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Post by hatter_in_macc on Jan 18, 2020 13:06:55 GMT
Here is my take in today's programme on our visitors this afternoon. Hope you find it U's-ful! Arf.
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GUEST INFORMANT: SUTTON UNITED
Sutton-ly, after a two-week break and a trilogy of knockout ties, we find ourselves back in National League action! Hatter in Macc feasts on the rich history of the delightfully-nicknamed ‘amber and chocolates’, as they get their first-ever taste of Edgeley Park.
Outside of Sutton, these days, they are probably better known by their ‘U’s’ moniker - although their more vocal fans can still be heard keeping alive the one relating to the club’s historical colours, by virtue of adapting The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. And why not - when, for so many years since United’s establishment in 1898, amber and chocolate have featured alongside each other in stripes (thick and thin), hoops, halves and quarters, as well as around collar and sleeve trims! For one Athenian League campaign during the original ‘Roaring Twenties’, Sutton broke with tradition and turned out in green and white stripes - only for form to suffer and the experimental colour scheme to be ditched after a year, paving the way for an instant return to the warm, comforting combination of dark brown with the pure chroma colour between yellow and orange.
In fact, the original ‘amber and chocolates’ pre-dated the current club. Let us go back in time, and start with them…
1. Lighting the f-U’s-e
The Robin Hood Hotel, which still stands today as a pub on West Street in Sutton, provided the venue for a meeting on 5 March 1898, at which it was agreed to merge two leading local clubs - namely, Sutton Association (formerly known as Sutton St Barnabas) and Sutton Guild Rovers. The newly-formed Sutton United retained the amber and chocolate garb worn by Sutton Association, and, for a year, used the grounds of both predecessor outfits while fielding three teams in the Herald and Surrey Junior Leagues. After branching out into other local junior competitions - including the Clapham League in South London - the club assumed senior status, and joined the Southern Suburban League (which it won at the first attempt), in 1910.
2. A U’s-ful amateur outfit
A year following the end of The Great War, in 1919, the club made current stadium, Gander Green Lane, its permanent home - having previously used the venue, then known as the Sutton Adult School Ground, as one of several playing fields on which it hosted matches in the pre-war years.
Sutton gained election to the Athenian League in 1921, and slowly but surely began to become a force to be reckoned with in the amateur game - winning a first AL title in 1928. Two semi-final appearances in the FA Amateur Cup were made (in 1929 and 1937), before the club’s second championship, for 1945/46, which coincided with lifting the Surrey Senior Cup on the first of 15 occasions. When Sutton were crowned as AL winners for a third time, in 1958, there was also ground-breaking knockout success for them to celebrate in the form of an inaugural London Senior Cup Final victory. Five years later, United joined the Isthmian League - of which the club has been champions five times between 1967 and 2011. And while domestic non-league tournament silverware has proved elusive - following two unsuccessful run-outs at Wembley in the Amateur Cup Final, and, subsequently, one as beaten FA Trophy finalists - the U’s do hold the distinction of being the first and only winners of the Anglo-Italian Cup during that competition’s semi-professional era, courtesy of defeating Chieti by the odd goal in three in 1979.
And then, of course, there have been The FA Cup heroics - worthy of the Classical honour and endeavour that underpinned the Athenian and Isthmian Leagues’ dedication to amateurism…
3. Ref-U’s-ing to bow to the giants
Sutton took a First Round-proper bow in the FA Cup during the 1945/46 campaign that also yielded Athenian League and Surrey Senior Cup successes - although the club really caught the public imagination more widely in 1970, on reaching the Fourth Round and hosting the then-mighty Leeds United, who took to the field at Gander Green Lane with 11 internationals and hit the U’s for six in front of a record 14,000 crowd. During an initial spell in the Conference, Sutton defeated Football League opposition for the first time, by seeing off Aldershot and Peterborough United in succession, during 1987/88 - but, the following season, eclipsed those achievements to knock out Coventry City, who had won the Cup only two years earlier and turned up in South London holding down second place in the top flight. More recently, in 2016/17, and as reigning National League South champions enjoying the first campaign of their current spell back in non-league’s highest division, the U’s became only the ninth team from outside the FL since 1945 to reach the Fifth Round. They lost, as hosts, to Arsenal at that stage - albeit after avenging the 6-0 defeat by Leeds 47 years earlier with a single-goal, Fourth Round defeat of the West Yorkshire outfit.
