game was always a bit special at that time, and it set us up to go and win the cup from there.”
More about that in part two of this feature.
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