Playing for Uncle Sam

by David Tossell

  League MVP Davies recalls that ‘everything seemed to gel for us’ and is full of praise for the contribution of former England midfielder Alan Hudson, who finished with 15 assists. ‘I had seen him play before in the NASL. He could really play but he was trying to run the show, taking it deep from defenders. Now he had a back four of internationals behind him and could push on and do more damage further forward.’ Bourne adds, ‘Alan was one of the best midfield players I ever saw. He would look one way, but you knew he was going to knock it to you.’

  Recalling his Sounders teammates in his autobiography, Hudson describes Rioch, an old First Division nemesis, as being as good as it was possible to find in his new position in the back four. But, off the field, he claims Rioch was trying to undermine Hinton’s position as coach because of his own interest in the job. Rioch puts Hudson’s comments down to a relationship that went sour at the end of their first season together. ‘We got on very well in the first year but had a bit of a fallout in one of the play-off matches against Los Angeles. He took it personally and couldn’t get it out of his system. It festered.’

  Despite that situation, Rioch says, ‘The reason we did so well was the phenomenal team spirit, as good as I have been involved in. We lunched together, barbecued together, swam together and lived in the same apartment complex. Tommy was outstanding for us, but Roger Davies was the hero. The Americans love the guys who get the touchdowns, make the baskets or score the goals. He was a lovely man as well, which helped. He was very popular with the Seattle public.’

  Rioch’s own form after moving into the back four earned him a place on the NASL all-star team. ‘I had stood in at centre-half at Luton, Everton and Derby, so it wasn’t new. I went to Seattle to play in the back four because they wanted an experienced player there. It helped playing alongside David Nish and Jimmy Ryan, who had been at Luton with me.’

  Seattle’s first play-off opponents were the Vancouver Whitecaps, who had scraped into the play-offs in third place in their division. Trevor Whymark had top scored with 15 goals, while Carl Valentine added 10. Kevin Hector had not returned until late in the season.

  In goal for Vancouver was a 22-year-old Zimbabwean, Bruce Grobbelaar, who had played a couple of games in 1979 and won the position in the wake of Phil Parkes’s departure. The joker’s personality that would make him a folk hero at Liverpool was already in evidence. Coach Tony Waiters recalls, ‘We worked him out at Derby’s training ground because West Brom were releasing him. I asked Tommy Docherty if we could fire a few balls at him and it was obvious he had something special. The ability was there, but we hadn’t tested his brains. Bruce didn’t play much in 1979, but in one game he tried to show everything he knew. One shot was going outside the post and he dived and caught it, rolled over and it went under his body into the net. We loaned him to Crewe that winter and Liverpool got interested.

  ‘He was very popular and a joker. When we were bringing him back from South Africa, I picked him up and told him how he had become this big mystery figure in our front office. He got this mask, the most horrible-looking thing, like someone 70 years of age. I took him to the front office and announced he had finally arrived and he walked in wearing the mask. People didn’t know how to take it. He got me in 1980, after we had won at California to reach the play-offs. The players took the next day off and went to Disneyland. I had a call from the trainer saying Bruce had fallen off a ride and broken his arm. He even got a fake cast and had me going for three or four hours. He even did it for the media after I didn’t play him in the last game of the season.’

  Seattle had the last laugh on Grobbelaar, winning both games against Vancouver to set up a meeting with Los Angeles, play-off conquerors of Cruyff’s Diplomats. The series featured two one-sided games, the Aztecs winning 3–0 at home and Seattle taking revenge with a 4–0 victory at the Kingdome, Steve Buttle, an ever-present midfielder, getting one of the goals. In the fourth of his six seasons in Seattle after failing a medical at Ipswich, the former Bournemouth midfielder could, according to Hudson, ‘have been a real star had it not been for his wonky knee’ and ‘had a left foot that I can only imagine God gave him’.

  The decisive mini-game saw Buttle and the Sounders go down in a shoot-out after drawing 1–1. ‘They got lucky,’ says Seattle goalscorer Davies. ‘We hammered them, but it was just one of those games.’ Rioch adds, ‘We had done so well that year and thought we could go all the way. Suddenly it was over.’