4. A Multi-U’s-e Venue
The sodden penalty areas loaded with sand at Gander Green Lane, which Hatters of a certain age may remember from watching Sutton’s televised triumph over Coventry more than 30 decades ago, are now consigned to history - with the grass having been gone for over four years. And just as the stadium in modern times, with its 3G pitch, is available for wider and more frequent use by the local community, so, too, was it adaptable, in a sporting sense, during bygone days - with the oval curvature of two of the open terraces still providing a reminder that Gander Green Lane was also once used for track events in athletics.
5. Haven’t U’s played for us as well?
The ‘played for both teams’ club is very small and select in this instance, but does contain a Big name… or, more precisely, ‘Big’ within a name!
Yes - striker Nicholas Bignall (for it is he) turned out 11 times, and weighed in with three goals, for County whilst on loan to us, as his third of eight temporary clubs, from Reading during 2009. A succession of recurring injury problems saw him, in 2014, finally leave the Madejski Stadium, after eight years there as an academy and professional player, and drop into non-league football - whereupon, after an initial spell with Basingstoke Town, Bignall plied his trade briefly at Sutton - making seven 2014/15 appearances and netting once. More than a decade on from his stint at EP, and still not yet quite having turned 30, he remains in the game - leading the line for Bracknell Town in the Isthmian League’s South Central Division.
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Post by hatter_in_macc on Feb 1, 2020 13:24:29 GMT
An-D over we go to Dover! Here is today's programme article on the life and times of our visitors:
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GUEST INFORMANT: DOVER ATHLETIC
From far, far away, and for the first time at Edgeley Park, the ‘Whites’ of Dover Athletic come a-visiting. Hatter in Macc passes the port in the right direction, after feasting on the story of Dover clubs past that was, at times, rather a cliff-hanger!
When the current outfit celebrates 37 unbroken years in existence later this year, it will officially become the longest-running club to have plied its trade in the major ferry town. Athletic’s immediate predecessor, Dover FC, managed 36 before folding - and prompting the birth of today’s opposition - in 1983. And prior to that, over the course of more than 50 stop-start years, there were four separate, successive, short-lived footballing entities bearing the name of Dover in Britain’s southeastern-most county.
No, I Kent believe it either! Let us coast back in time and check whether they were really all… erm, terminal cases:
1. Dover-ture
It is, alas, true - with the first two incarnations failing to advance beyond primary-school age, and the second pair disbanding in their teenage years.
Dover FC (Mark 1) got the town’s footballing show on the road - joining the Kent League in the middle of the 19th Century’s final decade. The club was promoted in 1896 to the competition’s top flight, where it achieved a second-placed finish for 1898/99 - but only completed one further season beyond that before failing to fulfil its fixtures, and going to the wall, in 1900/01.
Enter, one year later, Dover FC (Mark 2), who hung around in the Kent League’s First Division for seven consecutive, and unremarkable, campaigns between 1902 and 1909 - the first and, as it turned out, final ones of which saw this second incarnation end up in the basement position.
Another 11 years and The Great War were to pass before the club reformed again - and, on that occasion, in 1920, with a change of name. Dover United took part in more local leagues, and lasted a little longer than their two predecessors, before disbanding in 1933. And Dover FC (Mark 3), who came into being the following year, equalled United’s 13-year-old lifespan - albeit courtesy of an existence that included six years during which competitive leagues were suspended while World War Two raged - ahead of calling it a day during 1947.
2. It ain’t Dover ’til it’s Dover
Five decades down, and four clubs to show for it. But the fifth, formed immediately upon its predecessor’s demise, appeared to be made of stronger stuff. Dover FC (Mark 4) went straight into the Kent League with a semi-professional set-up, initially found its feet by coming seventh in 1948, and then recorded three straight top-five finishes before becoming champions for 1951/52 - as well as lifting the Kent Senior Cup on the first of seven occasions. The club were also runners-up three times before the county league was disbanded in 1959 - whereupon Dover became one of eight representatives from Kent admitted to the First Division of the Southern League.
Dover FC plodded through seven middling campaigns, in what was then only two tiers away from the Football League, before hitting the jackpot as champions for 1966/67 - a season that saw leading scorer Johnny Ray net 42 times, and the namesake of the American pre-rock and roller from the previous decade doubtless make many an opposing defence ‘Cry’. The club went on to enjoy 11 years of the Southern League Premier Division high life before being relegated. And within another five, it was brought down by debts and gone - albeit with another outfit, today’s opposition, being founded to take Dover FC’s place in the Southern Division and populated, for the most part in its playing ranks, by a squad consisting of the defunct club’s reserves.
