|
Peter Broadbent was born in Elvington on 15th May 1933. An inside-forward, he played for Dover Athletic before joining Brentford in May 1950. He only played in 16 games for the Second Division club before being signed by Stan Cullis, the manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers, for a fee of £10,000. As Cullis later pointed out: "The club paid a big fee to Brentford for the transfer of Peter Broadbent, a 17-year-old inside-forward from Dover, who, I thought, could well develop into one of the outstanding inside-forwards of his day. Broadbent, in addition to the normal qualities of an inside-forward, also had considerable pace, and a flair for going past a defender in the fashion of a winger."
Broadbent made his debut against Portsmouth in March 1951. He joined a team that included Johnny Hancocks, Sammy Smyth, Jesse Pye, Jimmy Dunn, Jimmy Mullen, Billy Crook, Roy Swinbourne, Roy Pritchard, Billy Wright, Bert Williams and Bill Shorthouse. He held his place in the team for the rest of the season.
In the 1952-53 season Wolves finished in 3rd place in the First Division. Broadbent formed a great partnership with Johnny Hancocks. As the manager, Stan Cullis, pointed out in his autobiography, All For the Wolves (1960): "We often used him (Broadbent) as an advanced winger lying on the touchline twenty yards or more ahead of Hancocks. When the ball came out of defence to Hancocks, he was able to chip it accurately to Broadbent who was frequently clear on his own. This stratagem, designed to make the fullest use of the best qualities of both players, was also extremely successful, for the full-back marking Hancocks was caught between two men and played out of the game."
Wolves won the First Division championship in the 1953-54 season with four more points than their nearest challenger, West Bromwich Albion. They scored an impressive 96 goals. The top goalscorers were Johnny Hancocks (25), Dennis Wilshaw (25), Roy Swinbourne (24) and Jimmy Mullen (17). Broadbent scored 12 league goals at season.
Wolves won the First Division championship in the 1953-54 season with Johnny Hancocks as the club's top scorer. Broadbent scored 12 goals that year. The following season the club finished second to Chelsea.
In March 1956 Stan Cullis signed Harry Hooper from West Ham United for a club record fee of £25,000. Cullis wanted him as a replacement for Johnny Hancocks. Broadbent was now part of a forward line that included Hooper, Norman Deeley, Jimmy Mullen, Jimmy Murray and Bobby Mason. In the 1956-57 season Broadbent scored 19 goals.
Wolves won the First Division league title in the 1957-58 season. Broadbent scored 17 of the club's 103 goals that season. On 17th June 1958 Broadbent won his first international cap for England against the Soviet Union. England lost the game 1-0 but he kept his place for the game against Northern Ireland which was drawn 3-3. Broadbent scored both goals in the 2-2 draw with Wales on 26th November 1958.
Wolves also won the title in the 1958-59 season with 28 wins in 42 games. Once again the forwards were in great form scoring 110 goals. This was seven more than Manchester United and 22 more than third placed Arsenal. Jimmy Murray was the club's leading scorer with 21 goals in 28 games. Broadbent scored 20 league goals that season.
Broadbent kept his place in the England side appearing against Scotland (1-0), Italy (2-2) and Brazil (0-2) in 1959. Wolves continued their good run finishing 2nd to Burnley in the 1959-60 season. Broadbent was also a member of the side that won the FA Cup in 1960 with Norman Deeley scoring two of the goals in the 3-0 victory over Blackburn Rovers.
Broadbent won the last of his seven international caps against Scotland on 9th April 1960. However, he retained his place in the Wolves side that finished 3rd (1960-61) and 5th (1962-63). Stan Cullis was surprisingly sacked in September 1964 after Wolves finished in 16th place in the league.
After scoring 145 cup and league goals in 497 appearances for Wolves he joined Shrewsbury Town in the Third Division. He also played for Aston Villa (1966-68) and Stockport County (1968-69).
