Torquay United v Army XI 1954

Amongst those who were billed to play - but didn't - Frank Blunstone of Chelsea - later manager of Brentford and coach at a number of clubs - was to make his England debut against Wales at Wembley just seven months later. Similarly, just a couple of months later Jimmy Bloomfield was to leave Brentford for Arsenal. He later managed Leyton Orient and Leicester (where he replaced Frank O'Farrell).

In those days of National Service, Army XIs were potentially big time stuff and - on occasions - virtually amounted to a GB Under-23 XI. I believe the Army played strong Scotland XIs at Hampden Park in the 1950s as well as FA XIs made up of league players.

A brief conversation with Jon on Saturday about that Army XI has sent me in the direction of Neil Brown’s site and Barry Hugman’s 1946-2005 book of player records.

The side which was listed to play was probably rather stronger than the one which actually appeared. Together with Blunstone and Bloomfield - as mentioned above – there would have been Derek Hines (who was to play 300 games for Leicester) Cyril Rutter (171 league games for Pompey) and possibly Phil Gunter, Portsmouth and England U23/England B (although a David Gunter was also on Portsmouth's books at the time).

Of the team that did play, Bill Heath played over a hundred league games in goal for Bournemouth and Lincoln whilst Jim Fotheringham appeared seventy-odd times for Arsenal. Bob Gilchrist and John Mulholland were both Scottish and may have moved south for National Service. Jimmy Whittle had a reasonable career at Hearts (and later Ayr) and it might be Jock Brown (Hibs, Third Lanark, Tranmere and Hartlepools) at right back.

Cullum appears to have been Colchester-born – as opposed to a serviceman posted there – and I suspect it might have been Harry Griffiths who played 400 games for Swansea and won a Welsh cap (but with him playing out of position – and Griffiths being a relatively common name in those parts – it’s hard to be certain). If it's the man, Harry Griffiths later managed the Swans and was still working for the club when he died in the Vetch treatment room at the age of forty-seven.

That leaves the Arsenal players – Mitchell and Popple – of whom Jon was particularly interested. Neither ever played a Football League game for Arsenal – or any other club for that matter. Were they Scottish too? Or did they become senior amateur or semi-professional players?

Overall, if I’ve got the right players, it looks like they were all born between 1929 and 1935 with Jimmy Whittle being the oldest (coming up to twenty-five) and Jock Brown the youngest at a few days past his nineteenth birthday. It can only be surmised that the majority were on compulsory National Service which continued to draft individuals until 1960 (the last trickle of demobs being in 1963). In a football sense this meant the Army XI began to weaken after the early 1960s although there was still time to give the official Scotland Under 23 team a close game in 1961.

And, judging by several programmes being for sale on e-bay, it appears that Argyle regularly played army teams:

When the Torbay Sunday Combination started up in the sixties or seventies they played their knock out Cup Final there and the crowd was massive.

One of the competing clubs was Foxhole based Tom Cobley FC who played in green and yellow if I remember correctly.