Out of the BLUE, I was sent a link to the
www.wolvesheroes.com/ website from a friend who has an interest in Cambridge University alumni. Rowan Kitt is a rugby referee and has a lovely job helping to raise money on behalf of Queens' College, as Development Director and Fellow of the college. His job gets him in contact with past members of the college and Pat Neil is one of them.
Pat's story is fascinating and I have pinched much of this from the excellent Wolves website. P.T. Neil played for the University team between 1959-61 at a time when the relative quality of these student players was close to the world of "proper" football and many undergraduates could have chosen to play in the professional game had they not been channeled into academic pursuits. They were also obliged to do National Service and after that they went into employment in more reliable and lucrative careers.
Pat Neil played First Division football for two clubs while
still a sixth former and had one of his call-ups announced at his school’s morning
assembly.
He also scored the goal that preserved Wolves’ unbeaten
floodlit record at Molineux and went on to make four League appearances for the
club (scoring once) without taking a penny piece in wages.
Pat Neil, a skilful 1950s winger, would do his homework on
the train up from the south coast and then go and pull on the famous gold
shirt?
“I was at grammar school all week before going to
Wolverhampton on the 3.10 train from Portsmouth,” he said. “Initially, I would
stay over at the Molineux Hotel on a Friday night with Mr and Mrs Farr. Then,
as long as it hadn’t been an away game up north, I came home on the Saturday
night via Waterloo.
“I played in the England schoolboys team at 15 and had Bobby
Charlton and Wilf McGuinness as team-mates at one stage. At the end of the
season, Stan Cullis came looking for me because Wolves and Manchester United
were the two big clubs scooping up talented lads at that time.
“He knocked on our front door in Portsmouth when Wolves were
playing down south but I wasn’t allowed in on the meeting! We lived above an
off licence my father ran and he told Mr Cullis while I was in another room
that he was very keen that I finished my O Levels before thinking about
football.
“Stan came back to sign me in 1956 and I recall him being
very particular. He took his trilby off when he came into the house.
“I had to talk the matter over with my headmaster because
the school were a bit bemused by it all. So was I. It caused a bit of a furore
at Pompey as well because they were upset and complained to the FA that Wolves
had poached me.
“There was much angst round here, not least because I had
good friends at Pompey like Ray Crawford.”
Neil, an England amateur international, had broken into the
senior side at Fratton Park on the first day of 1955-56 as their youngest ever
first-team player, aged 17 years and 300 days. Ironically, given his classroom
commitments, the game fell during school holidays.
He subsequently became Portsmouth’s youngest ever goalscorer
and might have made his home debut against Wolves. In the event, he watched
that midweek meeting from the stand but played the Saturdays before and after,
against Huddersfield away and Blackpool at home, then lined up in a 3-1 defeat
in the early-season return at Molineux.
The game against the Seasiders was an attractive one for the
nation’s photographers, who clamoured for a picture of him (the First
Division’s youngest player) with the legendary and then 40-year-old Stanley
Matthews. Pat celebrated the rise to stardom with a goal in a 3-3 draw.
The following Saturday, he impressed in one of Pompey’s most
famous victories when they travelled to win 5-1 at Chelsea, who had beaten they
and Wolves to the title a few months earlier. He didn’t score but was on target
against Bolton in another 3-3 draw and came up with the only goal against
Everton shortly afterwards.
Only a call-up for an amateur international in which he
scored twice then denied him an outing in a win at Arsenal.
It was a highly encouraging baptism and, just over a year
later, he was doing something similar in the West Midlands.
“Because I was an amateur, there was no fee when I moved to
Wolves,” he added. “They just took over my registration in 1956-57.
“I was in digs in Tettenhall with the South African winger
Cliff Durandt. We lived in the next street to Billy Wright and used to collect
Eddie Stuart and Des Horne on the way to catching the bus up to the ground.
“My first match in the reserves was at Barnsley and I was
thrilled over the following months to be playing at some terrific grounds
against some great players. But it was Saturday games only until I had this
shock call to play against the Hungarian team Red Banner late in 1956.
“It was a coincidence
because Red Banner had played at Pompey the week before and I had gone in with
my father and watched from behind the goal. I had also been very impressed with
them.
“I had never played under floodlights before that night at
Molineux and was lucky enough to score our equaliser when the keeper palmed a
corner out to me and I hit it straight back in.
