First match attended

1960-61 away to Shrewsbury we did something special that night, I had to be picked up from Bates in Hospital St The old man and his mates worked there and they drove up there, coming back was an experience.

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This was my Dad’s first game.

Yes very similar . I became a regular in 58/59 as the season progressed and by 59/60 I hardly missed a home game.Away fixtures became a draw for me too from 59/60 onwards. Those were great times only matched by the Buckley years and the Graydon years. Lets hope that in 50/60 years time folk will be writing similar things about the Taylor years :grinning: Unlikely I know because if we have any success he will be tempted away to a bigger fish.

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Which begs the question, why did Bill Moore only manage Walsall? Having won two promotions with attacking football, and being unlucky not to keep us up for a second season, why did he manage nobody else, until he returned for another go with us at the end of the decade?
Did he not want to, or was there some reason why he wasn’t wanted?
I only remember him from the end of his second spell.

My father took me along to Fellows Park on his odd Saturday afternoons off during the early re-election days of the fifties and I have vague memories of games against Newport County and Millwall. I remember Gordon Chilvers in goal and Freddie Morris on the wing. I became a regular in the 1959/60 season (what a team!) and remember the 8 nil defeat of Gateshead with a hat-trick from Colin Taylor and a brace from Roy Faulkner. Strangely no goals from Tony Richards and then of course the following season with that wonderful penultimate end of season away game at Shrewsbury to clinch promotion to what is now the Championship.

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Good question. I don’t really know unless it because we are Walsall .I cannot recall a single Manager of our who has gone on to better teams immediately after leaving us. Smith and Buckley did it but had jobs in between. Moore’s regime was built on fitness and togetherness. Maybe he wasn’t sophisticated enough for some although most teams in those days were built along similar lines.

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It seems a bit strange to me, but of course I am only looking with hindsight. You could be right, perhaps the wider football world took little notice of his achievements here because we lack glamour. Perhaps his lack of success as a player put some off.

12th March 1955 - Fellows Park

Walsall 1-4 Crystal Palace

I’ve hated Crystal Palace ever since.

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My first game at FP was either in September or October 1963, I don’t recall the actual date or who we played.
I do remember Allan Clarke and the rocket left foot of Colin Taylor, I was hooked after that and have supported them ever since.

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I don’t really remember who we played, my Grandad took me when I was very young, I vaguely remember him giving me a Walsall scarf on the way into Fellows Park and not a lot else. My Dad took me sometime after that, this was all in the early to mid 80s.

First season I really remember well is the Milk Cup run season, I did think it was going to be like that every year. After my Dad took me to my first game I never looked back and have never regretted becoming a Walsall fan for one minute. It is one of many things I have to thank my Dad for. I’m really glad I got to experience Fellows Park and many other old school grounds before they disappeared forever.

Sadly I could not watch that one. I was working at Morrisons on the night shift at the time and the warehouse manager was a massive Leeds fan. Remember having some good banter … until it all went wrong :slight_smile:

Around the mid 1970s, my dad used to plan visits to my grandparents in the Pleck when there were midweek matches on. He would park up outside the houses in Wallows Lane about the time the exit gates were opened and we would sneak into the enclosure to watch the last 10 minutes of the match. I don’t know which matches we saw the endings of but I have memories of us playing a team in blue tops and yellow shorts. We didn’t witness any goals and as soon as the whistle went we were out of the ground and in the car before anybody else. My first full match was aged 11 v Bury in Jan 1975 in order to get vouchers for Newcastle tickets. Was in the railway end to witness the 3-0 win with Buckley, Wright and Andrews getting the goals. So next match was beating Newcastle in the cup. I was hooked.

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Remember Doffer who used to post on here at that Grimsby game. His phone got smashed in the celebrations, then we ended up on the same train back to Doncaster where he insisted on going to a pub, which to me didn’t seem like a very good idea for him :crazy_face:. Saw him in the Saddlers club before the next home game, apparently he got as far as Peterborough then mistakenly got a train to Cambridge, got the train back to Peterborough, and then did exactly the same thing again and ended up back in Cambridge, can’t remember where he was trying to get to - but it wasn’t Cambridge.

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Walsall v Aldershot. 1987/88. Won 2-0. David Kelly scored. Under the lights at Fellows Park.

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Not totally sure of the first game, but my dad started taking me in the 62-63 season when I was 5. I have vague memories of us playing Stoke that season, because I remember being sat on the wall in the enclosure, and a very old man (Stanley Matthews) trotting up and down the right wing about six feet away from me. The other games I know I was at that season were against Chelsea (we lost 5-1) and the second Charlton game when we got relegated.

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Also not totally sure, but my mom told me that they took me to an away game versus Notts County when I was young and I pestered them until they bought me a Hot Dog. I cannot remember this and looking at the head to head stats it must have been in 1950 when I was 5. In those days young children were lifted over the turnstiles .
At Fellows Park I was going regularly from 1956/7 season. I know this because my parents were told off by the Headmaster Of Wednesbury Boys Grammar School, ( a Mr Kipling who retired in early 1957), for not wearing my school cap as we walked back up to Wednesbury from a home game on a Saturday afternoon.
Saturday morning was a school day and there was a rule that all pupils must wear their school cap in the vicinity of the school on a school day!!

This is a true story.

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That’s what Salop wore for a few seasons in the 70s.

I think it was Mr Kipping…a chess player of some renown who founded Chess Clubs in Walsall and Woverhampton. I went to Joseph Leckie and was in the Chess team and our Deputy Head,Joe Sturrock, wanted us to beat Wednesbury High more than anyone else mainly because he and Kipping were good friends and chess fanatics. Sorry to go off topic but I thought you might be interested in that bit of history.

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A one nil defeat to Torquay 1967 ,first away game a win at Crewe on a Friday night in 1969 , Jimmy Murray scoring.

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First match attended was Blues v Middlesbrough possibly 3-1 I think in 75 first Walsall game was vHereford 0-0 the Buckley v McNeil game in 76

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