| Carlisle fans reminiscences of Stan 15:11 - Jul 31 with 1488 views | enfieldargh |
As I had a quiet day last Friday I decided to contacted the London Branch of the Carlisle United fan club to discover if any of their fans had any memories or stories of Stan.
This one is from Cumbrian fan Ian Jardine.
Only received your message just before setting off for the game yesterday. It was a great experience and I hope Stan was able to appreciate how much he was respected and admired.
Stan Bowles started his career at Manchester City but he was a problem they could not handle and he was sacked after throwing a punch at Malcolm Allison. He went to Crewe and helped them have a good season 1970-71 that saw them and Carlisle United qualify for the Watney Cup a new pre-season competition for the teams that finished third and fourth in the League. Man Utd and West Brom also qualified but Halifax beat Man. Utd. in the first round. Carlisle defeated Crewe in their first round game.
At the end of October Wolves signed Carlisle's excellent centre forward, Bob Hatton, and so the Carlisle United manager, Iain McFarlane, immediately moved to replace him with a talented Crewe player called Stan Bowles who had impressed in the pre-season game. McFarlane had been a coach at Man City and so knew Bowles, both the talent and the problems but thought he could manage him.
It appears his method was simple. Physical force and fear. The story goes that he had Stan off his feet against a wall during one flare up. McFarlane was sacked at the end of the season and no reason was given by the board but the story goes that they could no longer put up with his violence and foul mouthed behaviour. Alan Ashman returned (from a spell in Greece) to take over the team that McFarlane had built and after only a month sold Stan to QPR. After a couple of seasons Ashman's team was promoted to the First Division.
During this period I was at University in Belfast and so would spend as long as I could out of the difficult atmosphere back in Carlisle and watching the team. I was therefore able to see quite a number of games with Bowles playing and it was just a joy to see him on the ball as you never knew, as with the defence, what he would do next. This team featured Stan Ternant in midfield with Ray Train and they simply won the ball and played it to Chris Balderstone, still regarded as one of the best players ever to put on a Carlisle shirt. He had so much skill and vision. Stan Bowles, therefore, had the freedom to do as he wished up front as they would constantly provide him with the ball.
At this time I knew a young lady who lived in the same street as Mr. and Mrs. Bowles and so I was soon told what was going on between the games. McFarlane might have been able to control him at Brunton Park but away from the ground he was out of control and became involved with a group who lived on the edge if not over the edge of the law.
A few days before he was sold to QPR Carlisle United played Liverpool in the League Cup. During the night before the game the family of the young lady I knew were woken by someone ringing their doorbell. When they opened the front door they found an unconscious Stan Bowles. His friends had got the wrong house when they dumped him, rang the door bell and drove off. Stan was carried down to his house to sleep it off and play against Liverpool that evening. As I remember he was rather subdued in a 1-1 draw. (We lost 5-1 in the replay.) Knowing this, it was not a surprise he was sold to QPR, for what was considered to be a small fee given his ability, before the rumours spread further and he lost the reputation he had gained as a reformed character carving out a new career.
During the summer Carlisle United had played in the Anglo-Italian Tournament and they were drawn in a group with Roma and Catanzaro. The first game was in the Olympic stadium and Carlisle United emerged as 3-2 winners. This was the first time Roma had been defeated at home in European competition. Bowles was at his brilliant best that day. A fellow London Branch member went out to Rome for the game and reports seeing Bowles receive the ball and then proceed to sit on it to view the opposition, then bounce to his feet and simply beat three Roma players one after another. I saw the 3-3 draw at Brunton Park a few days later where Bowles was forced to leave the pitch given his treatment. Blackpool played a village team and won 10-1 which saw them play Roma in the final having got there on goal average over Carlisle who were also unbeaten.
My reply
Dear Ian
Thankyou for that, sounds just like Stan.
I would love to see Stan play in the modern game on pristine football pitches and the likes of Hunter, Bremner & Giles plus Ron Harris and most Stoke defenders of the time taking bites out of him.
But Stan was used to a scrap so could take it and serve revenge with his skills.
Hope you dont mind if I publish your email on a qpr forum(Loftforwords).
We would be pleased to hear from you and any other stories of Stan or QPR related stuff
I remember Chris Balderstone playing for Leicestershire and having his picture card in my footballer card collection(and Joe Laidlaw)
Ive visited Brunton Park twice and never seen us score or win!!!
30th April 1993 and 3rd round FA Cup defeat in '86
Hope we can play each other again soon preferably in the Championship!!
Thankyou so much again for a wonderful memory of a wonderful footballer
Ian replied again
No problem in using the written piece.
I can add an epilogue, if you wish. Some 10 years later I was at Brunton Park when a teenage Peter Beardsley played his first league game against Blackburn. Stan had gone on to play for England and so he was a measure of real talent for me. I saw the same talent in Beardsley on that day. He even nutmegged Howard Kendall. The crowd was immediately enthused and I went home to say I had seen a future England player. My father laughed.
I write a page for the United match programme about the activities of the London Branch.
To some extent QPR started my addiction. Jan 4th 1964 saw Carlisle United play QPR in the third round of the F.A. Cup. Carlisle and the county was buzzing at that point as Hugh McIlmoyle and Joe Livingstone were scoring goals for fun that season and the holiday period had seen two games against Workington, local rivals who were also to be promoted that season. More than 18,000 had filled Workington's ground and 16,000 a few days later at Brunton Park.
15,000 of us went to the QPR game. Although a southern team they were in Division 3 so they represented a real challenge and test if we were to be promoted. Mark Lazarus was on the wing and booed from start to finish. We had played in Div. 3 the year before and so Mark had a reputation to live up to. He played the pantomime villain to perfection and worked the crowd on his wing. Sadly this would earn him a booking these days but we have lost the characters, like him, who added that extra element to games.
Given I was less than 5 feet tall in '64 don't ask me to tell you about the game as I saw very little but can still picture Livingstone heading the first goal before McIlmoyle sealed the win. It was all about atmosphere which has seen me still turning up more than 50 years later.
I got this from Dave editor of Carlisle's fanzine
9 members of the Carlisle United Supporters’ Club London Branch (CUSCLB) attended the game on Saturday in support of Stan, sitting in row C of the Upper Loft.
I will be writing a report (hopefully at the end of the week) for our fanzine, “Hit the Bar”, and will copy you in.
However, the CUSCLB only started after we sold Stan to QPR. We will not, therefore, have any match reports featuring Stan in our club’s archives.
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| Carlisle fans reminiscences of Stan on 15:58 - Jul 31 with 1439 views | colinallcars |
Thanks for that, a fascinating read. |  | | |
| Carlisle fans reminiscences of Stan on 16:06 - Jul 31 with 1402 views | enfieldargh |
The van that Stan and don got arrested in was borrowed from Carlisle Jim(or Pete or Dave)anyway somebody from oooop Cumbria way | |
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