FIFTY years ago this coming week, one of football’s legendary managers was sacked.
Stan Cullis, manager of Wolves in their most- successful ever era, discovered that his services were being dispensed with when he received a note asking him to hand in his keys to the ground.
Cullis had given the Molineux club 30 years of his life, first as centre-half and captain, then as manager.
Like so many others, his was a war-interrupted career.
He retired in 1947 having seemed destined to only skipper the runners-up. The club finished second in the League in 1939 and 1947 and on the losing side in the FA Cup Final in 1939.
After a year as assistant manager under Ted Vizard, he took over the club and at the end of his first season won the Cup.
During the 1950s, Wolves were the chief rivals to Manchester United’s Busby Babes, winning three league titles, finishing second three times and ending the decade with another FA Cup win.
In the days prior to the introduction of European competitions, Cullis became the first English manager to arrange regular matches against the best Continental teams.
In 1954, for instance, Molineux hosted Honved, the Hungarian team that included Puskas and most of the other players who’d thrashed England at Wembley, and beat them 3-2.
His Wolves team, built around Billy Wright, played in a fast, direct style that Cullis had learnt from studying the “Mighty Magyars”.
The press proclaimed Wolves “Champions of Europe”, a phrase which would spur the creation of the European Cup.
Two-thirds of the players were natives of the Wolverhampton area and Cullis’s disciplined approach earned him the nickname the “Iron Manager”.
In 1964, however, after two mediocre seasons and with the team struggling near the foot of the First Division, new chairman John Ireland suddenly sacked him.
Cullis suffered ill health as he’d put in long hours to try to rectify the situation and at one point collapsed at his desk.
On his return, Ireland ordered him to resign. Cullis refused. A few days later, he received the letter asking him to hand in his keys and demanding he pay back an advance the club had given him on his phone line rental.
In many ways, it was the sacking that changed football’s attitude to managers. If Cullis could be sacked, anyone could be.
Cullis returned to management with Birmingham but his heart was always at Wolves, where a tribute statue was erected.
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