The club are organising voting for who goes on the legends wall in the community hub.
voting is now underway for the first of these on twitter:
current status:
[Walsall FC Official
The first of our polls for the Legends Wall in the Community Hub is for your all time favourite goalkeeper
All-time favourite ā¦ or best since we moved to Bescot? Otherwise, I would suggest that Bert Williams and Phil Parkes (England internationals), Mark Wallington, Roy John (Walsallās first ever international player (Wales))
If restricted to that list, both JW (most WFC appearances) and MK (most international caps while a Walsall player) have strong claims - room for both? Iām not counting Etheridgeās caps (nor Inceās for that matter)!!!
But, to be honest, for all heās done for the club and for the love heās shown it over decades, there shouldnāt even be a vote for this one. Mick Kearns has to be chosen. People use the term āWalsall legendā about players who come and go. Mick is Mr Walsall, and a thoroughly nice gent as well.
I donāt doubt that mick is mr Walsall and a great servant .But anyone voting under 40 will never have seen mick play and will obviously vote for our record appearance holder that is the legend jimmy walker.
I think all these votes are going to be heavily weighted towards the last 20 years. How is Scott Dann even an option on the defenders listā¦ great player but only played 50 games for usā¦
The obvious thing to do is to have a graphic that merges left to right, black and white to colour, older legends to new. Then you can have all generations involved.
Looking at the player options on the Saddlers site it looks like someone is choosng to forget supporters over 60 or 70 like with covid. I know itās an impossible task but to call it a legends wall without the likes of Albert Mac, Colin Taylor, Tony Richards, Nick Atthey and Allan Clarke just to name a few is a travesty.
The spiel on the OS is that the shortlist to be voted on was drawn up based on some sort of āpick a 5-a-side teamā thing they ran on social media recently, broken down by decade from the 70s onwards.
Didnāt someone from ISSA also say on here that, as the sponsors of this part of the refurb, they had chosen their own Legends? So guessing these will have been taken out of the choices being offered to fans to vote on (5 decades, only 4 options on the Twitter poll).
But yes, it seems that 60s and earlier have been forgotten - maybe the club also had their own choices and have already bagged Gilbert Alsop etc?
The accepted definition of a football club legend seems to be someone who achieved something special whether it be longevity of service, winning something, or even just a special moment in the clubās history so there are plenty of omissions from the list on the club website and a few gate crashers.
Just to stir things up I find it amusing to see Shakey listed as attacker in the 5 a side list. Yes he had a hard shot and scored a few spectacular goals including one long range free kick at Plymouth which gained me a fiver from a home fan who challenged my comment that he would score. However in my opinion he was somewhat lucky to have such a good playing career and my memory suggests that he was similar to the crab the nickname given to Ray Wilkins because of his style of playing safe often sideways passes and so made few mistakes. I respect the fact that others will disagree.