Another Bolton supporter posted this over on a Wanderers site. It's an extract from a report on a game between BWFC and Man City with Franny Lee lining up alongside Lofthouse for Bolton. It's a great description of the era which the likes of Lofthouse and Trautmann graced. Well worth a read.
“Those who have attended Burnden Park have seen English football, sometimes at its best, but always with the native characteristics prominent. For the album of respected memories I would retain the match between the Wanderers and Manchester City, played – appropriately enough – on November 5th 1960. Under scowling skies, with ancient Pacifics passing threateningly over the heads of the crowd on the railway embankment, with crackers and catherine wheels in occasional and spirited combustion, the two teams played a fierce scherzo over the mud. Skill there was in plenty – if only in the way that twenty-two players contrived not merely to stand but also to move with speed and manipulate the ball; but skill engaged with vigour. The tackling was of a ferocity unknown in Barcelona, but regarded as axiomatic among the devotees at Burnden. It was, wrote W.R. Taylor in the Guardian, the sort of ‘blood and thunder match that no-one dared leave early in case he missed the odd murder or sending off. ...... Bolton knows what it likes, however, and this is it. The purists may rage and talk about the lost arts of English football, but the fact remains that the gate was almost double the average for the season so far. There is a moral somewhere.’
At inside-right for Bolton that day was Nat Lofthouse, in such a position for the first time in ten years – and in the season following that which, officially, saw his retirement. Outside Lofthouse was a new boy, sixteen-year-old Francis Lee, playing in his first match. Lofthouse’s function was tutorial – to see the boy through the rigours of a local Derby. The manner in which he conducted his function, now counselling, now encouraging, now putting the ball across for the outside-right to get the feel of it, was an inspiration : here was a player who cared for the game, for his club, and for the future. The attitude was symbolised by the final goal, which gave Bolton a welcome 3-1 win : Lee took a corner, and Lofthouse, rising high above both friend and foe, nodded the ball past Trautmann. That action took the years away, and joined others of equal claim in the annals of eternity.
There is English football; there are English footballers; and Lofthouse is, perhaps, in our time the most English of them all.”
‘Bolton Wanderers’ by Percy M. Young
