The years following World War II saw the highest ever average attendances for football. For those who had been in uniform a football crowd created a strong sense of belonging to their home town, often after years away. The Swansea crowd averages of the late 1940s have never been topped. 28,623 watched the Swans sweep back to Division 2 in 1949 with a 2-1 victory over Newport. The 1940s ended with the notable debut of local lad Ivor Allchurch, ushering in a ‘Golden Age’ of Swansea football.
During the 1950s Swansea Town had an abundance of local players of high quality. In November 1952 at Fulham, only one of the team was not Welsh and eight of the players were from Swansea.
Three sets of brothers played for the team during this time: Gilbert and Cyril Beech; Ivor and Len Allchurch; and Cli and Brin Jones.
The club continued to struggle nancially and the fans’ biggest moan was the selling of talented players to bigger clubs. The great promise of the decade looked to have come to nothing, when, after avoiding relegation on the last day of the 1957-58 season, Ivor Allchurch was sold to Newcastle the following autumn.
