IT was the moment of realisation. As the tears fell freely from Dave Whelan’s face, the enormity of that afternoon’s events had just started to sink in.
Just hours earlier a 23-year-old Whelan was preparing for what every schoolboy dreamed of, an FA Cup final appearance, now he was facing up to defeat and a double broken leg that ultimately stopped his playing career ever hitting such heights again.
Blackburn Rovers had just lost the 1960 FA Cup final 3-0 to Wolverhampton Wanderers but, having been stretchered off the Wembley turf just before half time with his side trailing 1-0, the first Whelan knew about it was upon regaining consciousness from surgery.
The physical pain had long since dulled but the mental pain had just started ahead of a three year road to recovery that finally brought an end to his memorable Ewood Park career.
He said: “They whizzed me straight off in an ambulance to Wembley hospital and the surgeon who was going to be doing the operation was actually watching the game before.
“You are half unconscious because of what they put into you. The next thing I really remember was waking up and being wheeled back from the theatre.
“I was being wheeled along the corridor after my operation and the first thing I said to the nurse was ‘how have we got on?’. The nurse just said ‘you lost 3-0’. The tears just fell.
“I couldn’t stop crying. That was the passion for the game then. I wasn’t crying for myself, I was crying for us, the team, we had lost the cup final.”
This was meant to be Rovers’ time. Having suffered a semi final heartbreak to bitter rivals Bolton just a few years previous, May 7 1960 was the day the famous blue and white halves were going to put things right.
Bryan Douglas, Ronnie Clayton and co had already seen off Sunderland, Blackpool, Spurs, Burnley and Sheffield Wednesday on the road to Wembley and the 40,000 plus Rovers fans who made the journey were confident their heroes could add Wolves’ scalp to their name.
It was not to be. From striker Derek Dougan handing in a transfer request on the morning of the game, to him then playing half fit, to Whelan’s own personal heartbreak, it became a day to forget for the East Lancashire outfit.
“We all knew Derek was not 100 per cent fit and we knew he should not be on the park,” Whelan, 73, said.
“It was a tight game though and we were probably on top.
“Then they had a cross and Mick McGrath slid in and pushed the ball in the back of his own net.
"Harry Leyland had it covered, I was right behind Harry – there was no danger.
"But Mick didn’t know that, he thought there was someone behind him.
“Then two minutes before half time I break my leg, no substitutes, and it was game over.”
Even with Dougan’s injury leaving Rovers with effectively 10 men, Dally Duncan’s men were well in the game, despite trailing to McGrath’s own goal.
Then Norman Deeley’s challenge forced Whelan out of the action and, now up against just nine fit players, Deeley rubbed salt into the wound with a second half double as Wolves coasted to victory.
Whelan said: “Norman Deeley came right over the ball.
"Today he would have been sent off and banned for a long time.
"He came six inches over the ball, he came for me not the ball.
“I snapped both bones completely. You had no pain killers then, so they just strapped me together with bandages, lifted me up and put me on the stretcher.
“The stretcher was one of those old canvas things and when they took me in the dressing room they put me across the baths.
“One of the baths leapt me up in the air because it moved my leg.
"I was screaming when the lads came in at half time, which was not good for them.
"It was just a terrible day for us all.”
Now, 50 years on, the Wigan Athletic chairman and businessman will be watching Saturday’s final between Portsmouth and Chelsea with his own Wembley pain very much a thing of the past.
Since then has achieved the unique feat of having played in every division in the football league and then going on to be a chairman at every level and insists he looks back with no regrets.
He said: “Sometimes I look at it and think it is a long time since I played at Wembley in the cup final but other times I look at it and say ‘hasn’t time flown?’”
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