Pat Welton

Few keepers can have had such a traumatic start to their Leyton Orient career as Pat Welton. Signed as an amateur in the summer of 1949, he replaced Stan Gerula (who has a plaque outside the West Stand) for the visit to Tommy Lawton’s high-riding Notts County in front of 36,000 and came off after a 7-1 defeat. County went on to win the Third Division South title but Pat was recalled for the last dozen games and kept the jersey for the next two seasons in a team struggling in the bottom eight. Dave Groombridge, another former amateur, emerged as a strong rival and the pair shared the glory of the early Fifties FA Cup runs: Welton between the posts in all nine games of the 1951-52 campaign, with the wins at Everton and Birmingham; Groombridge taking over after one game of the 1953-54 run to the quarter-final at home to Port Vale (0-1). Pat was then restored for the highly succes-sful two years that culminated in promotion at last back to the Second Division. In 1954-55 he missed only three games as the O’s finished secondto Bristol City, and the following season he played all 50 league and cup matches in the championship win. In the Second Division the job was shared until a new contender emerged: yet another former amateur recruit in Frank George from Carshalton. When George took over at the end of November 1958 the writing was on the wall for Pat and shortly before the transfer deadline the following March he left for QPR. A qualified PE teacher who worked at Forest School in Snaresbrook, he forged a new career as a manager of St Albans, then Clapton and Walthamstow Avenue, and became an FA staff coach. He was in charge of the 1963 England Youth team that won the European Championship final at Wembley, with Chelsea's Ron Harris as captain. In 1969 he became Tottenham’s first full-time youth coach, later promoted to reserve-team manager and first-team assistant to Keith Burkinshaw for four years. He died from cancer in June 2010, aged 82.