Our two big stories this time are the upcoming Sheffield Football Library launch and a wonderfully comprehensive Club Corner piece from John Hutchinson of Leicester City. Lower down, we touch on an exhibition opening in Reading, the latest from Sporting Heritage and a plug for a new book from one of the Great Savers.

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‘Sheffield Football Library’ update

Already Sheffield Central Library and TGS have had a discussion with the FA about digitising their valuable run of FA Annuals (Alcocks, dating from 1870) as a template exercise.

Physical donations continue to come in and the collection of When Saturday Comes is now complete, thanks to further donations. The intention is to have a more public launch in March 2022. The Great Save has worked with the library in producing a Collections Policy. If you’re interested in donating or loaning, then please take a look at the Collections policy HERE.

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Club Corner – Leicester City, John Hutchinson

This one is not so much a corner as a whole pitch! John is employed by Leicester City as official historian (if only more clubs would or could invest in this position) and thus the scope of his heritage activities has been able to range wider and deeper than anyone else so far that TGS has come across.

For us the most notable features of his work are:

• The establishment and regular updating of a database to provide an inventory of items in existence – including those held by private collectors
• The development of a digital picture archive (constantly being updated)
• Careful collection management processes
• Collaboration with De Montfort University on research projects
• The staging of talks, exhibitions and heritage afternoons to explain the club’s history

Rather than edit the comprehensive review that John has provided we’ll give you this link to the full works.

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‘Collected – 150 years of Reading FC’

Great Saver Roger has been rather more involved than he expected in putting this show together! It opens at Reading Museum on 22 February 2022 and runs until mid-August.

“There’s precious little resource available in local authorities to support this kind of activity so we’ve had to act not only as fundraisers but also as informed curatorial assistants. ‘Collected’ will be the first specifically Reading FC exhibition, launched on the exact date the club played its first match 150 years ago and so, for the first time, I’ve been able to see the treasures amassed by supporter-collectors over the decades. Fascinating stuff and the collection that most took my eye was of advertising flyers for football special trains dating back to the 1950s. Who’d imagine they’d be kept – and what they tell us about travelling support from long ago.”

If you’re in the area do drop in and see the exhibition. Here’s the link to the museum website for opening hours, address and so on: https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/

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Sporting Heritage news

In the last blog we covered the launch of the toolkit created to help enthusiasts set up heritage groups and mentioned that one key resource was still to come. That was a module on recruiting and using volunteers and it’s now available on the Sporting Heritage website here.

We are pleased to announce that the Staff and Volunteers section of the toolkit is now live.

To access the toolkit, including this new section, please go to: www.sportingheritage.org.uk/content/toolkit/toolkit

Thanks again and as usual to Justine Reilly and her team for providing this.

Also, news of the next Sporting Heritage Football Network meeting which takes place via Zoom on Weds 9 March from 10-11.30am. There will be a focus on the upcoming women’s Euros. You can book for free here:

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Motorcycle Football in the 1920s and buried treasure

Great Saver Geoff edits the club-specific heritage publication The Watford Treasury (and recommends it highly!) Volume 5 included an article on the short-lived 1920s/30s craze of motorcycle football. It was illustrated with scans of photographs from contemporary local newspapers of the 1927 fixture between Watford and West Bromwich MCFC at Vicarage Road.

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of Watford’s move to their current ground; Geoff and others are working on plans to commemorate it. A recent review of the ‘leisure’ section in the photography collection at Watford Museum located some original photographs from the 1927 match (won 4-1 by the Watford team, which in 1930 was invited to represent England against Germany at Wembley – and yes, there is footage on YouTube). Too late to illustrate the magazine article but, with some fine background detail from the early days of Vicarage Road, they will certainly find a place in the centenary celebration.  

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A new book

And very vaguely related to the topic above, ‘The Strange Death of Women’s Football in 1921’ is just published. It offers a fresh perspective on the most momentous year in women’s football, one that began with a record crowd at Goodison Park and ended with the FA’s ban on women’s teams playing on FA affiliated grounds.

It’s based largely on – thankfully preserved – contemporary newspaper reports and an analysis which tells a rather different story about the evolution, appeal and fate of the women’s game in that dramatic era. It’s available from the When Saturday Comes book shop under Other Books

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Swansea programmes in peril

There was a piece here in the Guardian on 7 February by Elis James lamenting on the possible fate of his collection of Swansea City programmes following a house move:

The comments beneath are worth a look too – with many replies telling him to hang to them! But yes, there are donors – we just need more recipients, and that’s what the Great Save is trying to inspire.

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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.

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Database of club historians

TGS is part way on producing a directory of club historians and club-based heritage resources. We’ve had a decent but so far incomplete response and we’d be grateful for more additions via our easy-to-fill form that’s downloadable HERE.

We’d like to share this database with all those that have contributed to creating it but, for GDPR reasons, we do need contributors’ express permission to share contact details.

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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: https://thegreatsave.net/subscribe/

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