Memorabilia Corner – The Odd Pieces

The stuff on this page might not be unique, but it is a little out of the ordinary so again, I thought I’d include it.

I thought I’d start with this, I bought a box of old photos a while back and they’re fascinating. I really like browsing the crowd and seeing if I recognise any faces. I haven’t seen myself as yet, but in this one our resident historian Malcolm Johnson stands out a mile. We must have stood close together back then, my Dad and I were usually left of the goal as you look at it, but right side looking onto the pitch, right up tight by the wall.

I have a few copies of bits like this, old player contracts and the like, but this is reflective of stuff I like. It’s a letter written to Jim Connor, who made seven appearances for City in goal towards the end of 1939, before the suspension of football for the war. I would imagine £3 a week was a decent enough sum back then.

This next item came in a box of programmes and is really special. It’s a notebook in which someone has meticulously recorded all of the teams and results of our 1919/20 season. It looks like it was an L Howden of Pennell Street, and they even cut out a small panel at the front so the title was clear.

The information is the same as can be found in the Nannestad’s book, but it’s the personal touch that makes this really nice to own.

I said on the podcast I liked to keep inserts that I found, how about this menu for the social club? I would imagine it is from the seventies and it offers a fairly uninspiring menu (for my tastes at least) of roast dinner and all the trimmings. No spaghetti bolognese or southern friend chicken here, it’s veg and tates all the way!

These are perhaps not all that unique, but I wanted to drop it in anyway because it is perhaps reflective of my hoarding nature; I have this item three times. All still have the card insert from the club, one is stamped on the front with the result of the game against Sheff Weds (1-1). I don’t suppose they’re all that rare, maybe worth a couple of quid at best, but I keep finding them in programmes and can’t seem to part with them. Each is different you see, with the stamp and addressed, they all feel unique.

Yes, I know, I need to get a life.

Remember Malcolm from the picture at the top of the page? He told me a great story about this teamsheet. I found one in a programme and it fascinated me; teamsheets didn’t seem to be the norm until well into the nineties, so why suddenly start pumping them out in 1974? The answer was given to me by Malcolm recently.

The FA and several clubs believed that Sunday football would move to improve declining attendances, but they faced a couple of problems in playing matches on the Holy Day. For a start, the Sunday Observances Act barred the selling of tickets on Sundays. In January 1974, attendances were still on the slide, partly due to a ban on floodlights courtesy of the worldwide energy crisis. The FA approved the playing of some FA Cup matches on Sunday, which drew large crowds, so Football League clubs chose to do the same.

This was our first Sunday game and it drew more than 1,000 more fans than the New Year’s Day win against Torquay. We won 2-1, but by March attendances shrank to 2,5600 for a Sunday clash with Mansfield, fulled in no small part by six defeats on the spin. That prompted the club to move back to Saturday for the following week, but only 1800 turned up to watch us play Hartlepool.

So, why the team sheet? The Sunday Observances Act barred the selling of tickets on Sunday, so to get around it the club sold teamsheets that equated to the entry fee. For 40p you got a teamsheet, which was presented on the turnstile. entry was free of course, as long as you had a teamsheet.

I’m sure I have more stuff like this kicking about, so if you’re interested do let me know in the comments and I’ll dig some out over the next week or two.