George Petchey was one goal away from emulating Johnny Carey as the only manager ever to take Orient into the highest division of English football.
The infamous occasion was on a midweek night in May 1974 when the O’s, lying fourth in the Second Division, needed victory at home to middle-of-the-table Aston Villa to win promotion. It would have been reward for the outstanding football played until January, but from there the team had lost its sharpness in attack, which was underlined once more, when an equaliser from Micky Bullock to a Villa penalty was all they could manage. In the final 15 games of the season Orient had won only twice, and only once scored more than a single goal.
Petchey was a respected coach, who unlike some of his breed, took easily to management. He was helped in that by surrounding himself with players and officials from his previous club, Crystal Palace, whom he had coached to promotion in 1969 and then for two seasons in the top division.
His mentor was Arthur Rowe, responsible for the ‘push and run’ style that made Tottenham champions of the Football League a decade earlier and whom he eventually took to Brisbane Road as an adviser. The highlight of Petchey’s first season was a run to the quarter-final of the FA Cup that included victories away to his predecessor Jimmy Bloomfield’s Leicester and, most memorably, by 3-2 at home to Chelsea after trailing 2-0. In front of another full house ‘lucky Arsenal’ somehow prevailed 1-0 in the sixth round.
League form rarely reached those levels for two years, but there were some notable performances in the first few months of 1973-74, and demolishing Malcolm Allison’s Crystal Palace 3-0 on Boxing Day with more than 20,000 present put the O’s second in the table.
But a long drawn-out FA Cup tie with Portsmouth stalled momentum and that final game with Villa was the third in succession that ended 1-1, when a victory in any one of them would have meant promotion.
The team by then regularly included five Palace old boys, including goalkeeper John Jackson, who was preferred to the unlucky Ray Goddard. Petchey signed another, Derek Possee, for the following season, when the tone was set for a miserable campaign by the team failing to score in the opening four games – three of them goalless. The total of 28 in 42 league games was the lowest in the country and although 20 draws earned a respectable 12th place, Petchey was running out of goodwill with many fans.
In 1976-77 there were chants of ‘Petchey out’ during a cup final at Brisbane Road – the Anglo-Scottish Cup, which gave Brian Clough his first trophy as manager of Nottingham Forest. The departure of Laurie Cunningham depressed supporters further and once again all depended on the last game of the season – this time it went in Orient’s favour, a 1-1 draw with Hull saving them from relegation.
The manager was on borrowed time. He was given enough money in the close-season to buy Peter Kitchen from Doncaster but did not reap the reward for that astute purchase. The first game of the new league season was lost at Luton, the second was lost by 4-1 at home to Blackpool with barely 5,000 present and Petchey departed three days later.
‘We parted the best of friends,’ said chairman Brian Winston. ‘George has done more for Orient with training, coaching and youth players than anyone else.’ ‘I’ve enjoyed my time at Orient,’ Petchey said. ‘It was simply that a situation grew up between myself and the chairman and we decided it was best we parted company.’
It was ironic that Kitchen then became the 20-goal striker Petchey had always needed; and that three dull seasons rather obscured the memory of the more enjoyable ones beforehand.
He joined Millwall a few months later and saved them from relegation in a run that included beating the O’s 2-0. But they went down the following season.
He did various coaching and scouting jobs at Brighton. where he had lived for many years, and died there in December 2019.
