It’s been a while since our last blog. Maybe the disappointing fortunes of our respective teams this season have distracted us while we think about where The Great Save goes next!
Sunderland Fans Museum
In February Roger paid a match day visit to the Sunderland Fans Museum which is a short walk from the Stadium of Light. It being 50 years since Sunderland’s legendary FA Cup Final win there was ‘quite a bit’ about that on display.
But there was plenty else besides and all credit to the organisers and curators for the displays and little library. To see what’s on show click here:
This is a genuinely good example of what can be done, particularly if you have the good fortune to have a substantial building close to the stadium. It’s well worth an hour’s visit pre-match. The facility doubles as a café and bar, open most day times, and the football theme goes right through the building and into the urinals!
The Sheffield Football Library and Archive
Progress is being made digitising some of the ancient and rare Alcock FA Annuals from the late 19th century, which will be a boon to remotely-located early football historians.
On the same trip to the North Roger popped into the library and donated three boxes including, among other things, data from 1990s fan surveys and football finance reports of that era, a missing Sky Sports Annual, the Taylor Report and several biographies. It was good to meet Alex Holyoake who is curating the collection.
We hear also that the Scottish Football Annuals (1875-1900) are being digitised by the Scottish Football Museum. These books contain useful information about the early days of football across Britain, articles on the state of play in each home nation and changes to the laws of the game as they evolved.
The revolving Maidstone Museum football exhibition
The ‘Maidstone: United in Football’ exhibition of 2019-20 was deemed such a success that curator (and Great Saver) John Bunyard was invited back to do more! He says, “They want me to encourage visitors to keep coming back. I’m going to have a centre-piece display of six or eight boards on a particular theme I can change from time to time. The first will be on the legacy of the original exhibition. Having spent yesterday grappling with the challenge of squeezing seven topics under that heading into eight A3 boards, I’ve found I can only fit in basic picture-plus-name-checks. However, I do now have plenty more information with which to convince any curious media types how far the Great Save has come within three years. I’m also thinking it would be neat to come back at the end of the run – which is intended to continue for at least a year – with another such display appealing for further TGS-style exhibitions (and books).”
Sporting Heritage Football Network
We attended the quarterly Football Network Zoom meeting on 25 April and met some new and helpful people. These meetings are free to attend and typically last from 10am to 11.30am on a weekday morning. It’s really interesting to exchange news and experiences with others from right around the UK. The topic this time was about celebrating anniversaries – with so many 125ths and 150ths coming up. Next time we’ll be talking about in- and at-stadium heritage displays and museum facilities. To register your interest please contact fran@sportingheritage.org.uk
Sporting Heritage Survey – as part of its bid for National Lottery Heritage funding Sporting Heritage are running an important survey on how their assets and services are used and what people in the heritage space might want from them. The link to the survey is here and the survey takes 15-20 minutes.
Heritage Society at Swindon Town
Keith Coatsworth writes, “We are still very early on in the journey, just setup the website, created a charity, have a board of trustees that include the CEO of STFC, Trust STFC board members and members of the official supporters’ club as well as the clubs historian – so hopefully quite well set up.
In the long term we are looking to create a museum room but also adopt a similar approach to Exeter City with a stadium wide approach.”
This is just the type of initiative the Great Save is trying to encourage. It looks as though there’s a good, wide-ranging team involved. The website is here:
A Watford’s player’s press photos
Many players keep mementoes of their careers; often these include press photographs. Geoff came across an unusual example when gathering material for his recent book ‘100 Years at Vicarage Road’ on the history of Watford’s stadium.
One of his interviewees was Peter Walker, who played for Watford from 1954 to 1962. Peter explained that, prior to signing professional at 21, he left school at 14 and worked in ad sales for the local West Herts Post newspaper. He would volunteer for extra weekend duties as a photographer and would sometimes be sent to Vicarage Road. As he describes it: “I would take pictures by the side of the goal. You’d get a camera, and you’d also have photographic plates, which used to cost ten shillings each, I think. That was a lot of money, so you couldn’t afford to waste them. You’d take about six pictures in the game – that’s all you were allowed to do because otherwise it would be too expensive – and you’d try to catch a picture of a goal. You’d see someone about to kick, but he might hit it over the bar, so you’d waste a frame. It was almost impossible to catch a goal. Penalties were easy, you’d go round behind the goal.”
This picture from his collection shows Watford’s Taffy Davies scoring a penalty against Port Vale in April 1949. Peter would have been 16 when he took this shot. Five years later he was playing on the same pitch in Watford’s first team.
The Reading FC Museum Exhibition on the move
‘Collected’ – the exhibition to celebrate 150 years of Reading FC closed after a six month run in August 2022. As a condition of part-funding the exhibition STAR (the Supporters’ Trust At Reading) inherited the 2D display material and now over 60 framed images are on permanent display around the SCL (formerly Madejski) Stadium, including this series on the main staircase.
International Football History Conference
The 2023 annual International Football History Conference will take place at Hampden Park, Glasgow, G42 9BA and will be held over two days (30 June and 1 July 2023). You can find out more about the event and how to attend here:
Roger attended the last one in Manchester in November and found it offered a fascinating mix of papers.
The Great Save resources
We’ve created what we’ve called The Great Save ‘Taxonomy of Football Memorabilia’. In other words, a list – of the kinds of items we believe are more or less valuable in terms of requiring preservation and / or making a collection. It’s a downloadable PDF here.
We’ve also compiled The Great Save ‘Beginner’s Guide to the Different Types of Football Heritage Entity’ you might set up with some real world examples drawn from our blog posts. It’s a downloadable PDF here.
And finally …
We’re very happy to take feedback, reader contributions and additional information through any of these three channels: via the Comments section below, by email to thegreatsave@btinternet.com or via Twitter @TheGreatSave1
Do please sign up to our emails! Even though we’re on Twitter, we do see The Great Save primarily as an informative and campaigning blog best viewed on something other than a mobile phone! If you’d like to get our emails direct to your inbox, let us know here:
Leave a Reply