The 1953 cup run nobody remembers
Miners, postmen and farm workers, three professional clubs beaten and 42,000 people at the semi-final.
In 1953, a team of miners, postmen and farm workers from Castleford Wanderers reached the semi-final of the national cup. They beat three professional clubs on the way and drew 42,000 people to their last match. Today, almost nobody remembers. We went looking for the story.
The team
Castleford Wanderers were an amateur club in a mining town. Most of the players worked six days a week and trained on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Their best player, a centre-forward called Tommy Ward, worked at the pit and played on Saturdays with coal dust still in his skin.
The run
In the first round, Wanderers beat a non-league team 3-0. In the second, they beat their first professional club, away from home, in front of a crowd of 9,000. In the third round, they drew with a bigger professional club and won the replay at Mill Lane, where people climbed onto roofs and trees to see.
By the quarter-final, the whole region was following them. Factories let workers out early. Newspapers sent reporters. Wanderers won 2-1 with a header from Tommy Ward in the last minute.
The semi-final
The semi-final was played at a neutral ground in a city fifty miles away. Special trains carried fans from the town; there were not enough of them, and thousands walked. The crowd was 42,000, the largest ever to watch a Castleford team.
Wanderers lost 2-0 to a top-division side. Nobody in the town remembers it as a defeat.
My grandfather said it was the only time the whole town was in one place. Even the vicar went.
Margaret Ward, Tommy's granddaughter
Why it was forgotten
The club never did anything like it again. The mines closed in the 1980s, and many families moved away. The team photograph hangs in the clubhouse, but most of the young players do not know the names.
The players after
Most of the 1953 team went back to work the next Monday. Tommy Ward played for Castleford for six more seasons and turned down two offers from professional clubs, because he did not want to leave the pit or his family. The goalkeeper, Albert Sykes, became the club's groundsman and stayed until 1980. Two of the defenders opened a shop together on the high street; their names are still over the door, although the owners have changed.
- Tommy Ward, centre-forward: 212 goals for the club.
- Albert Sykes, goalkeeper: groundsman for twenty-seven years.
- Fred and Harry Lees, full-backs: brothers, and later shopkeepers.
- Jack Moran, captain: later the club's chairman.
Remembering
This season, the club will wear a special shirt for one game in March, the anniversary of the semi-final, with the names of the 1953 team printed inside the collar. Margaret Ward will be the guest of honour. "He'd have been embarrassed," she says. "He'd also have been very proud."
