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  Dennis Wit was a part of the Tea Men squad under Cantwell in 1978, and he remembers the team well: ‘We actually won our division that season and were the only team to beat the New York Cosmos, who were the team of the time, twice during the season. There were no real superstars on the side. Gerry Daly, an Ireland international, was in the team, and there was Mick Flanagan, who had been at Charlton. He was a big success for the Tea Men and was voted the most valuable player in 1978.

  ‘I was one of only three Americans in the team. You see, in those days the NASL teams were pretty much made up of foreign players from England, Ireland and Scotland. The NASL, in an effort to increase the popularity of the sport in the USA and get Americans to play, made a rule that stated each franchise had to have three home-grown players in the first team. In general, one of the positions that would be filled by an American was that of goalkeeper – the USA has always had a tradition of producing good goalkeepers.

  ‘I got involved with the Tea Men through my relationship with the assistant coach Dennis Viollet. I was a Baltimore lad, and he had played and captained the Baltimore Bays. I later played for Baltimore before moving on to San Diego and then the Tampa Bay Rowdies, who were a popular team at the time, with Rodney Marsh in their line-up. When the New England Tea Men franchise started up, I got traded there. The Tea Men name came about due to Lipton Tea owning the club.’

  Arthur Smith was the personnel director of the Tea Men and was in a three-man partnership with Cantwell and Viollet. Arthur recalls the fateful day he set off on an adventure that would change his life: ‘I had known Noel a long time. I was a childhood friend of John Barnwell, the former chief executive of the League Managers Association, and he had been assistant to Noel at Peterborough, so we all knew each other well. Phil Woosnam, a former teammate of Noel at West Ham who was then the commissioner of the NASL, had got in touch with Noel and asked him if he would be interested in coming to the USA to coach. Noel told him he would think about it. He would have been a big coup for the NASL. He rang me and asked me if I was doing anything and would I like to come down to his house for some dinner. I went down, and he asked me if I would go to America with him because he needed some help. I initially said no, but then had a think about it, and as I had such good time working for Noel I said I would.

  ‘Dennis Viollet had been in America for a number of years with the Baltimore Bays. He was currently out of work, though, so we asked him to get involved as assistant manager. Dennis knew the American college players, and I knew players from England and Europe. I had previously been chairman at Halifax Town, so I had good contacts in football.

  ‘In the end we only had six weeks to put a team together in time for the start of the season. We wanted players with ability and character, and we got them. We had an arrangement with Charlton and got Laurie Abraham and Mick Flanagan, who would become the League’s most valuable player, and we also signed Peter Simpson, who had played for almost fifteen years with Arsenal. Even though we had a short space of time to get organised, we ended up winning the Eastern Division.

  ‘The players all had great respect for Noel. They all knew what he had done in football, so we were very fortunate in that sense. After games, however, Noel was more like one of the boys and had a great rapport with them. He was a footballing purist and wanted the game played on the ground. I would often be in the dugout beside him and would shout, “Take him down!” and Noel would turn and look at me and give out to me.

  ‘The training and coaching were very different from the English set-up. Noel had a canny knack of knowing if a player was dehydrated or carrying a knock, often before the player himself. If someone needed a break, he would see it and would say to me, “Make sure and have some water at the ready.” He could see the little things that affected players.

  ‘One of Noel’s funnier attributes was that when he spoke, he would often get his facts mixed up. One time he was over talking to Chris Turner about the next game and how the opposition had this attacking midfielder who he would be marking, a Yugoslavian. I think his name was Mitic. Noel was telling Chris in great detail how this midfielder was physical and good in the air, and although he had two good feet, he always went to the left. He was emphasising to Chris this point when all of a sudden he said, “Not that any of this matters. He injured his leg last week and isn’t playing.”

