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Stan Cullis
| Category: | Manager |
| Year Inducted: | 2003 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of Football's Greatest Heroes, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Stan Cullis was the ‘Iron Manager' who forged Wolverhampton Wanderers into a major power in English and European football during the 1950s.
On his orders the Wolves players increased the tempo of their play. ‘Fast, direct attack', was the Cullis mantra. The ball had to be played forward quickly. To pass the ball sideways, let alone backwards, was to shirk responsibility.
Their positive, energetic play carried Wolves to three championship titles in the space of five years, successes sandwiched between FA Cups triumphs in 1949 and 1960.
A strict disciplinarian, his frequent dressing-room tirades made him unpopular with some of his players, but his uncompromising, often abrasive methods were undoubtedly effective: only once in nine consecutive seasons did Wolves finish outside the top three. No other side came close to matching that level of consistency.
There were plenty of highlights: in the middle of the decade Wolves beat several of the leading club sides of Europe , including Honved and Spartak Moscow in prestigious midweek friendlies under newly installed floodlights at Molineux.
Standing in the dressing-room after watching a 3-2 victory over Honved in December 1954, Cullis motioned the newspapermen toward the exhausted Wolves players. ‘There they are”, Cullis told the journalists, ‘the champions of the world.'
Their stirring comeback did much to restore confidence, coming, as it did, only 13 months after England were humiliated 6-3 at Wembley. ‘The legend of Hungarian invincibility perished forever in the Molineux quagmire,' one newspaper reported the following day, under the headline: ‘Hail Mighty Wolves.'
On the domestic front, only Manchester United rivalled them during the 1950s. For many youngsters Wolves were the most glamorous club in the country. As a boy growing up in Belfast George Best dreamt of playing at Molineux not Old Trafford.
‘Wolves in those days stood for everything that was good about British football,' Matt Busby said. ‘They played with great power, spirit and style.'
To win consistently, argued Cullis, the Wolves had to be fitter than their rivals, and that meant long and gruelling training runs up a steep hill in the country. ‘Heartbreak Hill,' Billy Wright called it.
Adopting a scientific approach to training, Cullis hired athletics coach Frank Morris, a former national running champion, to supervise the sessions. Each player was given specific targets: 100 yards in 10.5 seconds, for example. Minimum times were set for other distances: 220 yards, 440 yards, 880 yards, one mile, and three miles.
Cullis gave his players 18 months to reach those standards, the papers said. Anyone who complained was soon on his way out of Molineux.
Famously described as the ‘Passionate Puritan' by the sportswriter John Arlott, Cullis watched games with the same intensity he expected his men to play them. Agitated, arms flying, he could not keep still. Those sitting next to him often ended up with a few bruises. ‘He got carried away in games completely,' Wright said.
Intensely loyal to the club, Cullis and the rest of football was shocked when Wolves sacked him in 1964, after several indifferent seasons. The decision shattered him. Matt Busby wrote a warm letter of sympathy.
In their heyday in the late 1950s, Wolves scored more than 100 goals in four successive seasons. Critics decried their flat-out, relentless long-ball football as ‘kick and rush'. Cullis did not care. ‘They can say all they like. Our supporters get more entertainment from watching Wolves than any other two teams put together.'