Soccer Ashes trophy. Everton Club Corner. Digitisation. Plenty of activity and contact going on in our space over the past few weeks. Here are the highlights.
The Soccer Ashes Trophy
One of the highlights of last year was to meet up with Greg Werner – who is leading The Great Save Australia. He was in the UK for Australia’s internationals against England and New Zealand and, in particular, to see the recovered Soccer Ashes trophy presented. Here’s the amazing story…
The ‘Soccer Ashes’, instigated 100 years ago during the 1923 series between Australia and New Zealand, was fought for again – for the first time in 69 years – on 17 October 2023 at Brentford’s G-Tech stadium.
Series between the two countries have been intermittent since the trophy was first made. Consisting of an outer casket built of timbers from both countries, it contains a silver razor case carried ashore on the first boat to land at Gallipoli in 1915, a fateful enterprise in World War I. Within that case are the ashes of cigars smoked by the captains of the 1923 teams after the first test in Brisbane, a nod to cricket’s Ashes trophy.
The trophy disappeared from view after the 1954 series but came to light after diligent work, aided by Greg Werner of The Great Save Australia, recovered this beautiful artefact. At Brentford, in faraway west London, it was fought for once more and stood testimony to a long and perhaps forgotten rivalry. A short and poignant film showcased the rediscovery, and the Soccer Ashes were won by Australia by two goals to nil.
The Digitisation route to preserving collections
There is a growing interest in digitising collections and making the outputs more widely available online. Among others, groups at Huddersfield, Swansea and Exeter City have taken this route.
The Great Save met with Microform, one of the leaders in the digitisation area, in November 2023. We have subsequently produced a simple ‘one page resource’ for any group thinking of going this way. Please click to download it here. Microform will be participating in one of the free Sporting Heritage webinars mentioned below.
Football Club Museums WhatsApp Group
Andy Ellis, from the Derby County Collection (featured in our April and September 2021 Club Corner blogs), has set up a WhatsApp group “for people involved or who want to be involved with football club museums or large collections. Covering the methods, processes, documents. Not for selling.” The Great Save is very pleased to participate in this initiative.
Separately, we’ve also made recent contact with the Thistle Archive (Partick Thistle) and the Wigan Athletic Heritage Society, both of which are added to our growing database of heritage societies, contacts and resources. To add yourself, please contact thegreatsave@btinternet.com.
Lost Watford images saved – and published
Great Saver Geoff and fellow Watford history-lovers made an exciting discovery in the town museum archive…box upon box of 1950s and 1960s glass photographic negatives from the Watford Observer newspaper.
With the log books missing, identifying which were football-related was quite laborious. But once this was done, and with a negative scanner acquired, they were converted into high-resolution images. A selection of about 90 have been colourised and – with the approval of the Watford Observer – recently published alongside the originals in a 144-page A5 book, Golden Shots and Visions of Blue.
It’s gone down very well with Watford fans. Already close to 500 have bought copies and can enjoy these images. The effort of bringing them to life has proved very worthwhile.
Sporting Heritage news
After the Covid years Sporting Heritage is now bringing back its in-person annual conference. It will be held at Headingley, Leeds, on 8th and 9th May 2024.
If you’re into the intersection of Sport, Art and Digitisation there are two interesting and free webinars coming up – The Art of Sporting Heritage – tensions, theory and practice – Thursday 1st February 10.30am -12pm and Digitisation and the Art of Sporting Heritage – Wednesday 21st February 10.30am-12pm. For booking, please visit the Sporting Heritage website – https://www.sportingheritage.org.uk/content/category/events.
Club Corner – Everton
In this issue we hear from Brendan Connolly of the Everton FC Heritage Society.
How was the Everton FC Heritage Society formed?
The Society was another Everton-related brainchild of Dr David France OBE, in addition to the Former Players Foundation and the Hall of Fame. David invited a small number of people he knew who were interested in different aspects of the club’s heritage.
What are the aims of the Society?
- To be the first point of contact for all enquiries related to Everton’s history.
- To actively promote knowledge of the club’s history.
- To promote and support the Everton Collection Trust.
How long have you been in existence and what were the early days like?
Formed in 2008, early meetings were held in The Adelphi Hotel, but following David’s move across the Atlantic I felt we struggled for direction in what we were trying to achieve. Meetings were moved to the more affordable Crosby Lakeside Marina and were initially poorly attended.
A breakthrough was made when Paul Wharton and George Orr decided to rent the upstairs room at St Luke’s church hall on the corner of Goodison Park. Displays were prepared for supporters to reminisce about the splendid history of our great club, and I fondly recall George’s words in those early days – “We’re just supporters with blu-tac and passion”. We had a table of old programmes which we started to sell to raise funds.
And how are things now?
Ten years on, St. Luke’s is unrecognisable and an Aladdin’s Cave of photographic displays, programmes, replica shirts and other memorabilia. There are stalls where supporters can purchase items, and we regularly have book signings with our Everton heroes. Neville Southall, Bob Latchford and Dave Thomas have all graced us with their presence.
The funds raised assist in the delivery of our projects, and we have renovated the graves of former players and officials such as Will Cuff, Sandy Young and Billy Scott. These events are extremely rewarding and often pull together families from various parts of the world to celebrate the lives of their predecessors.
Who makes up the Society?
The Society includes authors, historians, statisticians, researchers and memorabilia collectors.
What are your main achievements?
One of our objectives is to support The Everton Collection and we work closely with Lord Grantchester and the trustees.
We hosted a ‘120 Years of Goodison Park’ weekend at the Museum of Liverpool; we have collected almost 10,000 pieces of kit in support of KitAid and obtained medals for former players who missed out due to injury – Adrian Heath, Derek Temple and Ray Veall. Celebration events have been organised in honour of Harry Catterick and Joe Mercer, and blue plaques have been arranged in recognition of Dixie Dean, Jack Borthwick and Norman Greenhalgh.
How is your relationship with the club?
We are fortunate to enjoy an excellent relationship with the club and are grateful for the support of Richard Kenyon, Scott McLeod, Darren Griffiths and Alistair James. As a result, our meetings were moved to Goodison Park before we were offered the wonderful facilities of the club’s boardroom in the Royal Liver Building.
What does the future hold?
Our main concern is whether we will have a base once the club moves to the fantastic new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock. However, the Society continues to flourish, and we have recently invested in some audio-visual equipment and produced a couple of excellent videos.
The Everton FC Heritage Society website is here.
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, as mentioned above, we’ve recently produced The Great Save ‘Digitisation Route to Preserving Collections’. You can download that 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 X/Twitter @TheGreatSave1
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