Tom King RIP

[pjdaly]

Tom, who passed away very recently at the age of 91, was a Barrow lad and played for the club between 1952 and 1960 and, I think I'm right in saying, he's lived up Hawcoat-way for many years.

Here's an excerpt from the book "A Who's Who of Barrow AFC" by Garth Dykes:-

"A hard-working wing-half who excelled in defence, local discovery Tom King made his League debut as a 19-year-old. Tried at outside-left in his fourth and fifth senior outings, he scored the only League goal of his career in a 1-2 defeat against Port Vale in the penultimate fixture of season 1952-53. Like many players of his generation, the calls of National Service interrupted his career and he did not kick a ball in League football for two seasons. Returning to Holker Street for the 1957-58 season he won a regular place in the first team, his polished displays reported to be attracting the attention of several prominent clubs".

In total, Tom made 79 appearances for our first team.

Tom played in two of the very most iconic matches in our club's history. On 9th January 1954 he was in the team that drew 2-2 with Swansea in an FA Cup 3rd Round match. Why historic? Because the match was played at Holker Street in front of an attendance of 16,874 which I believe is the record attendance ever for a match at Holker Street (and I don't think it's going to be surpassed anytime soon, no matter how well we do).

The second 'historic' match that Tom featured in was again an FA Cup 3rd Round Match at Holker Street on 10th January 1959.Why was this one so historic? Because we entertained Wolves in front of a crowd of 16,340 and at that time Wolves were Champions of England. It's a bit like us getting to the 3rd Round this season and Liverpool coming to town. Wolves were littered with internationals, including England captain Billy Wright. In those days, the 'big' clubs always featured their strongest first elevens and didn't demean their 'lowly' opponents by putting out reserve teams. We lost 2-4 but were holding the Champions 2-2 for seventy-odd minutes. We couldn't quite 'do a Grimsby' (. . . . not that Man Utd are Champions of England anyway).

And to finish on a totally irrelevant aside, Bev Bevan, co-founding member and former drummer of ELO, travelled through to the match (he was a school-kid at the time). In 2006 he said "I do remember this lovely little ground and the great respect the Barrow supporters had for the mighty Wolves, as they then were . . . . . in fact, I've still got the programme".

("Lovely little ground" - - - that's definitely a compliment and might be contrasted with the "li'll 'ol Barrow" tag that is causing some to kick off in another thread at the moment . . . . )

[Jim]

I was at that game. We were level at 2-2 but Wolves got two late goals in the last 15 minutes to win 4-2. Although they cleared the pitch of snow, nothing was done to the terraces and we only kept upright by being wedged front, back and sides by other supporters!

This is a summary from the Wolves history site (I think they got the attendance wrong):

https://wolvescompletehistory.co.uk/bar ... 58-59-fac/

[Rico]

I didn’t get to the game but my father did and came home to tell me about our No 8 Jackie Robertson stooping around Billy Wright and heading our first goal. Left Wright opened mouthed he said. I saw Robertson quite a few times and he is still the best header of a ball I’ve seen at HS.