Ivor Broadis - Carlisle United (1st Spell)

Carlisle United (1st Spell)

At the end of the war Broadis was posted to Crosby-on-Eden. "Until after the war I'd never been so far north in my life, I thought I'd need a dog team to get up here," recalled Broadis. When Carlisle United heard how close he was, when he was just 23, they offered him the player/manager's position in August 1946. Broadis is still the youngest man to have been player/manager in the English Football League.

Broadis is the first ever manager to transfer himself to another club when he sold himself to Sunderland in January 1949. As Broadis told the BBC, "Carlisle got £18,000 for me. It was an incredible amount in those days". Broadis was succeeded as manager by Bill Shankly. Broadis continued to live and train in Carlisle.

One day Broadis arrived late for training. Shankly's version of what he said to Broadis: "What do you think you're doing? Who do you think you are? If you do the training we do you can train with us and we'll play five-a-side and you'll run your guts out as an example to everybody else".

Shankly never said that he made Broadis as a footballer, "but I made him realise what was needed to be a player, and Ivor Broadis was one of the strongest and most dangerous inside forwards that ever played."

Broadis' description of events with Shankly: "Bill always regarded himself as the man who saved me, really - the man who gave me to England. I would maybe be lapping round and I admit I could have put a lot more into it.

"You sort of take the routine from the club you are with and that was not good enough for Bill. I was doing what I thought Sunderland would be doing, the way they were doing it. And that wasn't Bill's way. You had to come off jiggered. So Bill regarded himself as putting me right and I think there's a lot of truth in that. His strength was not Liverpool. It was the strength he could give to anybody."

With Shankly's infectious enthusiasm he would ask Broadis, "Are you doing anything this afternoon? Aye, right then, if you're not, come down to the ground." They would upturn two chimney pots to each be a goal and play one-a-side.