The Great English Final

1953: Cup, Coronation and Stanley Matthews

David Tossell

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• eBook ISBN:
  9781909178939
• Year: 2013

The 1953 FA Cup Final between Blackpool and Bolton Wanderers had everything: seven goals, a dramatic comeback and, in Stanley Matthews, a fairytale hero. Sixty years on, this legendary game has come to represent a golden age—the year when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned and a British expedition conquered Everest. The Great English Final looks at the cultural importance of the match as Britain broke free from post-war austerity, with pre-Coronation television sales taking the Cup Final into more homes than ever before. In 1953, Britain clung to the old-fashioned values epitomized by Matthews while bracing itself for a new consumer-driven age under its young monarch. Football was on the threshold of similar change. Five months later, the England team would be torn apart by Hungary and the national game would never be the same again. Yet the 1953 FA Cup Final would live forever.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Cast of Characters
• 1 - Captain, My Captain
• 2 - New Advances, Trusted Methods
• 3 - A Tale of Two Towns
• 4 - Same Old Ball Game
• 5 - Lofty Ambitions
• 6 - Morty and the Money Men
• 7 - On a Wing and a Prayer
• 8 - The People’s Champion
• 9 - Screen Shots
• 10 - Up For the Cup
• 11 - Wembley Calling
• 12 - The Longest Days
• 13 - Comeback
• 14 - The Winner
• 15 - After the Party
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Photographs