Jon
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Nov 6, 2013 20:38:28 GMT
Post by Jon on Nov 6, 2013 20:38:28 GMT
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JamesB
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Nov 6, 2013 20:49:20 GMT
Post by JamesB on Nov 6, 2013 20:49:20 GMT
"The United"?
We were talking about nicknames a while back. Was this standard or was the writer just desperate?
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Deleted
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Nov 6, 2013 21:06:15 GMT
Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2013 21:06:15 GMT
That's a cracking article, Jon, both for the way it talks about bringing Plainmoor up to scratch and in detailing the efforts to draw a decent team together. Interesting how it draws attention to the sole Devonian "on the roll", a lad from Budleigh Salterton.
It must have been an exciting time and you hope the punters were full of anticipation. I wonder how much of a "once in, always in" attitude there was towards the future barring the failure to gain re-election at some stage? It's hard to know the tolerance of other clubs if, say, we'd finished bottom five years on the trot. Yet you suspect the feeling was that league football would be guaranteed for the duration. Or have we always been uncertain of our station in life?
As for the point about nicknames in those days, I would have thought "the United" to have been sufficient. That, after all, was - and is - our name!
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1927
Nov 7, 2013 17:13:42 GMT
Post by gullone on Nov 7, 2013 17:13:42 GMT
Very interesting read that Jon. As if Percy Mackrill didnt have enough to do! He has to handle ticket arrangements as well. Over 10,000 at Plainmoor for that first game.
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Deleted
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Nov 7, 2013 19:14:54 GMT
Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2013 19:14:54 GMT
Another thing about the article is the way that James "Jimmy" Jones is shown off as the likely "star turn". Although he's labelled as the "Welsh International centre-forward" I suspect he only played the once for Wales against Ireland in 1925. The records showed he scored six times in twenty league games for Torquay disappearing off the scene in the January of that first League season. Perhaps he was injured; maybe he was a disappointment.
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Jon
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Nov 7, 2013 22:16:11 GMT
Post by Jon on Nov 7, 2013 22:16:11 GMT
Interesting how it draws attention to the sole Devonian "on the roll", a lad from Budleigh Salterton. By a strange twist of fate, our "last" match as a non-league club in May 1927 featured a boy from Budleigh Salterton on the left wing and our "first" match as a non-league club in August 2007 featured a boy from Budleigh Salterton on the left wing. |
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Jon
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Nov 7, 2013 22:25:42 GMT
Post by Jon on Nov 7, 2013 22:25:42 GMT
I wonder how much of a "once in, always in" attitude there was towards the future barring the failure to gain re-election at some stage? It's hard to know the tolerance of other clubs if, say, we'd finished bottom five years on the trot. Yet you suspect the feeling was that league football would be guaranteed for the duration. Or have we always been uncertain of our station in life? Well we had the Wembley-based Argonauts to fight off at the 1928 elections. It's worth remembering that SIX league clubs bit the dust during our first five seasons in the League - Durham, Ashington, Merthyr, Newport, Wigan and Thames. www.nonleaguematters.co.uk/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=3506;Money was tight in the 30s and clubs hated having to travel to Torquay - much larger than average travel expenses and a cut of our miserable gates did not make financial sense. I'm sure that if we had not scraped clear of the bottom two in 1938, that would have been curtains. Ipswich were coming up whatever. They would never have kicked Gillingham out if they could have got rid of us instead. |
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Jon
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Nov 7, 2013 22:26:44 GMT
Post by Jon on Nov 7, 2013 22:26:44 GMT
As if Percy Mackrill didnt have enough to do! He has to handle ticket arrangements as well. No internet ticket-booking?  Sort it out, Mackrill!!! |
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Jon
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Nov 7, 2013 23:17:29 GMT
Post by Jon on Nov 7, 2013 23:17:29 GMT
Well we had the Wembley-based Argonauts to fight off at the 1928 elections. The Derbyshire Daily Telegraph had as down as sacrificial lambs or rams:  Then followed it up with this cheeky piece:  But then again, what do people from Derbyshire know about football? |
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1927
Nov 8, 2013 4:49:15 GMT
Post by scangull on Nov 8, 2013 4:49:15 GMT
"The United"? We were talking about nicknames a while back. Was this standard or was the writer just desperate? I had many a pint in the Noah's Ark with a bloke who was a young lad in 1927. He would often refer to "The United" and I heard it a few times being shouted by older supporters in the old main stand. |
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Deleted
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Nov 8, 2013 6:30:49 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2013 6:30:49 GMT
Sounds as if Jon's Derbyshire correspondent was an Old Reptonian. Or an old reptile.
Interesting point Jon makes about the clubs leaving the Football League just after we arrived. Not a good time for football in the more heavily industrialised areas.
Ah, I was hoping for a Kevin Hill connection somewhere.
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1927
Nov 8, 2013 8:28:32 GMT
Post by phipsy on Nov 8, 2013 8:28:32 GMT
Fantastic archive stuff jon. Keep up the good work.
