Those Were The Games
Netbuster
Published by Eccles on February 26, 2009
Gillingham v Northampton Town – Saturday February 26th 1955
On the face of it, the Gills home game with Northampton Town on 26th February 1955 appeared to be fairly routine. The 1954/55 season was turning out to be, by Gillingham standards, a pretty good one. With thirty-one of the forty-six games played Gills were in fifth position in Division Three South, for once looking towards the top of the table rather than nervously over their shoulders towards the bottom.
We had a pretty decent side that season, full of good steady players whose reputations have endured down the years. But as ever it was the forwards who caught the eye, and in this team we had two gems – Peter “Paddy” Sowden and Ernie Morgan. For four seasons Gills fans delighted at Paddy’s dazzling skills and close ball control that got him out of tight corners and set up chances for his fellow forwards. And no-one took more advantage of the chances served up by the diminutive Sowden than inside left Ernie Morgan. Ernie’s direct style had already netted him nineteen League goals that season, and the club Football League goal-scoring record of twenty-five goals, held jointly by Jonah Wilcox in 1927/28 and George Nicol in 1932/33 was in his sights.
Opponents Northampton Town weren’t expected to provide too much trouble. They were twelfth in the table, and had lost ten of their sixteen away games so far played. But although Gills had a very similar pedigree to Northampton and had played them regularly in both the Southern League and the Football League going back to 1901 the Cobblers had a very good record in the encounters, almost always winning at the County Ground and notching eleven wins so far at Priestfield. The match was in fact a potential banana skin for the Gills.
Our team was:-
Tommy Rigg; Charlie Marks, Ted West; Jimmy Boswell (Capt), Vic Niblett, Les Riggs; Jimmy Scarth, Billy Evans, Paddy Sowden, Ernie Morgan, Billy Millar.
Up front in this team was plenty of goal-power. Left winger Billy Millar, who netted eighteen league goals that season, had developed an excellent partnership with the prolific Ernie Morgan, and of course Jimmy Scarth, nearing the end of his Gillingham career, held the record for the fastest hat-trick – ever. They were well supported by Billy Evans.
In defence, stylish captain Jimmy Boswell had played for the club since 1946 and had led us back into the Football League. His wing half partner Les Riggs was a tough tackler and one of the first players who progressed through the junior sides to regular first-team duty. Les was also one of the first players ever to perfect a long throw, and he could comfortably send the ball from the touchline to the far post, so causing panic in the opposition defence. Behind him at left back was Ted West, a young Lancastrian who had been brought in by manager Archie Clark to succeed the reliable but ageing Ron Lewin. And alongside Ted, at right back, was Charlie Marks.
Charles William Alfred Marks, known to everyone as “Charlie” was, and still is, a Gills legend. A local man born in Eccles, near Maidstone, in December 1919, he first pulled the blue shirt on in anger on August 26th 1944, for a Kent League match against Gravesend. All told he made 464 appearances for the club – 265 Football League, 112 Southern League, 20 FA Cup, 16 Southern League Cup, and 51 in the Kent League and Cup Competitions at the end of the Second World War. At six foot and thirteen stone, Charlie was an imposing figure, and he certainly didn’t stand on ceremony when tackling wingers. But it was Charlie’s ferocious dead-ball kicks that elevated him to cult status. Making astute use of the Priestfield slope that fell away from the Gordon Road side towards the Main Stand, it was difficult to defend against the cunningly flighted cannonballs that appeared to be rising but in fact weren’t. And if you ever got in the way of one of the heavy leather balls of those times that had Charlie’s boot behind it, then you certainly knew it.
Yet another local bus strike (they always seemed to be the main topic of conversation in the 1950’s) had kept the crowd down to 8,523, modest for those times, and they were horrified when Northampton kicked off, went straight up the Rainham End, and missed a sitter. Oakley found himself in acres of space and completely unmarked, but he put his shot tamely wide of Tommy Rigg and the left-hand post. Phew! Gills were stung by this, and Paddy Sowden immediately took the game by the scruff of the neck, feeding some beautiful passes through to Ernie Morgan and Billy Millar. With just five minutes gone Ernie was on to one of them, controlling the skimming ball to perfection and blasting it into the far corner from eighteen yards out. It was a typical Ernie Morgan goal – his twentieth League goal of the season, and twenty-second so far in all.