  Elsewhere, David Chadwick had taken the head coaching position in Atlanta, but the team’s seven wins were the lowest in the league. In California, Laurie Abrahams’s 17 goals and 15 assists helped fire the Surf to a play-off spot. Ex-Rowdies midfielder Mark Lindsay says of the Surf set-up, ‘They were a club who took care of us and we didn’t have to worry about people like Gordon Jago, who had their own agenda at Tampa.’

  In Detroit, the links with Jimmy Hill and Coventry took young Sky Blues forwards Mark Hateley and Gary Bannister to the Pontiac Silverdome. Hateley, later to forge an England career, found his game ill-suited to Astroturf and scored only twice in 19 games, while Bannister enjoyed more success with 10 goals in 22 matches. It was not enough, though, to get Detroit beyond the regular season. Nor were the 12 goals from leading scorer Paul Child able to lift the Memphis Rogues out of the basement of their division.

  The Minnesota Kicks had Freddie Goodwin back at the coaching helm, but they surrendered top place in the National Conference’s Central Division to the Dallas Tornado and were then shut out by Tornado goalkeeper Alex Stepney in two play-off games.

  In New England, the Tea Men’s play-off push was spearheaded by 14 goals from Hartlepool striker Bob Newton. ‘He was a big, strong centre-forward who was quicker than you would think,’ recalls coach Noel Cantwell. ‘He was one of those holiday players. Playing in Hartlepool and then coming to America, well, it was like Christmas every day to him. He was hard and tough and if there was a chance around goal he would take it.

  ‘I remember playing Fort Lauderdale and they had a player who was a film star in South America and he was very good looking. He was an international player of top quality. Newton was a strong bastard who put himself about, a typical Third Division player. The ball was played into the box and Newton elbowed this guy and broke his jaw. There was a big shemozzle and in the papers in Boston it said Bob was going to be sued for $2 million. I told them, “I will tell you now, if he is sued for $2 he will not be able to pay it.” The player didn’t have an arse in his trousers.’

  Newton was partnered up front by the former West Brom forward Tony ‘Bomber’ Brown. Approaching 35, Brown had scored 218 League goals in 16 seasons at The Hawthorns, including leading the First Division with 28 in 1970–71, when he won his only England cap. He was held to eight in the first of his two NASL seasons, but set up fourteen goals. The Tea Men, however, could not find the net in two play-off games against Tampa Bay.

  In Portland, a familiar face returned to take charge of the team, but a late-season revival under Vic Crowe could not get the Timbers into the play-offs. Clyde Best scored 11 goals for a team that saw former Scotland and Manchester City left-back Willie Donachie beginning a three-year NASL stint. Meanwhile, Bill Foulkes took charge of his third NASL team, but could not guide the San Jose Earthquakes into the play-offs, even with George Best in the ranks.

  The New York Cosmos, now without any British connections, duly won their division as Giorgio Chinaglia notched a goal for every one of his 32 appearances. Chinaglia also scored six goals in three games in the new mid-season Transatlantic Challenge Cup, a tournament in which the Cosmos won two games and drew one to finish ahead of Vancouver, Manchester City – who had Dennis Tueart back in their ranks – and Roma. Tueart scored in a 3–2 loss against his former team and City were then thrashed 5–0 by the Whitecaps, with Whymark scoring a hat-trick.

  Chinaglia kicked off the play-offs with two goals in a 3–1 win at Tulsa. The Roughnecks, now coached by Charlie Mitchell, had sneaked into the post-
season field by winning their last two games, a 2–0 win in the season finale against Vancouver having seen former Fulham centre-forward Viv Busby finally score his first NASL goal in 19 games. Busby and his teammates could only watch in awe as Chinaglia scored seven goals in New York’s 8–1 victory at Giants Stadium and by the time Dallas and Los Angeles had been dispatched in later rounds, Chinaglia had scored an incredible sixteen goals in seven play-off games.

