After the fine performance by the seniors in Belgium, Wales’ Under 16 team capped a fine week for the country’s football sides when they were crowned Victory Shield Champions. It was the first outright Welsh win since 1948/49 and, better still, they managed to do it with a 100% record.
Victory Shield Champions 2014. *
The campaign started off with a 1-0 win over England at Bangor with City’s Liam Angel getting the goal – here are brief highlights from that game, before a couple of goals by Swansea’s Liam Cullen secured a 2-1 win over Scotland in Perth. Therefore, Wales traveled to Ballymena on Thursday knowing they needed only a draw to be crowned Champions, but won the Shield in style as goals by captain Tyler Roberts (West Brom) and another from Cullen clinched what was a pretty comfortable win.
Congratulations then to the whole squad for a great achievement and it was heartening to hear coach Osian Roberts say that there were high hopes that a number of the players would progress into the senior side eventually.
I’m grateful to the poster called Surge on Mike Morris’ City messageboard who found this picture of Wales’ 1948/49 Victory Shield winners. I’ve Googled all of the names shown and found that it appears that three of the players went on to have notable careers. Ivor’s brother Len Allchurch played for Wales’ senior side, Johnny King had a spell with City in a career that saw him play over 500 league games and Glyn Davies played over 200 matches for Derby before playing for and managing the jacks.
It’s difficult to get too many details of these games online, but I have found there were at least four City players in the victorious Welsh squad. I’ve already mentioned defender Liam Angel and besides him goalkeeper Scott Coughlan played in each match, I’m not sure if that’s true of midfield player Keiran Proctor, but was in the starting line up against England and another midfield player Ibby Solani saw some action when he came on as a sub on Thursday – apologies to any City players who were in the squad that I haven’t mentioned.
*picture courtesy of http://www.faw.org.uk/
Hi Paul. That’s an interesting photo but the ‘Johnny King’ in the photo is not the one who played for City. He’s the goalkeeper who was Swansea’s regular ‘keeper in the 50’s. City’s Johnny King spent most of his career at Crewe and Stoke apart from one season (61/62) with us in the old 1st division.
So he is Richard, I was thrown by the unnamed bloke who is stood on the right. I couldn’t find any trace of another Johnny King from that era on Google, but at least it would appear that he played a lot of league football as well. However, the fact that there only seems to be one full international in the team does show what a tricky journey it is from this level to full international player.
Gosh! I was so relieved to read Richard’s comment!
As I had, on reading your fine piece Paul, suddenly been plagued with self-doubt re my knowledge of the history of Cardiff City, as the subtle, deep-lying centre forward Johnny King, was a real favourite player of mine.
And reading your piece, I thought “Welsh!? I must be losing my marbles!”
So thanks, Richard, for making me cancel that appointment with my psychiatrist!
Kindest,
Dai.