1957 video - Tommy Lawton and sheep on the Meadow Lane pitch

[upthemaggies]

As great as Tommy undoubtedly was as a player, he was a bit of a disaster for us as a manager by the looks of it. Maybe it was inevitable that we would have gone down that season regardless - due to circumstances lost to time - but Notts had only lost 1 of their last 12 at the end of previous campaign to pull away from relegation, so maybe they would have been better off sticking with Frank Broome who the players apparently preferred, it was down to them that Lawton hadn't taken over earlier, a matter of weeks after Poyser got sacked over the Rhyl debacle. The relegation escape of 56/57 and what happened afterwards proved the players right.

Maybe we should have signed up a few of those sheep.

[lunaspie]

We've made up for it in the intervening years.

[upthemaggies]

We've made up for it in the intervening years.

This is true in a sense, but the fact that Lawton's season in charge was the last time to date that Notts averaged over 14,000 (after consistently doing so before that) strongly suggests that the club has never really recovered from that slump.