A book charting Luton Town’s mercurial rise from Conference football to the Premier League is reviewed by Eric Brown…
BY ERIC BROWN
Luton Town’s place in football history is assured – sort of.
They were indeed the first club to journey from non-league to Premier League in nine years. However, this distinction should surely be shared with Wimbledon, who also took nine years to travel the identical road.
After all, it’s not Wimbledon’s fault that the top-flight label changed from Football League Division One to Premier League after their achievement.
Still, Luton fans will always insist their club’s mercurial progress is unique, and a new book commemorates this rapid ascent through the divisions.
‘Luton Town’s Miracle’ by Rob Hadgraft traces that swift climb which ended a five-year spell from 2009 to 2014 when the club faltered financially in the Conference League after suffering mismanagement and financial irregularities penalised by crippling points deductions.
How had it come to this? During my formative years, Luton were a decent top-flight club. They came close to winning the 1959 FA Cup Final when they were thwarted by a goal from Nottingham Forest’s Roy Dwight, cousin of the then unknown Elton John.
In the Luton side that day were England internationals Ron Baynham and Syd Owen, plus Billy Bingham of Northern Ireland.
The 1980s saw England’s Ricky Hill and Bryan Stein strutting their stuff in an entertaining team pleasing to watch and report on. Well, it would have been even more pleasurable if it had been possible to witness games uninterrupted by solid stanchions seemingly stationed to prevent continuous views from the press box without leaning, ducking and diving as the ball whizzed backwards and forwards.
Kenilworth Road was always a quirky ground. It stands mostly hidden behind terraced houses at one point situated just far apart to allow fans entrance through a sort of narrow covered alley. Only the floodlights peeping above rooftops betrayed the fact that a football ground existed there.
It hadn’t changed much when Luton returned to the League in 2014. Luton-born Hadgraft, a Hatters season ticket holder for five decades and a journalist with regional newspapers and periodicals, recounts in detailed and entertaining fashion the highs and lows of their epic journey.
Hadgraft was lifted over the turnstiles to witness his first Luton game aged three and believes he has seen the team in action more than 1,000 times.
So he is the perfect figure to chart the rise of a tiny budget club playing on a tiny ground as they marched through the divisions to reclaim their place at the summit of English football. His month-by-month chronicle lists a few bumps in the road before the goal is achieved, and rainy afternoons at Braintree and Eastbourne are finally swapped for illustrious surroundings at the Etihad and Emirates Stadiums.
Sadly, Luton couldn’t handle the big time. Whereas Wimbledon went on to win the FA Cup two years after completing their rise, Luton began a slide back down the divisions after just one season at the top.
Hadgraft has written 22 books on sporting history, half of them on football, and featured five times on the shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year title.
This is his fifth book on Luton Town and, given the wealth of material, will surely be remembered as the finest.
‘Luton Town’s Miracle’ by Rob Hadgraft is published by Amberley, priced £16.99.
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