For many years Peter Broadbent ran a successful babywear shop in Halesowen. When he retired he moved to Codsall. Like many professional footballers who played before the introduction of balls coated with a special polyurethane preparation, which eliminated water absorption during games in the 1970s, suffers from Alzheimer's Disease.
Forum Debates
History of Football Project
History of Football: Course Outline
Women and Football
Black History and Football
First World War and Sport
(1) Stan Cullis, All For the Wolves (1960)
The club paid a big fee to Brentford for the transfer of Peter Broadbent, a 17-year-old inside-forward from Dover, who, I thought, could well develop into one of the outstanding inside-forwards of his day. Broadbent, in addition to the normal qualities of an inside-forward, also had considerable pace, and a flair for going past a defender in the fashion of a winger.
Consequently, we often used him as an advanced winger lying on the touchline twenty yards or more ahead of Hancocks. When the ball came out of defence to Hancocks, he was able to chip it accurately to Broadbent who was frequently clear on his own. This stratagem, designed to make the fullest use of the best qualities of both players, was also extremely successful, for the full-back marking Hancocks was caught between two men and played out of the game.
As we were working largely to the law of averages, determined to ensure that the ball spent a far larger proportion of each match in front of the opposition goal than in front of ours, it is a logical sequel that, once we had put the ball into the other team's danger area, we could not afford to allow them to obtain possession of it without a fight. So I needed forwards who could challenge and tackle and struggle for every loose ball.
In 1950, I was fortunate in that I had an ideal player for this type of game in Roy Swinbourne, the young Yorkshireman who came to Molineux from Wath Wanderers, the nursery team of Wolves which is run by Mark Crook, one of our old players. Tall and strong, Swinbourne could gain possession of the ball on the ground and, in the air, he could beat most defenders. As he learned, and removed the rough edges from his game, he developed into a first-class centre-forward for Wolves and was just coming to the peak of his career when he injured a knee in the last minute of a game at Preston.
This unfortunate injury happened early in the 1955-6 season and, although he tried for nearly two years to find his old speed, Swinbourne never recovered from that accident and now he has to be content to referee local games in Wolverhampton. Although the game may have found a first-rate official, football lost a potentially great centre-forward.
At the time of Swinbourne's accident, I knew that Wolves would find it very difficult to replace a key man in the tactical plan. I did not realize that, three years later, as we played in the European Cup for the first time, I would still be without an adequate substitute.
For Swinbourne was one of the few powerful forwards in the modern game who could fight and tackle for every ball in the manner of Peter Doherty, Raich Carter or Jimmy Hagan.
(2) Ron Flowers, For Wolves and England (1962)
Before going to bed I took a walk around Wolverhampton and met Peter Broadbent, the Wolves and England inside-right, who told me I was going to "dig" with him at the house of Mrs. Long in Chester Street, Wolverhampton. "She'll look after you like a mother," was Peter's comforting tip, "and, don't forget, if I can give you any help never hesitate to ask."
The following morning Neal and I had to report to Joe Gardiner, the Wolves trainer, and George Poyser, the club coach, two men of great experience; kind-hearted fellows whose lifetime in the game has given them a human approach to young footballers which I know from experience is a most wonderful thing.
Educational Websites
Standards Site, BBC History, PBS Online, Open Directory Project, Virtual Library,
Education Forum, History GCSE, Design & Technology, Learn History, Music Teacher Resource,
Freepedia, Teach It, Science Active, Geography IST, Brighton Photographers, Sussex Photo History,
Compton History, Universal Teacher, English Teaching, English Online, History Learning Site,
History on the Net, Black History, Greenfield History, School History, HistoryWorld, I Love History,
E-HELP, Ed Podesta Blog, Macgregorish History, Historiasiglo20, Sintermeerten, ICT4LT |
News and Search
Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, Daily Telegraph, The Independent, New York Times,
Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Google News, Channel 4, ZDNet,
Google, Excite, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AOL Search, Hotbot, Metacrawler, Netscape, Ask, Search,
Go, Looksmart, Dogpile, Raging Search, All the Web, Kartoo, Search Engine Watch, About
|
|
|
|
