Michael Fagan’s opponent in the Ireland-Wales 1949 Glorney Cup match was Walter Marshall, later Baron Marshall of Goring and described in the The Independent as “one of the more colourful technocrats of our age” in his 1996 obituary.
In 1984 Marshall penned some notes about his chess career and continuing interest in the game. Here is his memory of that 1949 game:
My most vivid recollection is arriving in Birmingham in 1949 captaining the Welsh junior team to play for the first time in the Glorney Cup Competition.
We six Welsh schoolboys were very naive, entirely self-taught chess players. We had never seen a chess clock before and had no idea what they were for but were too ashamed to display our ignorance by asking questions and therefore followed the example of everybody else by banging our clock lever after we had made our move, just like everybody else did. I remember my first match was against an Irishman. Since I was determined not to lose I played very slowly, when to my horror the controller of the competition, Ritson Morry, whispered in my ear that I had exactly 20 moves to make in 3 minutes else I would lose on time. In that hasty and whispered conversation I realised for the very first time that chess clocks had a real purpose, namely to stop me stone-walling in slow play. I promptly launched a sacrificial attack against my opponent’s king and to my total astonishment the sacrifice turned out to be sound and I won. On that occasion Sir George Thomas gave the best game prize to me and I recall that the score of that game was published with some generous praise of my coolness under great time pressure. Fortunately I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut so nobody actually realised it was really a fluke. If you can find the score of that game in your records I would actually enjoy playing it through again.
[Source: British Chess Magazine, Volume 104 (1984), pages 499-500]