As a respected coach and manager with clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal, QPR and Manchester United, it is perhaps surprising that Dave Sexton could not make more of his first manager’s job, at Brisbane Road. He was handicapped, however, by the O’s growing financial problems, which did not deter him from taking the job but proved the reason to leave it.
Despite having been an Orient player from June 1956 until October 1957 – and scored the club’s first goal back in the Second Division – he must have thought long and hard about rejoining the club in January 1965 as successor to Benny Fenton. He had been coach for three years to Tommy Docherty’s exciting young Chelsea team, helping them back into the First Division, where they immediately became a top six club. But while that team was winning the League Cup and reaching an FA Cup semi-final, Sexton would be fighting to keep Leyton Orient out of the Third Division.
The son of a professional boxer, he found the O’s on the relegation ropes, and bottom of the table after his first two games. Then came the visit of league leaders Newcastle United, to be featured in the first Second Division game ever to be shown on a new BBC2 programme, only available to a few thousand London viewers, called Match of the Day. Frank Bough introduced it from a typical muddy Brisbane Road pitch, and those viewers saw Irishman Joe Elwood score both goals to stun the Geordies, who still went on to finish as champions.
Elwood, left out of the team since September, kept his place as Sexton threw in three or four younger players and the revamped side finished up safe by just two points.
In the summer many of the old guard were shown the door, but Sexton’s five signings proved inadequate replacements. Sticking with youth, the manager also made 19 year-old inside-forward Jimmy Scott the Football League’s youngest captain, then gave England schoolboys captain Paul Went a debut a month before his 16th birthday – still the club record.
Bottom of the table almost from day one, Orient were rooted there even more firmly after successive defeats of 4-0 and 5-0 at the start of December. Sexton then resigned after being told that the playing staff was to be cut from 24 to 17 for financial reasons, resisting pleas from the directors to stay.
Les Gore for once could not work his magic as caretaker and the O’s finished ten points behind the rest, condemned to the Third Division again.
Sexton, however, went on to great things, winning the FA Cup and European Cup-Winners Cup with Chelsea, taking QPR to their best ever finish as runners-up to Liverpool, and then having Manchester United runners-up in both the League and FA Cup.