  ‘Another time he was naming the team and he called out twelve players. We had a young American keeper as understudy to Kevin Keelan. His name was Kirk Pearson, and his nickname was “the Kitten”, as Kevin was “the Cat”. Well, Kirk started laughing, and Noel asked him what was so funny. Kirk told him he had named twelve players, and Noel just turned and said, “And you’re still not one of them.” He had a quick wit about him.

  ‘That said, he was very competitive and did not like to lose. He would get angry, but he never singled anyone out. Noel was a natural sportsman, and you can add golf to the list of sports he excelled at. He loved it around Jacksonville with all the golf courses. He was a terrific fellow. It’s very hard to say a bad word about him. He was also very modest. His favourite saying was, “It’s not a rehearsal, it’s your one shot”, and that was the way he lived his life. He was generous not just in terms of money but with his time and knowledge.

  ‘He had a lovely charm about him. One time we were headed to New York for the Soccer Bowl, which was the equivalent of the FA Cup in America, and Noel and I flew to New York to meet Dennis, who had to drive from Boston with his wife Helen. Alan Ball was playing for the Whitecaps, and his father, Alan Ball senior, had come over. I had actually been Alan Ball senior’s chairman at Halifax, so we all knew each other well. We had a cracking night catching up, and in the morning Dennis and Helen wanted to head back to see their kids. Dennis had agreed to drive us back, but we were to meet for breakfast first. I eventually got up but left Noel in bed. I only had a cup of tea, as I did not want to delay them any further, but there was still no sign of Noel. An hour passed and still nothing. He eventually turned up, by which stage Helen was exasperated. She wanted to go, but Noel said we might as well have some lunch. So, we had our lunch, and then Dennis went and got the car. We got 100 yards before being stopped at a light. Noel and I were in the back, and Noel says to me, “Should we go back and stay the night with Bally?” I said we’d better head home. The light turned green, we moved another 100 yards and hit another traffic light. Noel said the same thing again. Finally, by the third set of lights, he said to Dennis, “Stop the car. We’re staying.” We left our bags and everything. But the way he went about it, it was so hard to be annoyed with him. He was a great friend, and I miss him dearly, even now.’

  Kevin Keelan was Noel’s first signing for the New England Tea Men and he has a huge amount of respect for his old manager and friend: ‘Noel was an old friend of John Bond’s, and he came to Norwich to talk to me. I had been at Norwich for seventeen years at that stage, and I was due a testimonial. John told me that Noel wanted to sign me for the Tea Men, so I met with Noel and had a chat with him about the League and what he wanted from the team and from me. By the end of it I had committed myself to them for three years, but I also decided to stay on with Norwich. I played in the NASL for three years, during which time I commuted from the USA to England. I played football for twelve months a year. They were hard times but good times.

  ‘One time, I finished the season with New England, got on a plane on the Thursday and arrived in England to play for Norwich against Everton on the Saturday. We won the game 3–1, but at the end of it I was on my knees.

  ‘Before I went to the Tea Men, I had a call from George Best, who wanted me to come out to the LA Aztecs, but I decided I was better off where I was at the time. Then Noel came in and made me an offer. I remember we played the Aztecs when I got over there, and after the game we were in a bar having a chat when a young lad came over to me and said that Mr Cantwell wanted to talk to me in the back bar. I headed in there and there was Noel and Besty having a good chat. George was s
aying how he had tried to sign me, while Noel was saying how good I was. It made for good listening, but I think that if I had gone to the Aztecs, I wouldn’t have got the extra few years out of my career.

  ‘There was a lot of travelling in the NASL. It was not like with Norwich, where the furthest you went was the north-east of England. In the States we played in Detroit, LA, Portland and San José. We’d be on road trips for a week at a time. It was tough, but it was great fun. I saw places I’d never seen before. The League was an exciting thing to be a part of. There were some top players from England and elsewhere playing at that time.

  ‘He was a great man, though. He enjoyed a good rapport with the players, and the training was exactly the same as it was in England, so it was of a good standard. He worked great with Dennis Viollet. They really bounced off each other and had a good relationship. Like all managers, however, you didn’t want to go near him if the team lost. He hated to lose. That said, you could have a chat with him about the game over a beer, and he would tell you exactly where it had gone wrong.’

