Johny’s gonna get ya !
Brian caswell for me, an old Beechdale lad, once saw him hit a player around the head about 3-4 times while sitting on him, after the player had brought him down, and play had switched taking the attention of the officials
When was the last time anyone saw a Stop Press on the back page of a newspaper with the late football scores?
Reminds me of that newspaper style match programme we had for a season in the 80’s,terrible, but given the sparse toilet facilities at FP, much more practical than the shiny ones with the staples in.
I know it’s not football, but do you remember the man up the pole in a barrel. It was at a cafe by the arboretum entrance,
Think the cafe was called the Melba.
That must have been in the early 50’s … I do remember it l
I remember local stuntman Reg Morris doing the barrel squat outside the Sportsman in brownhills in the 80’s, the poor sod would suffer some terrible abuse from us when we were coming out at closing time, we nearly pushed it over one night.
Remember reg
He tried to get out of paying poll tax claiming his property was used for religious purposes because he prayed to his canaries
Don’t think Brian Caswell was an old beechdale lad chunks ? He went to Mesty Croft Junior School Wednesbury and played in the the same team as Alan Birch, the headmaster there was a certain Ron Jukes who older fans will know as being a great scout for local talent for WFC, I played against Brian and Alan a number of times in school games, so I’m fairly sure that Caswell lived in Park Hill Wednesbury and think Birch was from the Stone Cross area.
Ye you are right mate don’t know where i got that from? i used to go out with his sister and her husband mark chacket, they lived in hednesford and she worked for royal mail.
No probs chunks, it’s surprising how the memory deteriorates with age, or perhaps it’s with drink
I think it is a bit of both mate
That’s very modern of you Chunks,so you swing both ways then…
i feel to old to swing either way now
Or the latest racing results? I think the Shropshire Star is printed very early now, maybe even in the morning. It was sometimes delivered to my parents at lunchtime in the school holidays, so not really an evening paper any more. The E&S might be the same, I don’t know - it is printed at Ketley though, same place as the Shroppie.
I think Gary Leech (Kevs brother) used to go out with Brian Caswells sister.
I know it - been up there a number of times for various things. A mate used to work for PCP at Halesfield who did the colour printing for both titles.
The Shroppie is another rag that seems to ignore that we exist. My missus even wrote to them once wanting to know they can have regular articles covering all the local sides including Blues, and even Stoke and Vale, but not ever a mention of us even if it’s a national news story. Their argument was that the E&S covers us - which it does (to some extent), but then it sometimes does also have the odd article about the Sloppies. And I’ve seen more of our shirts being worn around Telford than I have Vale ones so saying “there’s no call compared to the other teams” doesn’t wash either.
We get more of a mention in the Manchester Evening News, or at least used to (their sport’s editor was a Saddler. I’ve still got a clipping of the MEN article he wrote about our trip to Wembley).
We used to get a bit of coverage, back in the day. As you say, nothing for years (although since my parents died I rarely see the paper) even though there are a few of us round and about.
My favourite ever bit from a match report when we played them was a few years back when Matt Richards returned in a cup game, and the Shroppie reporter wrote “Matt Richards came close to dominating the midfield for the Shrews” which I chose to interpret as “Matt Richards failed to dominate the midfield”.
Circulation figures for newspapers are dismal now.
When you even had grounds with only 3 sides. Northampton & Shef Utd spring to mind. Not sure if there were any more. Kept the ball boys fit,!