“Red Banner had some
world-famous players like Hidgekuti, Sandor and Palotas and it was a dreamland
for me. We kept our unbeaten record at home to foreign clubs by drawing 1-1 and
that was seen as terribly important.
“My first League game for Wolves was at Manchester City the
weekend after. Bert Trautmann was making his comeback following his broken neck
and all the publicity was about him rather than me playing on Wolves’ left wing
in place of Jimmy Mullen, who was the nicest man I have ever met. We won 3-2
and I scored the winning goal.
“I remember going into the school library on the Monday,
opening up the huge broadsheet version of The Times and reading a beautiful
piece by Geoffrey Green, who I knew from amateur internationals.
“I loved my time at Wolves and was so flattered to be among
players like Jimmy, who sold me my first tennis racket when he had his sports
shop in the town, Dennis Wilshaw, Eddie Clamp, who was a bit of a rascal,
Johnny Hancocks, Billy and Bert Williams.
“Stan Cullis was such a big figure in the game, frightening
at times and kindly at others. I remember him giving even Billy Wright a
fearful rollocking at half-time in one game for not marking the centre-forward
properly. I was sitting quivering in the corner, hoping he wouldn’t come to
me!”
Neil, having played nine competitive first-team games for
his home city club, played four League matches in a row for Wolves, also facing
Blackpool at home and Charlton and Everton away.
He might have squeezed in one more appearance before
Mullen’s New Year’s Day return at Sunderland but the weather intervened. Having
turned out in a poorly attended morning clash at The Valley in Wolves’ last
Christmas Day fixture, he was due to line up in the return the following day as
well, only for heavy snow to cause a postponement.
The thumbs-down from the referee came an hour and a half
before the scheduled kick-off, late enough for Neil to recall the two teams
having lunch together in a town centre hotel. Who knows how many more matches
he might have racked up had he not had the likes of Mullen, Harry Hooper and
Norman Deeley as competition.
He had been an infant during the war but the continued
fall-out from the hostilities now had an impact on a football career that was
already highly unusual.
“My call-up papers came in November, 1957, so I played the
first part of that season elsewhere than in the first team and was then posted
to Exeter,” he added.
“I think my time at Molineux had run out. I played a lot in
the reserves and might have had a cushy number at Cosford if I had been a
full-time member of the Wolves staff.
“I still turned out for Wolves in the A and B teams when I
was on leave but I drifted away from Molineux and lost contact with them when I
was stationed in Cyprus, where I saw active service. I was a foot soldier in
the infantry and, although I was captain of the battalion, it didn’t spare me
guard duty as we fought to keep the Greeks and Turks apart.
“I had already booked my place at Cambridge University and
left the Army after two years with the Royal Berkshire Regiment to read modern
languages at Queens’ College. I played three times in the Varsity match at
Wembley, with Malcolm Allison as the coach for the last couple of years after
succeeding Tony Marchi.
“I was going to go straight into teaching but freedom of
contract came in and the Portsmouth manager George Smith persuaded me to go
back there in 1962, this time as a professional when they were in the Second
Division. I think I was the first Cambridge Blue to become a pro footballer.
“At the same time, I did some part-time teaching at the
school where I had been head boy, Portsmouth Northern Grammar. I spent four
afternoons a week, Monday to Thursday, in the classroom, leaving mornings for
training and Fridays in case we had to travel.
“I only briefly got back into the side, though – for one
League game against Derby and the second replay of an FA Cup tie against
Coventry, which we lost at White Hart Lane.
“There were a lot of distractions. I had an injury, I was
getting married, I knew I was going to be a teacher who played some football,
rather than the other way around, and 1962-63 was a season which seemed to go
on forever because of the bad weather.
“I decided the combination of jobs wasn’t for me and went to
play in the Southern League for Bath City, who Malcolm Allison had now joined.
I later played for Cambridge City and Poole Town and had spent five years after
Wolves with the famous amateur side Pegasus, which was drawn from graduates of
Oxford and Cambridge Universities.”
His farewell to League football having come at only 25, Neil
had the outstanding career in education that he had dreamed of.
Fluent in French and Spanish, he went back to teach for
eight years at his old school, then switched to a local comprehensive before
moving to a middle school in Midhurst, West Sussex, and becoming a deputy head
for seven years and a head for ten.
He and his wife of 48 years now live in Waterlooville, just
outside Portsmouth, from where he is actively involved in the Pompey Former
Players Association – and still in love with Wolves. Pat is in possession.
