The exit of English football’s youngest manager, 21-year-old Sammy Mould from non-League Yaxley, brings back memories of Everton’s ‘forgotten’ boss Ian Buchan who took charge at Goodison Park aged just 30 but was an early forerunner of Sean Dyche in terms of his dedication to physical fitness.
Yaxley FC, from a Huntingdonshire village four miles south of Peterborough, made a then 20-year-old Mould the most-youthful manager in the top nine tiers of the game in England when they hired him in January at a time when they had just one point all season. Although the baby-faced gaffer quickly guided his side to their first win of the campaign, he has been unable to pull off a great escape and with relegation confirmed earlier this month for the Northern Premier League Midlands Division outfit, the club announced that he has been “removed” from his position by mutual consent with the team 18 points adrift at the bottom of the table with five games to play.
A desperate minnow way down the pyramid taking a chance on a fledgling boss is one thing but the Blues’ left field choice of untried rookie Buchan, handing him the reins of a top flight club despite having no previous experience in professional football seems extraordinary. Certainly Everton’s directors of the time can’t be accused of lacking imagination compared to their contemporary Crystal Palace counterparts who have wheeled out Roy Hodgson from retirement in his 76th year as they search for a “safe pair of hands” to deal with their flagging fortunes.
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To this day Buchan remains something of an enigma and we have the diligent research of Rob Sawyer of the EFC Heritage Society to thank for unravelling many of the mysteries that surround him in his excellent ‘The Untold Story of Ian Buchan’ piece on Toffeeweb from 2015.
Not only does he point out that ‘Ian’s’ real name was John Cameron Buchan, despite 1950s newspaper articles stating that he had played for Queen’s Park, there is no record of him ever turning out for the amateur club in his native Glasgow and many reports of his death in the early hours of September 22, 1965 when the Ford Zephyr car he was driving left the road and hit a lamppost, incorrectly gave his age as 45 but born on June 20, 1926 he was in fact still nine months short of his 40th birthday.
Buchan’s own playing career was rather undistinguished. He twice attended trials with his boyhood heroes Rangers but was knocked out on both occasions by aerial challenges.
Such setbacks didn’t extinguish his head for heights though as he became a parachute instructor during the Second World War and after studying physical instruction, he got a job at Sir John Maxwell Primary School in Pollockshaws where he met his future wife Rita, a fellow PE teacher. Sawyer describes Buchan as “ambitious and willing to take risks” and in 1953, he accepted a post lecturing in sport at Loughborough College and it was from here that he would ultimately move on to his big break at Everton.
The Blues had been relative latecomers to embracing the concept of modern football managers. For best part of the club’s first 60 years, the closest thing they had was a so-called ‘secretary manager’ will members of the board of directors would pick the team through committee.
Theo Kelly, the ideas man who designed Everton’s crest complete with iconic tower image and Nil Satis Nisi Optimum motto was the first to hold the post of manager but reverted to his previous post of secretary after falling out with high-profile stars like Tommy Lawton, Joe Mercer and TG Jones. Although his replacement, Cliff Britton, a former Blues wing-half eventually took the club back up after suffering the ignominy of presiding over what remains their last relegation some three year earlier, when he resigned in February 1956, the directors’ sub-committee resumed responsibility for first team selection.
Five candidates were shortlisted for interview to replace Carey the following May: Ex-Everton pair, the aforementioned Jones and Maurice Lindley, whose respective managerial experience was at this point was at Pwllheli and Swindon Town respectively; former England international defender George Hardwick who had been in charge of Oldham Athletic since 1950; Buchan, and Luton Town coach Harry Wright who would join the Scot as his number two at Goodison Park. Probably because of his total lack of previous experience in the professional game, Buchan was only handed the position of ‘Chief coach’ by the Blues and the ECHO reports that he didn’t actually ‘take over’ responsibility for picking the team until the committee relinquished those duties in September.
It seemed as though Buchan charmed his way into the role by promising Everton’s directors that he’d turn their team into the fittest in the land and given their parsimonious nature before the arrival of Littlewoods tycoon John Moores, the prospect of raising performance levels without the need for a significant outlay on player acquisitions appealed to them. Following his appointment, Buchan told journalist Don Hardisty: “I don’t think the players of any professional club in the country have yet even approached the peak of physical fitness.
The ECHO’s very own football correspondent ‘Ranger’ was advised that success in the game was “90% perspiration and 10% inspiration”, explaining that his aim was to provide an infinite variety of tasks for the players to tackle so that they never lost interest. However, training was to be geared to the capacity of each individual with no-one being asked to attempt things beyond his ability merely because somebody else could do them.