  New York’s opponents in Soccer Bowl were the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, whose success was the perfect answer to those who had criticised the dismissal of Ron Newman. Ironically, to reach the final, the Strikers had been forced to contest the American Conference championship with their former coach’s new team, the San Diego Sockers. Newman saw his team lose the first game of the series in California before he made his return to Fort Lauderdale, where a sell-out crowd of more than 18,000 packed Lockhart Stadium.

  Newman recalls, ‘Soon after the start I was stood behind the players’ bench when a policeman came up behind me and whispered to me to stand still as it was reported that there was someone in the crowd with a gun threatening to shoot me. My first reaction was to look round at this policeman, who was several inches smaller than me, and I am only 5 ft 8 in. I asked him if he was the biggest policeman they had. Realising I was stood behind the substitutes and that the gunman may not be a marksman, I suggested to the miniature policeman that we moved behind another bench a few yards away. So we shuffled along like Flanagan and Allen. It was later reported that the suspected assassin was thrown out of the stadium and the gun was a fake. Anyway, I needed a change of underwear at half-time.’

  A hat-trick from Mexican striker Hugo Sanchez gave the Sockers a 4–2 victory, but the home team prevailed in the mini-game. Yet whoever won was only likely to provide fodder for the Cosmos, and so it proved as two more Chinaglia goals eased New York to a 3–0 victory and their third NASL title in four seasons. The Italian finished the season with a staggering total of 56 goals in 43 games.

  Even though a respectable 51,000 fans had attended the final in Washington DC’s Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, the league was concerned about the drop in New York’s average attendance from 49,000 to 42,000. Meanwhile, Philadelphia and Atlanta had both averaged fewer than 5,000 per game. ABC had been unhappy with the low ratings for its broadcasts and decided it would show only the Soccer Bowl in 1981, an indication that there would be no more contract beyond that.

  Derek Possee, the former Vancouver and Millwall forward, is among those who believe that the all-powerful NFL was exerting its influence over television networks like ABC. ‘I am convinced there was a conspiracy with football, because the NFL was frightened to death that some of the soccer teams could get bigger crowds. Television had millions invested in the NFL and I think the league put pressure on them. I think it was a done deal that ABC would dump its soccer contract to keep the NFL happy.’

  The NASL’s problems made for an unpleasant atmosphere when the league met a couple of months after the Soccer Bowl. California Surf owner Bob Hermann, one of the old-school traditionalists, had already resigned as chairman of the board of NASL directors after being insulted in a meeting and Phil Woosnam says, ‘Teams were caught up in thinking they could buy success. It was disappointing to think these intelligent businessmen couldn’t all stick together with the same approach. We were trying to at least break even before we went off on ego trips.

  ‘People like Lamar Hunt said that what was good for the league was good for the owners but there were a bunch of others who got in the wrong frame of mind. It was OK when only one was fighting that battle, but when half the room were taking that view we couldn’t control it. People were getting concerned with the losses and the effect of the union and the tone within the room had changed. They had split into two. There were New York and others who didn’t want controls and wanted to do whatever they wanted. The other faction was Lamar and Bob and the teams that were not financed as well, who felt the league was going to go downhill.’

  While the poorer teams wanted to restrict the big boys’ ability to spend money, the elite group, including Sonny Werblin, head of Madison Square Garden and owner of the Washington Diplomats, wanted to be rid of their poor relations. Gordon Jago, coach of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, remembers the meeting well. ‘The strong boys said, “We are not going to stay in a league like this. Some teams are costing us money and there will be a domino effect.” Washington wanted to reduce the teams, and Sonny Werblin was absolutely right. He said, “I have got Johan Cruyff and World Cup players and when we go to places like Atlanta we triple their gate. When they come to me, people in Washington won’t go to see it. They are costing me money.” He wanted the bigger teams to break away and have a four- or five-million budget. But the majority of people wanted to stick with the same teams.’

  As Americans discussed the previous night’s events on the Ewing ranch at South Fork, Werblin decided to saddle up and leave town, announcing that he was closing the Diplomats. ‘It was tragic, but he was right,’ says Jago. ‘Even in Tampa, we could not compete with the big cities. The Cosmos had more internationals on their bench than we had in our team.’

