GROUND JUBILEE
50 Years of Penlee Park 1952-2002
IT was early in 1951 that bulldozers advanced to tear into a piece of ground in the Alexandra Road area of Penzance to prepare the way for what was to become one of the best football stadiums in the west.
Penlee Park as it is seen today is a far cry from its humble beginnings. So much so that people can easily forget the massive amount of hard work which went into the project.
Club committee members and others of that period rolled up their sleeves and pitched into the task with much enthusiasm, despite having to contend with torrential rain and other adverse weather conditions.
However, work they did and over the next few months, some 20,000 tons of earth and other materials were moved to make way for the pitch.
The ground was officially opened on August 25, 1952, by Sir Stanley Rous, with Luton Town of the Football League being the opposition to help mark the occcasion, the 'Hatters' winning the match by ten goals to nil.
The whole effort made the front page of national newspapers and suddenly everyone was wanting to know who Penzance were, where they played and what league they played in.
Since then Penlee Park has played host to numerous professional teams, and plans are in place to host another Football League club later this year to mark 50 years of football at the ground, hopefully with a new set of floodlights to mark the ground's Jubilee year.
JUST OVER half a century ago, Penzance was graced by the footballing royalty of the day, when the club played host to Brentford FC in an exhibition friendly match in celebration of the opening of the Penlee Park ground the previous autumn. ‘The Bees’, as the visitors were affectionately known, were a strong team in the old Second Division at the time. Whilst this alone would have guaranteed a sizeable attendance, the real crowd-puller was the presence of the legendary late Tommy Lawton, Brentford’s player-manager and every schoolboy’s idol.
Lawton was the consummate footballer and professional. A fearsome centre-forward, he was prolific with either foot and possessed a head that would put a pint of Guinness to shame. His scoring record speaks for itself - 23 goals in just 22 official England games, and 231 career goals in 390 League appearances.
Many describe him as the greatest striker ever, and it was only the onset of the Second World War - which denied Lawton of 7 seasons of professional football in his prime - that prevented him from entering the record-books of scoring history.
Never booked or sent off, his distinguished career took him from Everton, and a scoring England debut at the age of 19, to Chelsea, Notts. County and subsequently to Brentford. Though, at the age of 33, he was past his prime by the time of his visit to Penzance, this did nothing to quell the enthusiasm of the hundreds of supporters that packed Penlee Park to watch the great man play. And Tommy Lawton certainly did not disappoint, either on or off the pitch.
George Sands, the tireless Brentford reporter, described how “he [Lawton] must have signed nearly a hundred autographs in the five minutes before kick-off”. When the game started, Lawton, to the delight of the crowd, began to show some of the marvellous skills that he was famed for.
The Cornishman remarked upon his “superb ball control and distribution, feeding the wings, and then, once in a while, showing some of the flashes”. However, in typically resilient spirit, the home team were not going to lie down and take a hiding from the great man.
The Penzance team was in fact something of a ‘South Western League’s XI’, comprising players from Newquay, Truro, Helston and of course Penzance itself.
Bob Swanson, one of the local representatives in that match, recalls the game with a smile. “Ron George (Penzance’s centre half) gave Tommy Lawton a bit of a rough time. He went in so hard on him that Lawton told him to ‘go easy’!” Despite such close attention, Lawton dominated the match, setting up the first goal and scoring the next two, the second of which Swanson described as “a real rocket - he hit the ball no more than two foot off the ground, but so hard I though it was going to break the back of the net!”.
Although Penzance eventually lost 3-0, the match was described as an entertaining one by all present - and whilst Brentford showed the “cracker-jack form” to be expected of a professional club, it was remarked that Penzance did themselves proud with their commitment and skills.
Obviously the referee enjoyed the spectacle - he let the game run on some nine minutes past time! Perhaps the most telling feature of the Brentford reporter’s account of the game is his praise of the local hospitality, as the players enjoyed “a lunch of pre-war quality and quantity” (although the question does arise whether this was generosity or just outdatedness!) before a coach tour of Land’s End.
Although that match fifty years ago may have marked the end of Tommy Lawton’s footballing era, it was the beginning of one for the Magpies at Penlee Park, who were playing their first season at the ground. We can only hope for as many golden memories in its next 50 years.