3. Dover in clover
Early seasons of Southern League struggle were followed by a transformation for Dover Athletic under the managerial guidance of Chris Kinnear, who steered the Whites to the Southern Division championship in 1988 and that of the Premier Division two years later. The place in the Conference that their efforts had earned were denied them by ground-grading requirements, but in 1993 Dover, with Kinnear still at the helm and stadium improvements duly made, won the Premier Division title again to be admitted to non-league’s top table - where they remained for nine years before suffering relegation. The club returned there in 2014 after a 12-year absence via the National League South play-offs - and, prior to that, through the Isthmian league, of which Athletic were Premier Division champions for 2008/09.
4. Dover-ly sporting venue
The picturesque Crabble ground - carved into the hill on one side of a river valley - was inherited by Dover Athletic from Dover FC (Mark 4), who had made a permanent home of the ‘upper pitch’, directly above the original Crabble Meadows sports complex, from 1951 - some 20 years after the first match had been played there. But the ‘lower pitch’ that had hosted games of the earlier Dover clubs since 1897, before being abandoned by football nearly 70 years ago, remains worthy of interest, too. For, like the Gander Green Lane home of our most recent guests, Sutton United, it has been, and continues to be, used for other sports. From the end of the 19th Century, the site also staged athletics and cycling events, as well as the town’s cricket club matches - and Kent played a week of first-class county cricket fixtures there more or less annually between 1908 and the end of the 1960s. The ‘lower pitch’ nowadays stages matches of the local rugby union outfit.
5. They played Dover here and down there!
Rather unexpectedly, given the distance that separates our two clubs, a trio of players have turned out for both County and Dover. One of them, outside-right Johnny Johnson, featured for Dover FC (Mark 4) during the club’s later Kent League days between 1957 and 1959 - having started his career as a wartime Hatter, who played a couple of dozen times here during WW2 before making more official appearances in a County shirt for the 1945/46 FA Cup.
More recently, midfielder Chris Allen, who turned out 16 times for the Hatters during 1999/2000, and Jemal Johnson, who led the County front-line of 2010 - also, as coincidence would have it, on 16 occasions - whilst on loan from MK Dons, had subsequent, respective stints with Dover Athletic in 2001 and 2012.
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Post by hatter_in_macc on Feb 15, 2020 12:57:20 GMT
Game on, despite Storm Dennis! Here is my take in the programme on the life and times of today's visitors:
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GUEST INFORMANT: BROMLEY
Today’s guests complete a quintet of clubs paying their first-ever visits to Edgeley Park in succession - albeit, hopefully, not following the lead of the previous four and heading home afterwards with something to show for it! Hatter in Macc gets ravin’ with the ‘Ravens’…
They are also the oldest of the five, having been founded in 1892 - and pipping Sutton United’s establishment by half a dozen years, as well as the 20th-Century creations of Boreham Wood, Dorking Wanderers and Dover Athletic by at least five decades. Since joining non-league’s top table just under five years ago, Bromley have become a solid force to be reckoned with - notching up between 60 and 70 National League points each season, and looking to have every chance of emulating, or possibly surpassing, that this term. But the club also has a proud history, rich in achievement, from the days before the Football Association’s official abolition of amateur status in 1974. And here is how it all began:
1. B-romping around the London scene
More than 70 years before Bromley, the town, was transferred from its historical county of Kent to become formally part of Greater London in 1965, Bromley, the football club, was beginning life by playing in the South London League. Two years after starting out, the Ravens began to get flighty - joining three different leagues as founder members within 13 years. They were one of seven Second Division outfits (including modern-day National League companions Maidenhead) to make up the lower tier of the Southern League for its inaugural 1894/95 season, and a couple of years later did likewise in the newly-formed London League - where they remained until 1901, although a single year’s flirtation with the Kent League was sandwiched in during 1898/99. The hat-trick of new starts in new surroundings was completed, and Bromley’s long association began with competitions whose names added a Classical flavour to amateur football around the capital and the home counties, when the club joined the Spartan League in 1907.
2. Bromising beginnings
The Bromley honours board had already, by then, seen its first entry, with the Ravens having won Division Two of the London League in 1896/97. And 11 years later they also won the Spartan League at the first attempt, as well as lifting the Kent Amateur Cup (which they went on to win on a dozen more occasions), before taking up an immediate invitation to join the fledgling Isthmian League where they claimed back-to-back titles for 1909, at the first time of asking, and for 1910. Not that those achievements did anything by way of filling the club’s trophy cabinet, mind; for the IL, true to the ideals of amateurism, and in keeping with its honor sufficit motto, refrained back then from awarding either silverware or medals to the winners.
