50th title anniversary!

“We survived and even became champions!”

VÖEST training next to smoking industrial chimneys.

(Bild: FC Blau Weiß Linz)

June 1st marks the 50th anniversary of the SK VÖEST Linz championship! For the "Krone", this is also a reason to shed light on how the ball rolled at that time with some incredible-sounding anecdotes. The fact is: in 1974, soccer clocks were still very, very different . . . 

After a home defeat, long-term chairman Hans Rinner stormed into the dressing room and asked those present: "What are the players doing out on the pitch now?" "Running out! That's a new regeneration method," came the reply. The boss replied: "The fools should run during the game, but not after it."

It's one of the VÖEST anecdotes from the time around the championship year of 1974, when the soccer clocks were still ticking differently. Not just in Linz and not just for the blue and whites. At that time, the Brazilian Chico, an idol of the LASK championship team from 1965, earned his living as a worker in the slaughterhouse.

LASK idol Chico (center) - here at the 1965 championship celebrations - had to earn his living in the Linz slaughterhouse nine years after winning the title.

(Bild: Stöger Max)

While there were licensed and contract players at SK VÖEST in the 1970s! The former were the equivalent of today's professionals, training three times a week in the mornings and five times in the afternoons with the contract players who were released from their work at the factory after 2 pm.

The air at training was always very, very bad.

VÖEST-Meisterheld Hans Scharmann

On the legendary factory sports field with its few blades of grass, lots of ash and a bunker as a cabin next to smoking blast furnaces. "The air was always very, very bad," recalls Hans Scharmann, one of the heroes of the 74 team, "but we not only survived, we even became champions!"

"They just sit in the grass" 
Although there were sometimes complaints about the footballers from the so-called hackers. "They passed the training pitch on their way to or from the factory, watched briefly, then called Rinner and complained: "They're just sitting in the grass and wiggling their feet," says former keeper Herbert Höller. And by the way: when the sporting management wanted to bring in a goalkeeping coach in addition to the head and assistant coaches in those years, it was said from the factory: "We have a department head with 40 people! It can't be that you need three for every 25 players . . . "

No less curious: the factory doctor was also responsible for the footballers at the time, although he specialized more in typical work accidents such as cuts than in sports injuries. Although Austria's Helmut Senekowitsch, who later became a legend as team manager at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, was a young coach who literally "trained the players to death".

Crazy camp before the title
"In Split, we trained so insanely that only six players were left on the pitch for the last session," is the story of the camp in January 1974.

In Split, we trained so hard that by the last session there were only six players left on the pitch.

VÖEST-Meisterkapitän Ferdinand Milanovich über Trainer Helmut Senekowitsch.

That welded the team, which previously consisted of three groups, together. The latter was mainly because not much of what had been announced in Yugoslavia at the time had actually been kept. "We had been promised top conditions. Good pitches, good test opponents and good food. Then we were only the third team in the hotel, the training pitch was 90 minutes away by bus and only had grass on one side. And we still didn't have a test opponent on the fifth day," remembers championship captain Ferdinand Milanovich.

Rebuke after championship coup
He continued: "So we all left one evening, went to a pub by the sea in Ražnjići - and of course came back to the hotel too late, where Senekovich was already waiting for us."

On June 1, 1974, SK VÖEST shot themselves to TItel.

(Bild: Dostal Harald)

That was also when the vow was made: "We won't shave again until we've lost a game!" But the beards grew and grew in the spring. Over 14 games and weeks until June 1, 1974 - SK VÖEST were champions! And even after this unique royal blue moment, there was a reprimand from chairman Rinner. The reason: Rettensteiner, Milanovich, Lorenz and co. had given some of their shirts to young fans, which meant that the kit was no longer complete. As mentioned: Those were different times . . .