Erith & Belvedere     5        Jarvis 14, 43, 44, 72, 83

Tooting & Mitcham              3        Hellard 34, McVety 77, Parker 78 

London Senior Cup Final, 12 May 1945 (at Dulwich Hamlet)

 

Continuing the series counting down the 100 most memorable games in our history.  Today, the final we won on the weekend following VE Day.

 

The whole of the 1944-45 football season took place against the backdrop of the endgame of the war, as new territory fell to the Allies week by week.  The Deres finished mid-table – 5th of 9 – in the South East Combination league, but the highlight came in the form of the London Senior Cup campaign.  We beat Acton United 4-1 at home in December, the week before Glenn Miller went missing and the Battle of the Bulge began; in the second round in January we beat London Fire Forces 4-0 on the day Russian forces liberated Auschwitz; in the third round in February we won 2-1 at Bromley the day after Iwo Jima fell to the US Marines; and in the semi-final in March we won 2-1 at Dulwich Hamlet the day before the Allies crossed the Rhine and took Cologne.

 

The final took place fully three weeks after our second-last match of the season.  A week beforehand goalkeeper Jack Day had played for The Rest against Bromley in the traditional Champions v The Rest match, and Pat O’Brien and Stan Aldous had turned out for Charlton Athletic reserves.  Other than that, the most strenuous action for most of our players had been whatever they got up to on VE Day!

 

Presumably a number of football finals took place around the country on Saturday 12 May 1945, and the victors would jointly hold the title of the first post-war trophy winners. In the Deres’ case, however, one player would have particular cause to remember the occasion.

 

JARVIS’ FIVE GOALS – DERES WIN LONDON SENIOR CUP

 

G Jarvis, the Erith and Belvedere centre-forward, was in great form in the London Senior Cup final on Saturday, and his five goals contributed largely to his side’s well-deserved victory over Tooting and Mitcham.

 

Despite the summer-like conditions, the match, which was played on the Dulwich Hamlet ground, was good and exciting, and there was very little to choose between the teams, as the score of 5-3 indicates.  Tooting may have had a shade the better of the exchanges, but Erith more than balanced this by their sound team-work and their greater precision in attack.

 

Tooting did much of the pressing from the start, but it was Erith who scored first.  This was after 14 minutes, when Fell raced away to force a corner.  He sent the flag-kick curling goalwards, and Jarvis’ head did the rest.

 

Fast end-to-end exchanges ensued with excitement round both goals, and both goalkeepers making good saves.  A move on the Tooting left saw Hellard flash in a shot which Shrimpton headed away from under the bar, and the Tooting goal had an escape when, following an advance on Erith’s left, the ball criss-crossed the goalmouth.

 

Tooting lost Thompson with a cut over the eye, but while he was off McVety got away and centred, and though the chance at first went begging, Hellard dashed in to equalise the score.  This happened after 34 minutes.  The injured man came back on the right wing, and for the rest of the half matters went in Erith’s favour.

 

Fell, well fed by Butterfill, was prominent, and he again secured a corner on the right, and with this cleared a throw-in not far from the corner flag followed.  Luxton made a long throw to Jarvis, and the centre-forward flashed a beauty into the net from what appeared an almost impossibly narrow angle.  This was two minutes from the interval, and a minute later a move on the right ended with Fell centring for Jarvis to head in and give the Deres a 3-1 lead at half-time.

 

Upon resuming, Tooting reverted to their original formation.  Fibbins made a great save from Fell when he seemed a certain scorer, and at the other end Day saved a free-kick from Burnett but dropped the ball, And it remains a mystery how Parker put it over the bar.  Mitcham had an aggressive bout, and O’Brien made a timely clearance in a hectic scramble, while Aldous, who was the outstanding Erith defender, twice robbed Hellard when he tried cutting in for goal.

