The Grecians moved up to second in the Division 4 table after a couple of excellent wins in mid March 1964. And in so doing they had mastered very difficult muddy conditions.

At Rochdale, City dealt with ‘large lumps of mud’ in winning 3-1. The Express and Echo reported that ‘there was a danger that the game may have been abandoned at one stage with the ball sometimes actually floating along in pools of water on the pitch’. An Alan Banks goal and two from Adrian Thorne did the business. Rochdale missed a penalty ‘as the rain lashed down’.

Then, a week later, there were challenging conditions at St James Park when Oxford United were beaten 3-2. The verdict according to the Echo was that ‘Exeter City slogged in the mud to get two more points towards their promotion target’. The goals were by Thorne, Dermot Curtis and an own goal.

Two stalwart City players coping with the mud were full backs Cec Smyth and Les Macdonald.  Between them they only missed six League games all season, part of the consistently available defence that gave the Grecians such a solid foundation. Together they played for Exeter over 600 times.

Cec Smyth (44 promotion season league games) was one of several players signed from Irish clubs joining Exeter from Distillery in 1962. He went on to make 303 league and cup appearances for City and looked back on his time at the club fondly.

Talking after his retirement from the game to Express and Echo reporter Tony Court Cec reflected “I still miss professional football. I was so happy with Exeter, and my days with the club will rank as probably the happiest of my life”.

On promotion Cec added “Consistency and team work is vital. Individual flair is not everything. We gained promotion through teamwork”.

Les Macdonald (42 promotion league games) was a Geordie by birth who joined Exeter in 1957 from Portsmouth, where he was brought up. He made 313 league and cup appearances for City and was considered by the Exeter City Complete Record book to be ‘one of the stars’ of the promotion team.

Cec and Les are among 12 promotion team signatures on Imperial Hotel headed paper that can be seen on The Grecian Archive on line collection. Great names from a great team.

Promotion Factfile

There were no January recruitment windows in 1964. As late as 16 March the Echo reported that ‘City made a late dash to Torquay last night to sign United’s wing-half Dave Hancock for a fee of £1000 payable in two £500 instalments. They beat the transfer deadline by just 15 minutes’. Hancock made his debut in the Oxford home game and played in all the remaining eight games.