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Rags
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Nov 8, 2013 8:34:12 GMT
Post by Rags on Nov 8, 2013 8:34:12 GMT
Well we had the Wembley-based Argonauts to fight off at the 1928 elections. I find it fascinating that the Derbyshire Daily Telegraph would write this: "..the quest of the good ship "Argo" is so highly vital to football generally that it should not be "holed in the keel" before it is launched."The snippet that Jon provides doesn't offer any evidence to support that view, and I would hazard a guess that they felt no compunction to offer any. Except for this from the second piece: " ..as its ultimate objective, a greater and wider encouragement of amateur talent from the public schools and other sources." Good grief - Dave Cameron's dad playing for Man Utd and in the World Cup Final for England? No Geoff Hurst hat-trick and no offshore tax-havens for the rich and well-connected to shield their earnings from HMRC!! There's an article on twohundredpercent that expands the history of Argonauts twohundredpercent.net/?p=1175"Perhaps the strangest case of attempting to franchise, however, came in the late 1920s when a stalwart of the amateur game decided that it was about time that those confounded professionals needed to be taught a lesson and tried to get his club – which never even played a single match – voted into the Football League. His club was called Argonauts FC.
RW (Dick) Stoley was a relic from the founding years of English football, when the amateurs ran the show. He had represented Cambridge University and the England, and had latterly been involved with the amateur club Ealing AFC, whose major achievement had been beating Norwich City on the way to an appearance in the FA Amateur Cup Final in 1904. Football as we understand it had been refined in the 1850s and 1860s in the gentlemens clubs of London and the refectories of England’s universities, and the pursuit of money was seen by these people as somewhat vulgar." "Stoley’s plan was simple. He wished to create a club to represent the whole of the amateur game in England and get it voted into the Football League. With a nod to the classical Greek taught in private schools that is one of the trademarks of amateur football (other examples of this trait include the Isthmian, Athenian, Spartan and Hellenic Leagues, not to mention Corinthians), he chose to name his club Argonauts FC, for the mythical band of men that accompanied Jason in this quest to find the Golden Fleece. ""He made no secret of the fact that, despite being based in London, they would represent the whole of the amateur game, and Stoley wrote to every existing member of the Football League to notify them of his plan. The loudest objections came from Queens Park Rangers and Brentford, into whose territory Argonauts may be parachuted. Both clubs struggled for attendances at the time, and there was a real danger that a large amateur club could seriously affect their wellbeing. In response to this, Stoley amended his plans and confirmed that the new club would instead play its home matches at Wembley Stadium.""...Argonauts had one very influential supporter. By the late 1920s, “Athletic News” was past its prime. Founded in Manchester in 1875, it was a sporting newspaper that focussed on amateur sport, and at its peak in 1919 had a circulation of 170,000 readers. It championed the cause of Argonauts, calling upon the FA to encourage amateur clubs to release their best players to join the cause. They reasoned that increased interest in amateur football could stem the tide of public schools from switching to rugby, something which had begun in earnest with the codification of rugby union in the 1880s. With such support, the club’s committee was confident that Argonauts could take the place of one of the ailing sides at the bottom of the Football League. When the end of the season came, the clubs met to decide who should stay in the league for the following season, and Argonauts did exceptionally well. Torquay United and Merthyr Town were re-elected, but Argonauts fell just eleven votes short of replacing Merthyr.If they’d taken six more votes from Merthyr, they’d have been in."Jon's link to nonleaguematters confirms the strange state of affairs with that particular club - they had yet to play a single game and effectively had no players! |
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rjdgull
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Nov 8, 2013 12:51:15 GMT
Post by rjdgull on Nov 8, 2013 12:51:15 GMT
Some great stuff on this thread! I see that the Argonauts also applied for election the following two seasons as well but with diminishing success. Funny enough a club was formed in 1999 with that name and play in the Bristol leagues at Staple Hill! link |
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Deleted
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Nov 8, 2013 18:29:36 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2013 18:29:36 GMT
"Stoley’s plan was simple. He wished to create a club to represent the whole of the amateur game in England and get it voted into the Football League. With a nod to the classical Greek taught in private schools that is one of the trademarks of amateur football (other examples of this trait include the Isthmian, Athenian, Spartan and Hellenic Leagues, not to mention Corinthians), he chose to name his club Argonauts FC, for the mythical band of men that accompanied Jason in this quest to find the Golden Fleece. "
To which you can add, at various times the Aeolian, Delphian and Parthenon leagues.
It concept of amateur football is complex. I guess there's a distinction between "amateur" football - played in parks and on small enclosed grounds in local leagues - and "Amateur" soccer as practised by gentlemen with a private school background.
The amateur was happy with his lot and content to watch and follow the professional game. The Amateur often took the moral high ground and regarded professionalism as a sin. This aloof outlook almost caused a major schism in the English game a hundred years ago.
But an uneasy truce ensued and the Amateurs continued with their own national cup competition and international team under the auspices of the FA. Oddly this was based around a somewhat unholy alliance between the clubs of suburban London, the Home Counties and those of industrial Durham and Northumberland.
The Corinthians, Casuals and the rest ploughed a particular furrow around London and on occasional Imperial expeditions. The Argonauts meanwhile planned to break water with the grubby professionals by joining Division 3 (South). If they'd been successful I doubt they would have lasted five minutes. But what if that had been at the cost of turfing Torquay United back into the Southern League? As Jon implies there were soon to be rather stronger League applicants on the scene and we may never have got another sniff.
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