Ernie was up for this one, and he was giving the Cobblers’ defence a torrid time. After thirty-one minutes he was blatantly fouled by Northampton’s McLain and the referee immediately pointed to the spot. The Gills regular penalty taker was inside-right Billy Evans, but he’d missed one in the 2-2 draw at Leyton Orient the previous week and declined to take it. Charlie Marks took over. Off a short run-up he blasted a fierce low one that beat veteran keeper Alf Wood to his left all ends up and put the Gills 2-0 ahead.
But wait – the ball is bouncing around at the foot of the Gillingham End terracing. How could it possibly be a goal? Wood went chasing after the referee demanding to know what was going on. Amidst much merriment, the referee led Wood to the side netting, lifted it up, and showed the embarrassed keeper the rent where Charlie’s cannonball had gone clean through! People talk about breaking the net with one, it’s very very rare that someone actually does. But Alf Wood didn’t see the funny side of it, and when the referee took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to start to tie the dangly netting bits together Wood objected strongly, claiming it would provide a “sighter” for the Gills forwards. Eh? So Gills trainers Danny O’Donnell and Dick Edmed were called out of the dugout, and armed with twine and scissors they spent the best part of five minutes tying all the loose netting ends back together again. They did a good job too, as events later in the game were to show.
When the game restarted Jimmy Scarth almost immediately had a chance to test the O’Donnell/Edmed repairs when the Cobblers left him unmarked three yards out with the ball at his feet. But Jimmy held his head in anguish after he’d unaccountably screwed it wide. That would have given Gills a pretty well unassailable 3-0 lead at half-time, but just before the break and with one of their only attacks of the half Northampton pulled one back. Young left back Ted West cleared weakly straight to Northampton’s right winger Mills, and his quick low cross was back-heeled past Tommy Rigg by Cobblers’ Jones.
Half-time and Northampton were back in the game at 2-1. The second half turned into a dour affair, as Gills sought to hold on to their lead, and Northampton sensed more and more that they were on for at least a point. They’d done their homework at half-time, cutting off Gills’ forward supply by nullifying play-maker Paddy Sowden with a mixture of clogging and the offside trap. Ernie Morgan and Billy Millar were now struggling to make an impact, and cracks were starting to appear in the Gillingham rearguard. The old Northampton bogey looked as though it was going to strike again.
Even so, Northampton’s equaliser was bizarre. Midway through the second half left back Ted West slipped when tackling right-winger Mills and appeared to put his hand on the ball. Close to the incident the referee ignored it, and Gills moved the ball upfield. But Northampton protested, and persuaded the referee to consult his linesman, who was actually on the other side of the field and much further away from the incident than the referee had been. After a long discussion between them, a penalty was awarded. As the local paper somewhat coyly put it “the crowd didn’t take kindly to this at all.” Another penalty at the Gillingham End, and Northampton’s inside-left Bernard Jones tested the net running repairs by firing his spot kick into exactly the same place as Charlie Marks had done. But the O’Donnell/Edmed handiwork held, and sadly the Gills had been held as well.
Right at the end Jimmy Scarth had the opportunity to win it for Gillingham when he pounced on a loose ball after Ernie Morgan’s shot had been blocked. But it wasn’t the little winger’s afternoon as he blasted the ball over the bar from close range. And so the final score remained Gillingham 2 Northampton Town 2. It was a valuable point dropped, but until the end of the season Gills retained their place near the top of the table, and finished in fourth place with 55 points. It was the best ever finish in the Third Division South, and nowadays would comfortably claim a play-off place. But in 1954/55 and until the restructure of the League in 1958 only the champions were promoted, and that was Bristol City with a mammoth seventy points. In the following seasons the Gills faded and this group of players started to break up. In 1958 we missed the halfway cut and were restructured into the Fourth Division.
But it was the individual performances from these times that live on. Ernie Morgan continued banging them in. He comfortably broke the then club record of twenty-five League goals by Easter, and established a new one of thirty-one (thirty-three if FA Cup goals are included) that stands to this day, equalled only by Brian Yeo in 1973/74. And of course there was the incomparable Charlie Marks, doing for real what Roy Of The Rovers did in “The Tiger” every other Saturday.
Charlie continued to play for the Gills until the end of the 1956/57 season when, nearing 38 years of age, he moved to Tonbridge. He remained in the area after he’d hung up his boots, and for many years worked in the paper mills at Aylesford. And as a sprightly septuagenarian he returned to Priestfield for the Centenary match in 1994 to demonstrate his penalty taking skills, unerringly chipping one in at the Rainham End. The modern nylon nets of today might have thwarted his special party-piece, but for kids growing up in the 1950’s it was part of the rituals of being a junior Gillingham supporter to examine the side-netting, spot the new twine, and to hear once again the legendary story of “Charlie’s Mark”.
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