  The Houston Hurricane and Rochester Lancers followed suit, while the New England Tea Men announced a move to Jacksonville. The Memphis Rogues were to become the Calgary Boomers, while the Philadelphia Fury would also move north, to become the Montreal Manic. Woosnam’s 24-team dream was in tatters and his former right-hand man, Clive Toye, was among those who had seen it coming.

  ‘I’d been part of the league’s long-range strategic committee,’ Toye explains. ‘We used to have a meeting once a month and we came out with this thick strategic plan. Phil was not on that committee, which was a mistake. Before 1978, we’d had six good clubs, six that were OK and six that were rubbish. We felt we needed to get rid of the last six, either by getting new ownership if the city was right or getting the team out of the city. Phil was going off on the parallel path of expansion. We presented our plan, which was contraction, and he presented his idea of expansion. With six new franchises playing $3 million, the idea of having $18 million to spread around had been too much for the owners. I still think it was a mistake. Instead of having two-thirds of our teams performing acceptably we now had 50 per cent that were not.’

  Woosnam, however, remains angered by the criticism he has received for adding new teams. ‘Not everybody believed in expansion, but I think there are ulterior motives in those who questioned it afterwards. Our intention was good and honourable and it was not like we did it round the corner. All the owners knew exactly what was going on. They had to approve everything we did. If people say now we shouldn’t have gone to 24, well, so what? They voted for it.’

  20. Beginning of the End

  Ken Furphy, coach of the Detroit Express, was preparing his off-season calendar when he received a surprising phone call. ‘It was Duncan Hill, Jimmy’s son, who had taken over as general manager,’ he recalls. ‘He told me to leave Eddie Colquhoun in charge because I had to fly to Washington right away. They were discussing taking the team there. I couldn’t believe it.’

  Team owner Jimmy Hill reckoned his team had been losing $1 million a year in Detroit and blamed NASL commissioner Phil Woosnam and the directors of the NASL for the league’s instability, claiming Woosnam was too busy finding new franchises to produce a comprehensive league strategy. The Coventry City chairman’s final throw of his NASL dice was to accept offers to relocate to Washington to become the new Diplomats, the venture being partly funded by $500,000 from his Highfield Road club. Furphy continues, ‘We had worked hard to build the club in Detroit, working with kids and creating a base of seven or eight thousand fans. The team in Washington had just folded and I thought, “How are we going to make money here when the last owners couldn’t make it work?” The next thing I know, we are in Washington and it was a terrible move.’

  The Diplomats started brightly in their new surroundings, winning eight of the first eleven games, but
won only seven more in the remainder of the season and missed the play-offs. Southampton’s Malcolm Waldron finished as top scorer with fifteen goals, while fellow Saint Trevor Hebbard added nine from midfield. Johan Cruyff played in only five games during the latter part of a season that Furphy recalls for its turmoil and uncertainty.

  He says, ‘Jimmy Hill came back on the scene and took over the team in the end. I remember a terrible game in about 100 degrees against Jacksonville. We lost in extra time and Jimmy came in and told everybody off and I had a bust-up with him upstairs. The outcome was that he took over selection. The players were calling the team the “Over-the-hill Gang”.

  ‘Later in the year we heard the club had declared bankruptcy. They owed about three or four hundred thousand dollars, but that was nothing over there. The players were in rented houses and it was a hell of a mess. I tried to sell a few players, acting on their behalf. I got £550 instead of two years’ wages. I had to get out of my flat so I got a van and went down to Atlanta to live with my son. Within two weeks other teams started folding.’

  Surprisingly, given their on-field consistency, the Minnesota Kicks were one of those teams, a year after being bought by a consortium headed by English businessman Ralph Sweet, formerly vice-chairman of Notts County. Geoff Barnett, the Kicks’ former goalkeeper, had taken over from Freddie Goodwin as coach during the season. ‘I had done fairly well as coach of the indoor team,’ Barnett recalls, ‘and one day the owner asked if I wanted to coach the outdoor team. I said I was not going to stab Freddie in the back, but obviously I had aspirations to coach outdoors. The next day he takes me into Freddie’s office and tells him that he is giving me the job.’