But two more tangible and durable reminders of the club’s achievements from around that time were gained, as Bromley won the London Senior Cup to complete a ‘double’ for 1909/10, and, most prestigiously of all, the FA Amateur Cup one year later. The LSC would be claimed on four additional occasions - most recently in 2012/13 - although only four other clubs ever tasted Amateur Cup glory more often than Bromley, who did so three times, and in each instance by a single goal…
3. The B-romance of the Cups
Bishop Auckland, with 10 victories, were to see their name inscribed on the Amateur Cup most of all, but the ‘Bishops’ were seen off by Bromley in the 1911 Final played at West Norwood’s Herne Hill ground (which subsequently staged Crystal Palace’s First World Wartime matches). The Ravens also triumphed by a goal to nil over then-Kent county rivals Erith & Belvedere at The Den, Millwall, in 1938, before contesting the first Wembley Final, and producing the same winning scoreline, against Romford 11 years later - with the latter campaign, 1948/49, seeing them become champions for the second time of the Athenian League, which they had joined 30 years earlier following the end of The Great War. The period around the Second World War, meanwhile, coincided with their best runs in the FA Cup. Second-round appearances for 1937/38, 1938/39 and 1945/46 represented a hat-trick, too, given the competition’s six-year WW2 suspension.
4. More recent Bromotions
Bromley won a third Athenian League title in 1950/51, before reuniting with the Isthmian League a year later and becoming its champions on two further occasions, for 1954 and 1961. The club’s first IL stint had lasted only three seasons, ahead of a brief pre-WW1 return to the Kent League in 1911, but its second was to last a considerably longer 55 years. As the IL began to admit professionalism, and introduced additional divisions, from the 1970s, the Ravens enjoyed and suffered four promotions and relegations apiece, until a play-off victory in 2007 saw them propelled up into the Conference South - which they won outright eight campaigns later to take their place in the freshly-renamed National League.
5. The Bromley Boys of County
Three ex-Hatters also plied their trade at Hayes Lane, and amid strikingly similar circumstances. The trio - namely, central defender Joe Dolan, as well as strikers Antonio German and Michael Malcolm - were all London-born trainees at clubs in the capital (Chelsea, Queens Park Rangers and Tottenham, respectively), who played, albeit with little if any overlap, for Bromley during the early years of the last decade, and, in the course of their careers with a number of Football League and non-league outfits, only ever ventured up to the North of England to turn out for County (such, no doubt, was our appeal…!).
Dolan - whose Irish showband-singing namesake, of ‘Make Me An Island’ fame, could boast a vocal range that put Mariah Carey in the shade - was qualified, through family, to play at Under-18 and Under-21 level for Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2000. He had two separate spells on loan to the Hatters in 2005, from two different clubs (Millwall and Leyton Orient), and made 18 appearances in Bromley’s defence half a dozen years later.
German, who was capped twice by Grenada, made Bromley his next club following a short-term stay, between September 2011 and January 2012, as a Hatter - although his spell, on non-contract terms, at Hayes Lane proved even shorter. After two appearances there, and a trial at Griffin Park, he earned himself an 18-month deal with Brentford. His short time as a Raven may or may not have been witness in early February 2012 to the arrival of Malcolm, who had turned out over 40 times for County between 2005 and 2007, and was to do so on 28 occasions, weighing in with four goals, over a period of 11 months in BR2.
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Post by hatter_in_macc on Mar 7, 2020 13:12:22 GMT
Seems ages since I penned one of these! Here - and no rhyming intended - is today's about the Bees!
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GUEST INFORMANT: BARNET
Today’s visitors see their name featured in the cockney rhyming slang dictionary, as well as on an acclaimed debut album by the one-time ‘high priestess of punk’! Hatter in Macc gets buzzin’ with the ‘Bees’…
Yes, the North London Borough may be more than a 20-mile drive around and down to Bow Bells, but from ‘Barnet Fair’ (at which horses were famously traded in days of yore) the original East Enders derived their phrase for ‘hair’, thereby inducting Barnet into the lexicon as one of a select few places where football clubs were based - alongside Oxford (‘Scholar’ - ‘dollar’) and, erm, both Bristols.
Ahem. Moving swiftly on to national treasure Toyah Wilcox - who, back in the day, was known to sport a ‘barnet’ that could be electric blue, neon orange or shocking pink at any given time. And let us take ourselves back to over 40 years ago - before her musical career went mainstream goth, and she went on to present Songs of Praise, as well as doing Teletubbies voiceovers - when her first, and best, long-player, Sheep Farming in Barnet, hit the record shops (ask yer dad). The area may not be known for its resident ovine ruminants, but the story goes that Toyah saw some in a field around Finchley before naming the acid-rocky platter for its 1979 release.
