MASCOTS AND GOALS

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.

T AST Saturday, Swindon Town put Notts County out of the L F.A. Cup, The ignorant say that Swindon did this by good football which bottled the mighty Tommy Lawton and seized scor- ing chances when they came. But the real soccer fan knows that the match was won, not by the Swindon players, but by a pair of spats worn by the Swindon manager, Louis Page.

These spats are the most famous lucky charm in football. They were given to the great Jack Tinn, Portsmouth manager for twenty years, when his team were staying at Leamington in 1934. Mr. Tinn was ragged by his team into wearing them during the next match, and Pompey won two very unexpected points. For the Pompey players, from that moment, the spats became a talisman, which had to be guarded in the Club's safe, which had to be insured for £250, and which, if they were to do their work properly, had to. figure in a ceremony whose rites were as sacred and unvarying as those of any ancient order.

The spats had to be carried from the safe to the dressing-room before any Cup-tie. In the dressing-room they had to be placed on Jack Tinn's feet by Freddie Worrall, the Portsmouth winger, and by none else. Further, the left spat had to be put on first. If all that was done, Pompey would win. All that was done and Pompey did win. They went through round after round of the Cup in 1934 until they reached Wembley. And even when they lost the Final to Manchester City, no one lost faith in the spats. It was just that something had gone wrong with the rituaL Freddie Worrell in a moment of Cup Final nerves had put the right spat on first.

Five years later the spats were pulled out of the safe and tried again. Again Freddie Worrall went through his ritual and again Pompey went through round after round of the Cup. At last they reached the Final, and this time, upsetting all the forecasts, Pompey smashed the all-conquering Wolves. All because of the spats.

At the end of last season Jack Tinn retired from Portsmouth, but his spats were not allowed to retire. Wherever he went, watching his belored football, directors and managers would ask, first, for his advice about their teams and then for the loan of his spats when the Cup-ties came along. At last he promised the spats to Swindon, a lowly Third Division club, and, when the draw came out, Swindon found they were playing mighty Burnley, second. in the First Division championship, at Burnley. The odds against them winning were It-1. They should have been 11-2 spats.

Louis Page, the Swindon manager, had been carefully coached in the ritual. His team's captain put the spats on Page's feet, left foot first. ' Of course, Swindon won. Next day five other managers whose teams had won somehow without the spats rang up for the loan of them in the next round. But Swindon had first call. They will have the spats yet again in the Fifth Round when they play Southampton. And every Swindon 'supporter knows that they'll win if only they stick to the ritual of left foot first.

dhildish? Maybe. But sportsmen are notoriously superstitious. Even Douglas Jardine, of the ice-cold brain and the merciless logic, had his " lucky " Harlequin cap. And professional footballers, with- out benefit of Winchester and Christ Church, are at least as firm believers in luck as Jardine. One player insists on leaving a dressing- room last to go on to the field. I believe that if this team bought another man with the same superstition, it would have permanently to play matches with only nine men.

Other players will not go on the field without their particular lucky charm. You may think that Colchester beat my beloved Huddersfield, and later Bradford, through the cramping smallness of their ground, the carefully laid plans of their player-manager, or the wonderful combined spirit of team and crowd. But the truth, of course, is that they won because of the lucky champagne cork carried in his pants pocket throughout the games by Ted Fenton.

The most remarkable portering job in football history was done in the 1939 Cup Final by Freddie Worrall, who carried a silver elephant tied to his right garter, a 3d. piece in his right boot, a sprig of white heather in his left garter, and a miniature horseshoe in the back pocket of his pants. To this day, Freddie is certain that these trinkets and his manager's spats won the game.

And he may not be so wrong after all. Certainly, when it comes to the Cup, there is not a great deal of difference in ability between various teams of professional players. In the tensely exciting Cup- tie atmosphere which can upset the strongest nerves and turn the most polished player into a blundering novice, some little trick of psychology may just turn the scale. Every manager who knows his job will be on the look-out for that trick. If playing up the superstitions of a player or a team will give them confidence or take their minds off the coming game, the manager does it.

One famous player invariably picked up every hairpin he could find on the morning of a match. To try to cure him of what was becoming a tiresome obsession and to keep the rest of his team amused during the needle period, the manager bought packets of hairpins and spread them all over the hotel. Unhappily, though the rest of the team enjoyed the joke, the superstitious player was attacked during the game by cramp in the small of the back, brought on, so the trainer said, by too much bending in the forenoon.

That managerial manoeuvre came unstuck. But another one almost certainly directly led to the winning of the Cup. As I said, in 1939 Wolverhampton were hot favourites for the Cup, and Cullis, their captain, was unwise enough to give an interview to a Wolver- hampton paper in which he hinted that Portsmouth's appearance in the Final was a mere formality ; that they were merely there to provide a game for the Wolves.

This was the sort of trick for which a manager is always watching. Jack Tinn got hold of this paper, kept it, and while his team were actually changing in the dressing-room at Wembley, he read this article to them without comment. As he read, you could see the nervous strain in his players' faces giving way to angry determination. Then within a minute a second trick dropped into Jack Tinn's hands. Someone brought in the official autograph book for the players to sign. Tinn glanced at it, saw that the Wolves' players had already signed ; then suddenly he looked again. The Wolves' signatures, obviously/ written with nervous, shaking fingers, were indecipherable.

Tinn called his players round the book. " Look at those signa- tures, boys," he said. "Pretty confident-looking, don't you think? " The players looked ; then " Give me that book," said the captain, Jimmie Guthrie, and, followed by the rest of the players, he signed the book with a bold, clear and steady hand.

Portsmouth went straight out on the field, scored three goals before half-time, and won the match 4—r.

Trinkets, lucky charms and—spats? Possibly. Understanding of the human mind, great managership? Certainly.