THE SEASON IN QUESTION 1972 - 73 • The Season in Question by Mike Robinson Jim Holton
After Shrewsbury Town had finished mid-table in Division Three in 1971-72, manager Harry Gregg promised the Gay Meadow faithful a ten-goal improvement on their League tally of 73 for the next campaign. He had more chance of being struck by lightning! The reason Town had scored so many
goals in ’71-72 was down entirely to Alf Wood, the defender- turned-striker who found the net 35 times in the League, twice in the FA Cup and three times in the League Cup. Wood had been sold to Millwall for £45,000 in May 1972, and there’s no doubt Gregg was either trying to put a brave face on what looked like a hopeless situation, or (more likely) speaking with his tongue very much in his cheek. Who on earth was going to score those 83 goals? George Andrews and Jimmy McLaughlin were coming to the end of distinguished Town careers, and young Welshman Terry Hughes was hardly going to produce the goods all on his own. Probably their brightest hope of finding the target came in the form of exciting but ill-fated winger Alan Groves The first three league matches at Gay Meadow – against
Notts County, Halifax Town and Watford – did little to boost Gregg’s hopes of reaching his ambitious target, as they all failed to produce a goal for either side. In among those games came a 2-1 victory at Charlton Athletic, courtesy of a rare right-foot Ricky Moir strike and an owl goal, so at least Town had made an adequate start to the season. But they still found goals hard to come by, and they failed to score in seven of their first 12 matches. On the day of that 12th game, a 2-0 defeat at Southend, the Shrewsbury board accepted a £45,000 bid from John Bond’s Bournemouth for Groves. It was the final straw for Gregg. There’s no doubt the sale
of Wood in the close season had come very much against the wishes of the genial Irishman, but the loss of Groves left him in what he felt was an untenable situation. Town fans were also upset by the Groves affair, to the extent that just 1,763 turned up four days after his departure to see a relatively exciting 3-2 win against Grimsby Town, in which Hughes scored twice. The following day the club issued a terse statement: “Mr Harry Gregg today resigned his post as manager of Shrewsbury Town Football Club.” Gregg himself said he was leaving “as a matter of pride and two issues of
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principle” – a thinly-disguised reference to the lack of ambition he thought the board had displayed by selling Wood and Groves.
In the first of what was to become a series of appointments from within, Gregg’s assistant Maurice Evans took the helm, firstly on a caretaker basis and then as a permanent boss – Town’s seventh since they entered the Football League. There might have been a new face in the manager’s office, but the departures continued. Shortly after Gregg’s appointment as the new manager of Swansea, McLaughlin left the Meadow to team up with his old boss at Vetch Field. Both central defenders, Jim Holton and John Moore, put in transfer requests on the same day, and were sold. Holton went to Tommy Docherty’s Manchester United for a then club record fee of £80,000, and Moore also went to Swansea. Less than a week after Holton’s switch to Old Trafford, Evans was allowed to spend £30,000 on a replacement – and the player he bought went on to be one of the most significant signings in Shrewsbury Town history: a certain Graham Turner from Chester City. Turner made his debut in a 2-2 draw at home to Oldham Athletic, in which one of the goals was scored by Andrews. It was to be the popular striker’s last game in a Town career which had produced 53 first-team goals, as he then moved to Walsall in a deal which brought winger Geoff Morris to the Meadow. The club’s search for an experienced striker finally bore fruit when they signed Alan Tarbuck from Preston North End for £15,000, and almost immediately Tarbuck and Morris were both on target in a 4-2 home win over Bristol Rovers. They earned another 4-2 success against Scunthorpe a fortnight later, but the only goal they scored in the last five matches was Tarbuck’s strike in a 1-0 win at Watford on the last day of the season. Town ended up in 15th place, but failed to score in 20 of their 46 league games. Bolton Wanderers, who knocked Town out of the FA Cup at the second-round stage, were promoted as Division Three champions. To round off the season, Shrewsbury were invited to take on Hereford United in a two-leg Herefordshire Senior Cup final. The Bulls had enjoyed a magnificent first season in the Football League, earning promotion from Division Four as runners-up to Southport. And they proved too strong for Town, winning 2-0 at Edgar Street after a 1-1 draw at the Meadow. On the field, then, 1972-73 was a pretty ordinary campaign… but worse was to follow. Next season Town were even more clueless in front of goal, drawing a blank in 23 league games. Needless to say, they were relegated.
Mike Robinson is Editor of Kidz in Sport publications. wrexham & shropshire | direct trains to london |
www.wrexhamandshropshire.co.uk
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