Lulu, Wembley and the Atom Age: Leeds United's first cup fever, 1950
If the Peacocks of 1950 could overcome Arsenal, they'd reach the FA Cup semi-final. And that could mean, it was reported, another trip to London, if the semi-finals were moved to Wembley.
I feel silly, looking back to the FA Cup third round and thinking about how I let myself be lulled in to not caring about a cup run this year. The Premier League, for once, was assuming priority and consuming my thoughts. The FA Cup, if it wanted Leeds United, had plenty of time to come knocking in the last twenty years.
A semi-final at Wembley felt like a remote prospect, handed down with inherited weariness from Manchester City: it's not our fault that this April will bring their 23rd trip to Wembley since Pep Guardiola took over, but Wembley fatigue has somehow become the problem of teams, like ours, who hardly remember what the place looks like. Villa 1996, Doncaster 2008 and Southampton 2024 were very tiring experiences, though.
Silliness is the secret ingredient of cup magic, though, and if reaching the semi-finals hasn't quite got me buying up tinfoil to cover a cardboard cup-shaped hat to take with me to Wembley, it has got me looking for the source of the compulsion that means I still might. FA Cup glory, when it's within reach, comes glittering, powerful and covered in rosettes. It can even shake a rugby town like Leeds out of its soccer-wary stance. And, when Leeds first got excited about cup football in 1950, it even came with foreshadows of ticket allocation chaos and Wembley semi-finals to come.
Leeds United did nothing in the Association Challenge Cup before 1950, only getting past the third round nine times and only reaching the fifth round thrice. 1949/50 was already a gala year because it was the first time Leeds had won in the third round since the war. A 5-2 win over Carlisle United was followed by a 3-2 win, after extra-time, in a replay away to Bolton Wanderers, a First Division scalp for the then Second Division Leeds. The Peacocks were in the fifth round for their fourth time, drawn at home to Division Two's Cardiff City, and the city went mad.
How mad can be judged first by how many pearls were clutched in protest at the soccer fever sweeping through the city. 'Scandalised Mother' of Leeds 6 wrote to the Yorkshire Evening Post condemning their photograph of Barbara and Jacqueline, aged three and two, queuing in the snow with their mother who wanted fourth round replay tickets for herself and her husband. 'Is a football match all that important?' she asked. 'This treatment of children should not be allowed ... if it is simply an outing for mother and father, it's a crime'. Other correspondents claimed it was 'plain barmy' for people to be so obsessed with football games when the impending general election ought to be dominating their thoughts.
And not, for example, electing the name of a doll. At games since November 26th, a doll dressed in blue and old gold had been handed to United's goalkeeper, Harold Searson, by members of the Stanningley branch of the Supporters' Club. The doll was in care of Mrs Burnett, landlady of The Fleece, and her daughter Anne; it had been won at a fairground on a trip to New Brighton. And since taking her place in Searson's goal, the doll had never seen Leeds lose. The only game she'd missed was a 2-0 defeat at Bury.
Naturally such a charm needed a name before the fifth round, and the YEP received 300 separate suggestions from over 2,000 readers for Searson and captain Tommy Burden to choose from. Some ideas leaned on the name of Major Frank Buckley, the team's manager: Miss Faith Hope ('No need for charity with Buckley in the chair'), Major Barbara or Betty Buckley. Some suggested Juno, as in Juno and the Paycock — a play and later Alfred Hitchcock film using an Irish colloquial version of 'Peacock'. Another popular choice was Berenico, from the Greek for 'Bringer of victory'. This was a cultural crowd.
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