Buchan’s first attempt at mind games backfired though as on the opening day of the 1956/57 season as he instructed Everton’s bus driver to stop a mile-and-a-half short of Elland Road so that the Leeds United players would be intimidated by the sight of the visitors arriving at a canter on foot. The final result was a 5-1 victory for the hosts.
Indeed, the Blues picked up just one point from their first seven matches. Despite this inauspicious start though, Buchan would survive in the Goodison hot seat for over two years, recording 15th and 16th place finishes in the 22-team Division One.
Although some of the senior pros within the squad like Wally Fielding – who was over six years older than his boss – complained about the increased physical demands, veteran captain Peter Farrell (also Buchan’s senior by almost four years) offered an insight into the new regime in his ECHO column. The Irishman wrote: “During the past four weeks, under our new coach Ian Buchan, all the boys at Goodison have undergone a very strenuous yet interesting schedule of training. In our new gymnasium under the Gwladys Street Stand we have shed quite a lot of perspiration in our circuit training and weight-lifting.
“We have also devoted much time endeavouring to speed up our movement in this respect with the aid of the stop watch. Mr Buchan and his staff discovered that we have quite a few speed merchants in our ranks, and one morning Jimmy Harris, the fastest man on the books, clocked 10 seconds for 100 yards.”
Another Dubliner, Mick Meagan who had spent five years on the fringes at Everton before being handed his senior debut in 1957, recalled Buchan’s obsession for conditioning. He said: “Ian didn’t seem like a real footballing type, he could have been a business man.
“He was a lovely man but maybe a bit too nice to deal with the pressure of football. He was a keep-fit merchant.
“He was the first man to bring in weight training in the gym. It was very good for guys who myself who were small.
“We had lunch at the ground in those days and the meals we had were fantastic with the best steak. He’d come up to you and say: ‘Did you get enough steak?’
“Ian was very concerned that you needed this grub to keep going. He had this vision of building us up into monsters!”
As well as handing a senior bow to Brian Labone who would go on to make a club record 534 appearances before eventually being eclipsed by Neville Southall, Buchan’s reign also saw the return to Everton of fans’ favourite Dave Hickson and the Cannonball Kid seemed to buy into the coach’s methods too.
He told the ECHO: “Under the guidance of our chief coach Mr Ian Buchan, I feel – apart from the temporary stiffness, which will soon wear off – fitter and better than for many a long day. My former colleagues, who have been through it all before and speak highly of the system, have told me how much it has improved their fitness and staying power in the past.
“I can quite believe it, the weight training system for the strengthening of muscles in all parts of the body – arms, legs abdomen, back and so on – is strenuous, but I am sure it will do me, as it has done the others, a world of good. Unless I am very much mistaken we are going to be one of the fittest teams in the country, and far more able to stand a gruelling ninety minutes than the majority of our opponents.”
Six straight losses at the start of the 1958/59 season marked the beginning of the end for Buchan’s reign at Everton though. Although he survived a behind-the-scenes shake-up that saw Gordon Watson promoted to first team trainer and his previous deputy Wright demoted to working with the juniors, following a board meeting Goodison’s power brokers decided: “The appointment of a team manager with playing experience of First Division professional football is expedient in the present circumstances.”
On September 23, Blackburn Rovers boss Johnny Carey, a former Manchester United captain agreed to become Everton’s manager with – unlike Buchan – full control of playing staff, training staff and scouting. Despite his previous boasts and a reputed offer to coach the Turkish national team, Buchan was not too proud to take a job at Littlewoods so he could stay put given that his wife had just given birth to their daughter.
Meagan who had been picked for the senior side for the first time by Buchan, recalled running into his former gaffer. He said: “Football can be a sad game. Four or five of us used to go into town for lunch on a Friday.
“One day we went into Littlewoods and there was Ian working. It was sad to see him as a few months earlier he had been our boss.
“It was so hard to go over, you didn’t know what to do because he was a very nice person. But we did go over and it was the usual hellos.
“He said that he was delighted that we were doing well and said: ‘Don’t forget that you are my boys.’ That was the last time I saw Ian.”
Perhaps Buchan was in some ways ahead of his time? Modern managers tend to be far more concerned with players’ fitness and diet and in his first comments as Blues boss, Dyche proclaimed: “I know about Everton’s passionate fanbase and how precious this club is to them. We’re ready to work and ready to give them what they want. That starts with sweat on the shirt, effort and getting back to some of the basic principles of what Everton Football Club has stood for a long time.”
One thing seems certain… Buchan would surely be a big fan of Dyche’s infamous ‘Gaffer's Day’ when his squad are put through a gruelling regime without a ball in sight.
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