  After some good times in America, it was tragedy that eventually brought Cantwell back to England when his only son died in a car crash at the tender age of twenty-two. While he never got over that loss, he managed to regain some semblance of normality when he returned once more to manage Peterborough in 1986, his second spell as a manager there. Cantwell remained in this role until he became general manager on 12 July 1988.

  After he quit football, he settled into life in Peterborough and ran the New Inn pub for a number of years before he finally retired in 1999. He came back into football during the England reign of Sven-Göran Eriksson, who invited Noel to go scouting for him and to report on some of England’s up-and-coming players. Sadly, Noel Cantwell died on 8 September 2005, after a battle against cancer, at the age of seventy-three.

  NOEL CANTWELL’S CLUB MANAGERIAL HONOURS RECORD:

  Fourth Division Championship: Peterborough United 1974

  NOEL CANTWELL’S IRELAND RECORD:

  Total number of games in charge: 3

  Total number of wins: 1 (ratio 33.33%)

  Total number of draws: 1 (ratio 33.33%)

  Total number of losses: 1 (ratio 33.33%)

  Biggest win: 2–0 v. Czechoslovakia

  Biggest defeat: 2–1 v . Czechoslovakia

  Longest run without defeat: 2 games

  3

  CHARLIE HURLEY

  Charlie Hurley was nicknamed ‘the King’ and for good reason. A colossus of a man, he is regarded as one of the giants of English and Irish football, and to this day he is revered by Sunderland, the club to whom he gave the majority of his career. Hurley was a natural leader who led by example and demanded that others give the same commitment that he himself gave on the pitch. Such was the impact that he made on Tyne and Wear with Sunderland that he was named their player of the century. In his day he was a good, old-fashioned centre-half who played with his heart and soul and became a legend for whatever team he turned out for, whether that was Millwall, Sunderland, Bolton or the country of his birth, Ireland. Hurley is remembered as a player who never shirked the challenge.

  At a time when change in Irish football was imminent, Noel Cantwell and Charlie Hurley were the last men to fall under the influence of the FAI committees. The history books do not really include them as managers, but from Johnny Carey’s last game in charge in February 1967, to the appointment of Mick Meagan in 1969, there was a period when Noel Cantwell and Charlie Hurley were co-managers of the national team for two games, with the FAI eventually opting to give the sole responsibility to Cantwell. When he stepped down from his duties as national team manager due to his commitments with Coventry, Hurley stepped into the breach from 18 November 1967, when the FAI committee officially named him as the man to look after the team on match days. He was technically the player-coach during that time, and he took control of the team for a total of six matches, eventually calling time on both his Ireland playing career and his Ireland coaching career at the same time, in June 1969.

  EARLY CAREER, MILLWALL AND THE KING

  Hurley was born in Cork in 1936 but emigrated with his father and mother to England when he was still a young child. Growing up in Essex, he made his name with his local school team, Blacksmiths Lane, with whom he was captain and played outside-right. Then, having finished school, he was playing for Rainham, his local youth team, when he was spotted by a Millwall scout. As is so often the case, the scout on the day, Bill Voisey, had actually gone to the match to check out a player from the opposition, but the game finished with Charlie signing amateur forms with the London club.

  Charlie made his debut for the Millwall reserves against Fulham and after the game was asked to join the grounds staff at Millwall to earn an apprenticeship. He decided to decline the offer and instead completed a tool-making apprenticeship, but the club were not to be deterred in their determination to have Hurley on the playing staff and, at the age of seventeen, his professional career did get going when he signed for Millwall, breaking into the team that same year, 1953. The irony of his breakthrough, though, was that it came at the expense of another Irishman, Gerry Bowler, who had represented Northern Ireland on three occasions.