 

Although the heat taxed the players considerably, the pace was kept up remarkably well.  Erith came into the picture again and their fourth goal 18 minutes from time was a fine example of a clear-cut movement.  Mercer robbed an opponent and passed to Fell.  His centre found Gurr, who juggled with the ball before passing to Jarvis, and the centre-forward neatly drove home his shot.

 

With Erith playing confidently, the game seemed safely “in the bag”, but they had a shock five minutes later when Tooting tried a reshuffle, and McVety, now on the left wing, took a long pass and raced away to score a fine goal.  In the next minute Tooting came again and Parker flashed in a shot as Day advanced, which made the score 4-3.

 

This put Erith on their mettle, and they made a number of raids before Aldous sent a long pass on the left.  Wardleworth short-passed to Jarvis, who quickly scented an opening, and dribbling by two defenders, he sent in a glorious drive to register his fifth goal.  In the remaining seven minutes there were close calls at both ends, the outstanding escape being following a corner on the Tooting right when the ball skidded off a defender’s boot and went just over the bar.

 

The handsome cup was presented to S Aldous, the Erith captain, by Sir Frank Meading, vice-president of the London FA, amid enthusiastic scenes. 

 

Erith and Belvedere:  Jack Day; Don Mercer, H Shrimpton; Danny Luxton, Stan Aldous, Pat O’Brien; Les Fell, Les Butterfill, George Jarvis, Harold Gurr, Jack Wardleworth.

Tooting and Mitcham: J Fibbins; E Davis, T Burnett; T Thompson, J Townsend, V Jones; A McVety, J Davidson, R Parker, R Crewe, L Hellard.

 

This was the greatest day in the career of George Jarvis, who scored 63 in 65 appearances for Deres, but a couple of our stars that day had even greater ones to come.

 

Les Fell (“Lightning Les”) first appeared in the Deres’ story on 11 September 1937 as a 17-year-old scoring twice in a 3-2 win for Margate, before breaking his collar-bone.  Les had started out with Margate in 1936 when they were the Arsenal nursery club – he was turning out alongside Arsenal players at the age of 16.  He then scored a hat-trick past George Barron in an 8-1 win for Canterbury Waverley on 17 April 1939.  For the first three years of the war Les hardly kicked a ball, working as a draughtsman for Shorts of Rochester, builders of Sunderland flying boats – although he did play against Stan Matthews for Charlton.  He made only this one appearance for the Deres, but what a memorable one. 

 

A year later he appeared in another, rather bigger, final – playing outside-right for Charlton Athletic when they lost the 1946 FA Cup Final 4-1 (aet) to Derby County.  He considered that less of a highlight of his career than the semi-final in which he’d set up the first goal of a 2-0 win over Bolton.  His own favourite goal was a long-range one he scored for Charlton in a reserve match at Highbury, which moved Arsenal’s double England international Denis Compton to say to him “that was a good ‘un!” as they lined up for the restart.  Les only played 23 times for Charlton, but went on to make 69 appearances for Crystal Palace before rejoining Margate in 1954.  He died on 9 October 2010.  A brief interview with CAFC Choice TV can be found on YouTube.

 

One of the supporting cast in the all-conquering 1941-42 team, Stan Aldous (born in Northfleet on 10 February 1923) debuted in a 2-1 win at Met Police on 31 January 1942 and had 14 games during the run-in, mainly at half-back.  He was a regular right-back for 1942-43 – except for the day he played centre-forward against the RAF on 24 October 1942 and scored four in a 12-1 win! – then reverted to left-half for 1943-44.  In 1944-45 he was centre-half or left-half in all but half a dozen games, one of those he missed being his wedding day on 10 February 1945, and guested for Charlton reserves in April.  He missed only one game in 1945-46 before joining an exodus of seven Deres players to Bromley in summer 1946.  After a spell with Gravesend and Northfleet he signed for Leyton Orient, and went on to make over 300 appearances for the O’s from 1950-58, skippering them to the Third Division South title in 1955-56.  Stan died in Ely on 17 October 1995.