Organised football in Barnet, by that time, was already past its 90th birthday - with forerunners of the current club having turned out as New Barnet (1885-88) and, previously, Woodville (1882-85), before the first incarnation of Barnet FC came into being in 1888.
1. Bee-ginnings
As it happened, the club, which started life playing friendlies for four years in Chipping Barnet, was originally nicknamed the ‘Hillmen’. They first dipped their toes in competitive waters as founder members of the North London League in 1892, before enjoying a few late 19th-Century campaigns of success in all three divisions of the North Middlesex League, and then earning promotion to the London League where they spent half a dozen seasons ahead of folding in 1902.
2. Bee-lievers in the amateur game
The outfit in its second iteration - or, rather, iterations - came about through the continued endeavours of two local clubs beyond the original Barnet FC’s demise. The 12-year-old, staunchly amateur Barnet Avenue took over the Hillmen’s Queens Road ground, and, in 1904, adopted their name, too, before merging eight years later with Barnet Alston who had been established during 1901 as Alston Works by a dental manufacturer’s staff. The ‘Dentals’, as they were, quite logically, dubbed, were to create two important legacies - playing, from 1907, and as reigning London League champions, at Underhill which was to remain Barnet’s ground for more than a century, as well as sporting a distinctive black and amber kit that would form the basis of the current team’s strip. The merged entity of Barnet & Alston, upon coming together in 1912, chose an amateur route for plying its trade and, along with nine other clubs in and around London, joined the Athenian League for that competition’s inaugural season.
Barnet & Alston reclaimed the original and present-day Barnet FC name in 1919, following the end of the First World War, and - World Wars One and Two notwithstanding - enjoyed an unbroken spell of over 50 years as members of the Athenian League, which the Bees (as they were by then nicknamed… more of which anon) won on seven occasions between 1930 and 1965, before turning semi-professional and moving to the Southern League for 1965/66. The immediate post-WW2 years also saw Barnet lift the FA Amateur Cup in 1945/46, and finish as beaten finalists two seasons later - as well as winning the London Senior Cup for a third time during the campaign in between, and the Hertfordshire Senior Cup on a couple of the record 19 occasions on which the club has triumphed in its ancient county’s knockout competition.
3. To bee or not to bee
Barnet’s residence in the Southern League’s two tiers lasted 14 years - yielding two First Division championships and a pair of League Cup wins - ahead of the Alliance Premier League’s formation, as non-league’s new pyramid tip, in 1979. The Bees were admitted as founder members of the APL - today’s National League - and finished second three times in four seasons between 1986 and 1990, before claiming the first of their trilogy of titles in 1990/91. Only Macclesfield can equal that haul of pole finishing positions, although the ‘Silkmen’ (whose Moss Rose ground failed to meet capacity requirements following their first title win) fall short of matching Barnet’s record three automatic promotions to the Football League - a feat that the Bees also achieved in 2004/05 and 2014/15. Sadly, the principle of ‘what goes up must come down’ has also occurred thrice - with Barnet’s spells of FL residence going in ever-decreasing circles from a 10-year stint between 1991 and 2001, through one of eight years’ duration (2005-13), to the most recent, three-season fling that came to an end, and saw the Bees relegated for a third time, in 2018.
4. Bee hives
Ah, yes - the nickname!
It is reflected in the club’s black and amber colours, of course - but likely to have been derived from the keeping of beehives in the vicinity of Underhill during the early years of the 20th Century.
Since 2013, the Bees have moved out of one London Borough (Barnet) to another (Harrow), and play at ‘The Hive’ - albeit without an apiary in obvious sight.
5. They played for both clubs… and others bee-sides
Before Barnet bade farewell to Underhill, and its notorious North-to-South sloping pitch, two former Hatters moved there directly from Edgeley Park.
The first of the pair to do so was striker Ken Charlery, who, having featured for 10 games in the run-in of County’s 1997 Second Division promotion campaign (and, five years prior to that, broken Hatters’ hearts with a third-tier play-off final-winning brace for Peterborough at Wembley), went on to notch up more than 120 appearances over three years at Barnet - netting 38 times for good measure.
More recently, Anthony Pulis - son of much-travelled manager Tony - followed up his 10 midfield showings on loan from Southampton during our final Football League season with four more in 2011 for the Bees.
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