John Harrison and Company - Charter Accounts

On Saturday I had the great pleasure to meet the eight surviving members of the Rotherham United team which won the very first League Cup final match (now the Carling Cup). The Mighty Millers beat Aston Villa 2-0 in the first leg at Millmoor only to lose the second leg by the same score at Villa Park and then lose the Cup Final in extra time.

The occasion was the Rotherham United v Barnet League Two game at Don Valley on Saturday. The club decided to make the game a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the historic match and invited all the surviving members of the team to the match.

I had the priviledge of being able to get my match programme signed by all of the members of the present Rotherham United team and all of the 1961 team. The amazing thing was that you can read all of the signatures of the 1961 team despite their advancing years but you couldn't make out the name of a single one of the modern day team.

The 1961 team are a very modest and unassuming bunch of people, all of course in their 70s apart from Lol Morgan, the full back who is now 80, but looks the fittest of them all. I reminded Lol of the time I saw him mark the great Stanley Mathews out of a game at Millmoor, though to be fair, the maestro was 50 years old at the time.

Peter Madden was one of the most underrated centre halves in the country at the time and in fact one person at our table had a press report which said the although Swann and Norman were contesting the England centre half position the one who should have been picked was Madden of Rotherham. He was certainly my hero and I have always felt that if he had played in the Jack Mansell Rotherham team (which would have beaten the great Manchester United team of Charlton, Law, Best and Crerand if it had not been for two unjustly disalllowed goals) they would have been promoted  to Division One as they had everything apart rom a centre half and were between his era and that of Dave Watson, who did go on to play for England. He deflated my bubble when he told me that he left Rotherham United because of Jack Mansell, who was never able to replace him.

One other thing that became obvious to me was the resentment that there was to the Pursehouses who sold our star players at the time. Butler and Houghton to Hull City, Lyons to Notts Forest, Bennett to Newcastle and Casper to Burnley. "They were only interested in money" was the comment, echoing what all of we Millers thought at the time, we could have made it to the top.

And what of the opinion of the modern day team? Well I am going to grant anonimity here. There was a feeling that despite the diets, weight training, fitness work, sports science, specilaised training etc modern day footballers don't run anything like the amount they did, something I would wholeheartedly endorse. There were no planned moves and no 'wall passes' (which I remember as being the most devasting at the time).

And most telling "If the ball was on the right side of the field, they all went to the right, if the ball went to the left, they all went to the left so they had no width, if one team had the ball everybody went in the other team's half and vice versa, if somebody went to the toilet, they would all have gone.

IT WAS LIKE WATCHING A GAME IN A SCHOOL PLAYGROUND

I'll never see a game in the same light again.