Sometimes you look at a name and wonder. With this one that was just the case. The name was Malcolm. And thanks to Google more information was easily sourced. Indeed suspicions were reinforced. The man in question had a second name and it was Alexander. A little more research was required, which revealed that his mother, Doris, had been born in Kent and his father and electrical engineer, Archibald, some say in Dumbarton, some in Clydebank. More than that he had been a player with West Ham of some some promise and two hundred and thirty-eight appearances at centre-half before at the age of twenty-nine ill-health cut a career on the pitch a little short but perhaps released the coach in him.
It may well have the arrival of Ron Greenwood as a replacement of Fenton that caused Allison's next move. For a season he went back to playing for non-league Romford and then left football altogether until drawn back in in 1963 as manager of Southern League Bath City. It would be the beginning of a thirty year career as manager and coach at fifteen clubs and in five counties. With Manchester City as assistant to Joe Mercer promotion from the Second Division would be achieved in 1966, at the end of their first season, the First Division would be won in 1968, the FA Cup in 1969 and the League and European Cup-Winners Cups in 1970. In 1982 with Sporting Lisbon in Portugal it would be the League-Cup Double.
Malcolm Alexander Allison was also born in Kent, in 1927. His time as a junior was spent with Erith & Belvedere before he is said to have signed for Charlton Athletic as an eighteen year-old in 1945. However, there is no mention of him in the first team squad there until 1949-50, aged twenty-two and he then played just twice before moving in February 1951 from The Valley and the First Division to Upton Park and the Second. It is said to have been after arguments about training techniques at the club, but was probably as cover for an injured Dick Walker as he played the last ten games of the season. However, for the next six years he was an almost ever-present with over forty games a season with the exception of 1954-5, when injured, he managed twenty-seven. In the period the Hammers never finished lower than sixteen but never challenging for promotion, the highest position being eighth.
That was until the beginning of the 1957-58 season, when six games in after an away defeat at Sheffield United he fell ill. Tuberculosis, the curse of the Scots, was diagnosed, which required the removal of a lung, and although he returned to the reserve team as the cub was promoted to the First Division at the age of just thirty his playing career in the football league was over. Yet Allison was to remain at the club turning under manager, Ted Fenton, his hand to coaching. Amongst his charges was a young Bobby Moore, who would join the first team squad in 1958-59 and say of him,
"I'd been a professional for two and a half months and Malcolm had taught me everything I know.... When Malcolm was coaching schoolboys he took a liking to me when I don't think anyone else at West Ham saw anything special in me... I looked up to the man. It's not too strong to say I loved him."
It is difficult from this distance to know what Malcom Allison was like as a player but as a centre-half but just 5 feet 10 ins tall he was far more likely to have been ball-playing than a stopper on the ground and in the air. What he does seem to have been, in spite of his eventual consumption, was extremely fit and it is with his attitude to fitness training that made him stand out as coach and also perhaps explains why many of his managerial stays were short. On coming into several clubs, as Manchester City, he was,
His teams, no matter their level, would be able to run all day, which no doubt gave them an advantage rapidly but could be replicated elsewhere to the point where the fitness gap was closed and technique and tactics, perhaps not his forte, reasserted themselves. However, there is no doubt that Allison's contribution to the game both in Britain and elsewhere was to raise the physical preparedness of his players and, by example, others in a quantum fashion that might be said to have been the first step towards modern levels. He might never have been a player that in later circumstances would have been considered as a Scotland player but one wonders if paternal Scots discipline applied to training might, firstly, have made him a better player than he might have been and, secondly, provided the motivation for its application to coaching others."....to introduce double training sessions to ensure his players would be fit for the season ahead. Soon after, exercise bikes and weight training were introduced to the players. The introduction of weight training was particularly incredible, given the general apathy of most coaches to strength development and the fear of players becoming ‘muscle bound’.Somewhat a man of his time in this respect, Allison encouraged weight training for younger players and placed less of an emphasis on it as players grew older and matured......"