  At that time Millwall were a Third Division team, and the season before Hurley’s debut they had finished runners-up in the League. In those days the runners-up spot did not guarantee you promotion, so Millwall had to rebuild and entered a period of change, one that benefited the young Cork man, who became a permanent fixture in the side.

  After four years with Millwall, and over 100 appearances, Sunderland, whose manager Alan Brown had been tipped off to his potential by a former Millwall manager, came calling for the then twenty-one-year-old. A fee of £18,000 was agreed with Millwall, and a prince was about to grow up and become a king.

  Sunderland at that time were undergoing a new chapter in their history. In 1957 the club had been relegated from Division One for the first time and had also been fined and their board suspended for making payments to players above the maximum agreed amount. Those events rocked English football to its core and pushed the club into a period of turmoil. Their relegation meant that after sixty-eight years in England’s top flight they were in Division Two, hardly the place for a young, ambitious centre-half who was already beginning to make a name for himself.

  Although we now know that his time with Sunderland was the making of Hurley, his first two appearances were the stuff of nightmares. A 7–0 defeat to Blackpool that included an own goal, followed by a 6–0 defeat to Burnley, would have seen many older, more experienced men crumble. But to be fair to both the player and manager who signed him, they stuck with it.

  Hurley suffered his fair share of heartbreak with Sunderland, as defeat on the last day of the season twice cost them the chance of promotion to the top flight, and it was not until 1964 that Sunderland would reclaim their place in the top tier of English football, ending a six-year absence. The previous season the club had come within one game of promotion to the First Division, requiring only a draw in their final game against promotion rivals Chelsea, who had another game left to play, to secure promotion. However, they were defeated, and Chelsea went on to win their last match and take their place in the First Division. However, there were no mistakes in 1964 when Charlie skippered the side and they finished runners-up behind Charlton Athletic, thereby winning the second promotion spot.

  That promotion-winning season was also extremely pleasing for Hurley on a personal front, as he was runner-up in the Football Writers’ Player of the Year award, just missing out to Bobby Moore. Hurley’s stature in the game was growing, and his strength at the back for Sunderland was one of the key factors in the club’s return to the top division.

  Norman Howe, a close friend of Hurleys, is the vice-president of the Sunderland Former Players Association. He remembers the promotion-winning team of 1964 as one of the greatest in Sunderland’s history: ‘They played at Roker Park in those days, and it was
a fortress. They went eighteen months without losing there at one stage. The players were highly regarded up in Sunderland, but they and Charlie never let it go to their heads.

  ‘I remember they would often have their lunch in the local hotel before a game and then cross the public park to Roker Park. The fans would stroll with them. Then, once the players got there, it would be a case of, “See ya now. We’re off to get changed.” It’s all very different nowadays, of course. There was so much interaction in those days.

  ‘Charlie is a very good friend of mine, and I can tell you one of the most striking things about him is that he is very modest. He never looked for glory. I remember one time we were out in Sunderland for a meal and a drink, and people were clamouring to see him. He did all the signing the fans wanted, but then instead of staying with the young fans he went over to these three old men and sat down with them and chatted away and had a drink with them. Later he said to me, “See them? They are yesterday’s men. They have worked all their lives and supported the club. It was nice to go over and chat to them and cheer them up.” That’s the way he is.

  ‘Charlie always attracted attention wherever he went in Sunderland. Even now when he comes up to Sunderland it’s the same. About three years ago he came up and we went for a game of golf. Word got around that Charlie was about. By the time we reached the clubhouse there was a queue of people looking to shake his hand, get some photos and ask for his autograph. Some of them were teenagers who would never have even seen him play.

  ‘He has a great sense of humour, too, and loves a good joke. One time we were in the pub together and this gentleman came and joined us. He shook Charlie’s hand and asked who I was. Charlie replied that I was his brother Chris. The bloke said it was lovely to meet me, and we got to chatting. He asked me if I had ever played football. I thought I would get my own back, so I said to him, “Charlie, why don’t you tell my story?”