08/09/56: Millwall (H) 7-2

Timbo’s trio of Torquay v Millwall programmes reminds us that Millwall would have been pretty regular opponents during our first forty years in the Football League. A quick count suggests we faced them in eighteen seasons, the last encounter being during the final weeks of Eric Webber’s time at Plainmoor.

Of the Millwall names in those programmes the two which interest me the most are Johnny Summers and Charlie Hurley. Summers, apparently not a success at The Den, is chiefly remembered for scoring five times as Charlton beat Huddersfield 7-6 one day in 1957 after they’d been 5-1 down with half-and-hour to play. And – remembering that Bill Shankly (who we’re hearing joined Liverpool fifty years ago this week) was Huddersfield manager at the time – there’s a nice link at www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article3060190.ece. Sadly this reports that Johnny Summers died just a few years after that match.

Charlie Hurley was – to coin a phrase – later a “legend” at Sunderland where he recently won of those “player of the century” accolades. Back in those days when international footballers just about always played for the country of their birth – and no other - I’d always imagined Hurley sounding like a true man of Cork. It was only years later that I learnt he’d lived in the lands beyond Dagenham since he was a babe in arms.

Read the small print and – as ever – there’s more tales and talking points. Graham Bond – off on National Service (I wonder how many playing careers suffered – or benefitted – from that time away?). Dennis Lewis – almost a Torquinian (I guess that proved true given he lived locally until his death many years later). And what of Harold Kellow, the masseur?

Then there’s Millwall’s long-standing reputation as “tough nuts” (a reference to the team I suspect); memories of the 1954/55 cup run (Don Mills bathing his feet at Blyth; Leeds being beaten in the Plainmoor mud) and mention of the name “Atyeo” in the notes reporting the game against Bristol City. That would be John Atyeo who played for England as a Bristol City player around the same time as Geoff Bradford of Bristol Rovers appeared for England.