ROBERT WELCH'S 1966 FOOTBALL TROPHY

“I tried to get away from the conventional shield and cup forms. The successful building up of a club is a great achievement and it is this characteristic of building step by step that I have tried to bring out in the trophy.”

Robert Welch

Today, we’re renowned worldwide for our iconic cutlery, award-winning kitchen knives and stainless-steel cookware, in the early days, Robert Welch’s design portfolio was even broader. 

From clocks to chalices, church crosses to kettles, cruise line crockery and even sports trophies; Robert’s prolific design alchemy was much in demand.  

In 1956 – one year after he set up his drawing board in the Silk Mill, in Chipping Campden, where our designers are still based today – he was approached by Scottish clockmaker Westclox to update its range of timepieces. From instantly recognisable Merlin alarm clocks to the ubiquitous Manager office wall clocks, the Westclox deal was one of Robert’s earliest industrial design commissions, and the relationship lasted well over a decade. More than 50 million clocks were produced there. 

By 1966 – the year England won the Football World Cup – Westclox’s brief to Robert had morphed from timepieces to a major trophy: The Westclox Football Manager of the Year Award.  

The award, sponsored by Westclox, was one of the most prestigious in the English and Scottish football leagues. It was to be presented to some of the game’s all-time greats at the Football Writers’ Association Dinner at the Café Royal in London.

No stranger to trophy design, Robert had already famously crafted the Prince Philip Silver Wink – the official trophy of the British Universities Tiddlywinks Championship – still hotly contested today.   

For the Westclox trophy, Robert took his inspiration not from a traditional cup, but from a ziggurat – an ancient Mesopotamian temple tower, consisting of a pyramidal, stepped structure with multiple terraces and a flat top.

To the ancients, ziggurats were the bridges between heaven and earth, the shrine at the top the literal earthly dwelling of a god and originally built from sun-drenched mud and bricks in marketplaces and alongside royal palaces.   

Robert’s trophy was crafted in solid silver; the modernist, sculptural trophy stood 8.5 inches high on an 8-inch rosewood base, with the names of the winning managers engraved on the symbolic silver ball at the top. Its launch made headlines in the Financial Times in May 1966. 

Writing in his 1986 book Hand & Machine, Robert recalled the ups and downs of the design process.  

“A ziggurat was the basis for the trophy, won so many times by Matt Busby and eventually given to him outright. This symbolised the ascent to the top, though not a design that one could hold triumphantly aloft, kiss and run round the football field with.... I recall the difficulties I had in persuading the management to proceed with such a design when they had their hearts set on a conventional cup; but these were brave days, and they consented to my proposals.” 

The first winner of the trophy was Celtic manager ‘Big Jock’ Stein for both the 1965/1966 and 1966/1967 seasons. Billed as the club’s ‘greatest ever manager’, he steered the squad to 10 League titles, eight Scottish Cups, six League Cups and one European Cup. 

Newspaper cuttings from the time show Liverpool Exchange MP Bessie Braddock presenting the silver ziggurat to him, alongside Liverpool’s Bill Shankly, who won Westclox’s English Football Manager of the Year award. 

Sir Matt Busby, legendary Manchester United manager, won it the following year, after famously guiding United to their historic first-ever European Cup triumph in Madrid. At the ceremony, his ‘Busby Babe’ and footballing legend George Best was presented with the Footballer of the Year Award. The last image of him holding it aloft was in January 1970.

One of Robert’s scrapbooks, safely stored in our temperature-controlled archive, reveal his working sketches and a typed press release, issued by Westclox and stamped as received by the Daily Telegraph in April 1966. 

“I tried to get away from the conventional shield and cup forms,” Robert is quoted as saying. “The successful building up of a club is a great achievement and it is this characteristic of building step by step that I have tried to bring out in the trophy.” 

It reads: “Mr Welch, a keen supporter of Spurs, would have liked the trophy to go to Bill Nicholson at White Hart Lane, but admits his team has not really had a sparkling season.

A World Cup souvenir score sheet from the day – also recently purchased to add to the archive - shows a line drawing of Robert’s iconic silverware and these words from the  Westclox clockmaker: “In recognition of managers throughout the country to improve the standards of the game and provide entertaining football, Westclox, the world’s largest manufacturers of timepieces, will annually award £500 to the top manager in England and £500 to the top manager in Scotland, plus an additional £500 and a Westclox trophy to the Manager of the Year, the outright winner between the two.”

Today, the trophy’s whereabout remains a mystery. No longer in the Manchester United trophy room, and with no documented winners after Sir Matt Busby, it is thought the Busby family are its custodians.

Charlotte Booth, Robert Welch Archivist, said: “Piecing together the story of the Westclox trophy is a reminder of just how wide-ranging Robert Welch’s early career was.

“Through his archive of sketchbooks, scrapbooks and press material, we see how he moved effortlessly between commissions, designing everything from clocks and domestic wares to ecclesiastical pieces and, in this case, a national football award.

“The trophy shows how he brought the same imaginative, confident approach to every project, transforming even a traditional brief into something distinctive and modern.

“It would be wonderful to know where it is today.”

Do you know where it is? Please do get in touch – we’d love to know. Email help@robertwelch.com.