Legendary Ipswich Town striker Ted Phillips gives us an insight into his playing career with the club he loves and his relationship with the legendary Sir Alf Ramsey.
IPSWICH TOWN MADE history when they won back to back championships in the seasons 1960-61 and 1961-62, the latter making them the champions of England. Under the guidance of one of the, if not the greatest English managers ever in Sir Alf Ramsey, Ipswich Town upset all the odds to become the only fourth club ever to achieve this remarkable feat.
Ted Phillips was one of the main reasons for this success, he formed an inseparable strike partnership with Ray Crawford and these two strikers’ goals played a major role in these two successive titles. In the 82 games they played together during these two seasons they netted a combined 131 league goals, an incredible record.
Edward John “Ted” Phillips was born 21 August 1933. Not long after coming out of the army, Phillips played for his hometown side non-league Leiston Town. In 1953 he was scouted and then signed by then Ipswich Town boss Scott Duncan. After spending a short amount of time on loan at fellow non-league outfit Stowmarket Town, Phillips made his Ipswich debut aged 20 on 3 March 1954. He never looked back since.
In the 11 years that Phillips spent at the club between 1953 and 1964 he scored an astonishing 161 league goals in 269 appearances, making him the second highest league goalscorer in the clubs history. Phillips was second only to his strike partner Ray Crawford, who hit 204 league goals in 320 appearances in two different spells for the ‘Tractor Boys’.
Phillips holds the record for the most goals scored for the club in one season, netting 46 in all competitions during the 1956/1957 season.
Strike Partnership
Phillips enjoyed a formidable partnership with Ray Crawford throughout his Ipswich career. During the 1960-61 Division Two promotion season, these two deadly strikers’ combined to score 70 of the 100 goals that the team scored that year. Phillips scored 30 goals with Crawford netting 40.
Both these strikers featured in all 42 league games during this campaign. It is very rare in the modern game that any outfield player plays in every single game due to the policy of rest and rotation.
Speaking of the partnerships success Phillips said: “We were the best of friends so when we played together the communication came naturally.”
These two strikers scored the goals that had got the club into the top tier of English football for the first time in their history. The partnership wasn’t to stop there; backed by all the media to go straight back down the players proved everyone wrong and won the league to become the English Champions.
Phillips netted 28 times and Crawford 33 as Ipswich achieved the amazing feet of winning the English Division One straight after winning the English Division Two. Ipswich became only the fourth club to achieve this remarkable record, emulating the same efforts by Liverpool in 1906, Everton in 1932 and Spurs in 1951. No team since have achieved the same feat and with the gap clearly widening between the top two leagues it looks increasingly unlikely that another team will do it again.
John Motson, the legendary football commentator and writer, once recorded reported Crawford and Phillips as having ‘a physical presence that was a frightening prospect for any defence.’
Phillips said: “We all clicked together and made a great team but I don’t think any of us realised what we could achieve until it happened. Both the team and the fans were over the moon at what we achieved.”
Sir Alf
Ipswich achieved this under the management of Sir Alf Ramsey. Ramsey is renowned by journalists and football fans alike for being one of the best English managers ever. Ramsey took charge of Ipswich in 1955 and in the eight years he was at the club he transformed them from a Third Division Southern Side to English league Champions.
What made the achievement even more remarkable was that Ipswich were the first club that Ramsey managed and the team cost a mere £30,000 in total containing just one player with international caps – Ray Crawford.
Phillips said: “Alf was a joy to work with, my relationship with him was brilliant both on and off the field.”
In 1963 Ramsey left Ipswich to manage England and immediately predicted that ‘England will win the next World Cup’, his prediction proved right as he led England to their only World Cup trophy in 1966. The following year Ramsey was knighted.
“I was surprised like alot of others at the time that Alf was given the England job but I knew he would do a great job just like he did at Ipswich,” added Phillips.
Under Ramsey’s reign, Ipswich were often referred to as ‘Ramsey’s rustics’: they played an unusual midfield formation without wide players. This often left opposition full-backs confused as they had no wide-men to mark, as a consequence the attacking players as Crawford and Phillips used to run and pass through the centre to score.
When he was in charge of England Ramsey put in place the same tactics and again success followed. You often hear journalists and historians refer to Ramsey’s winning 1966 World Cup squad as the ‘Wingless Wonders’.