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do for a living. For seven months I was kicking my heels.’
    After his stint at Highfield Road, the then home of Coventry, Cantwell took a job in the USA with the New England Tea Men. However, the move did not last long, and after seven months he was back in the UK.
    Surprisingly, despite his name in the game, the only other English club he managed was Peterborough United, in two separate spells. During his first stint as manager at London Road, he took over a team that was struggling at the foot of the Fourth Division and managed to turn their fortunes around and lead them to promotion some eighteen months later, in 1974. At the time of his appointment, Peterborough were not only struggling at the bottom of the table, but their gate receipts had also dropped, and it was a brave move.
    Cantwell began the task at hand by giving twelve players a free transfer, leaving him with a playing staff of only ten. Then, foregoing a summer holiday, he went about buying new players with a budget of just over £30,000. As with any club struggling at the bottom, Cantwell needed experienced performers, men he knew would be suited to life in the Fourth Division. He was now his own man again, and the only way was up, but he wanted to do it with the team playing the stylish football he believed in.
    Peterborough won the title in his first full season in charge and in doing so entertained the fans with flowing football. The supporters had taken their Irish manager to heart and had nicknamed him ‘the Messiah’.
    With his reputation restored, Cantwell was back in demand and the lure of another club proved too much, so in 1977 he left Peterborough for a second stint in America, again coaching the New England Tea Men. At the time, he was reported to be one of the highest-paid managers outside the English First Division. In a five-year spell in the USA, Cantwell managed the franchises of New England and Jacksonville, winning the Eastern Division Championship of the North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1978 with the New England Tea Men. The Tea Men franchise then moved from New England to Jacksonville, and Cantwell moved with them, managing them for one year in 1981.
    Dennis Wit was a part of the Tea Men squad under Cantwell in 1978, and he remembers the team well: ‘We actually won our division that season and were the only team to beat the New York Cosmos, who were the team of the time, twice during the season. There were no real superstars on the side. Gerry Daly, an Ireland international, was in the team, and there was Mick Flanagan, who had been at Charlton. He was a big success for the Tea Men and was voted the most valuable player in 1978.
    ‘I was one of only three Americans in the team. You see, in those days the NASL teams were pretty much made up of foreign players from England, Ireland and Scotland. The NASL, in an effort to increase the popularity of the sport in the USA and get Americans to play, made a rule that stated each franchise had to have three home-grown players in the first team. In general, one of the positions that would be filled by an American was that of goalkeeper – the USA has always had a tradition of producing good goalkeepers.
    ‘I got involved with the Tea Men through my relationship with the assistant coach Dennis Viollet. I was a Baltimore lad, and he had played and captained the Baltimore Bays. I later played for Baltimore before moving on to San Diego and then the Tampa Bay Rowdies, who were a popular team at the time, with Rodney Marsh in their line-up. When the New England Tea Men franchise started up, I got traded there. The Tea Men name came about due to Lipton Tea owning the club.’
    Arthur Smith was the personnel director of the Tea Men and was in a three-man partnership with Cantwell and Viollet. Arthur recalls the fateful day he set off on an adventure that would change his life: ‘I had known Noel a long time. I was a childhood friend of John Barnwell, the former chief executive of the League