C’Mon the Steelmen!

C’Mon the Steelmen! 

The hallowed ground of Occupation Road

A lifetime of following the fortunes of a nondescript non league football team, the occasional highs and the perpetual lows, decades of dreams and disasters, brilliance and rubbish. A roller coaster of emotions that will no doubt continue to engross hundreds of others till we shuttle off the mortal coil. 

As supporter Dale Campbell put it; “It's in our blood and always will be. You can run, escape for a bit, go in exile because you go in a huff - but we always return because we love our local club.”

Note, I said back there, hundreds. Not thousands. The Steelmen, Corby Town, like a million other minor football clubs, struggle along for eternity in attempting to entice the ‘armchair football fans’, the ‘glory hunters’, the ‘tourists’ attracted and attaching themselves to the global institutions of the Manchester Uniteds, the Liverpools, the Chelseas. And ok, at this point I have to hold my hands up - I too was once a ‘tourist’, following the Reds of Anfield. Discovering a whole new world of football almost by fate when aged 15, going to watch Leicester City play Liverpool at Filbert Street on the opening day of the 1965/66 football season. Liverpool, the F A Cup winners the previous May offered a nice alternative with the Steelmen, newly promoted to the Southern League Premier Division, playing their first game in the higher echelons of non league for the first time with an away day at Kings Lynn. No transport links, no way of getting to Norfolk by train, bus or car, an offer of a lift to Leicester from a friendly postman was gratefully accepted. So it was that along with future Steelmen goalkeeper Dick Dighton and our friend Nigel ‘Pop’ Portman, we experienced something that was life changing. Liverpool beat Leicester 3-1, the atmosphere and crack, the humour of the scousers was overwhelming. We agreed; we had to do this again! Pop was already a Man Utd fan and ironically, as this is supposed to be about the life and times of an avid Steelmen supporter, the following Wednesday, when Corby were playing the legendary non league team of Yeovil at home, we were all at the City Ground in Nottingham to see Forest play United! Thanks to Pop’s dad Arthur asking us if we would like to go! Well! But that’s another story…Forest beat United 4-2 by the way.

                                                                  1958

Football becoming an all consuming passion for kids in the 50s, the so called ‘Baby Boomers’, began with the hobby of collecting Bubble Gum Cards, sets comprising of 48 football teams, another of

football stars. There was also Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly, a magazine in which you had to save some of your pocket money to buy. Which could be a bit of a stretch. These opened your world up to the excitement of watching and playing the wonderful game of soccer. Other than these you would have to wait until Christmas and hope that an uncle would give you the ‘Football Champions Annual’ as a present. The only present that mattered! Never mind the jigsaw, the train set, the bike, ripping the gift paper off a football book was orgasmic! Of course if you were also lucky enough to get a football shirt off Santa, that was better still. And usually, whatever colour it was, they were always plain, replica shirts were light years away, they dictated what ‘Big’ team you would support. The first one I had was blue and white stripes. Amongst my collection of bubble gum cards, my favourite was Derek Kevan, the West Bromwich Albion and England centre forward. WBA then, became my team! Later, as children do, I swapped it for a blue one and became a Cardiff City supporter! Such are the whims of an eight year old.

Following the fortunes of your chosen ‘Big’ club was difficult, you never saw them! Unless they made it to the F.A.Cup Final. The only ‘live’ game shown on television. And long before ‘Match of the Day’. That and the ‘football pools’ a weekly lottery every dad in the country participated in, in the hope success would transport them from a life of run of the mill drudgery. Excitement would build on Saturday tea times with your dad writing down the scores read out by Australian sports reporter Len Martin from BBC’s teleprinter. ‘Stenhousemuir 3 Forfar Athletic 2’ might be greeted with a groan. ‘Damn, I had that for an away win!’ The weekly failure of the pools meant another week at the grindstone. 

Last but not least in this trip down memory lane there was the Saturday night ‘Pink Un’, a popular sports newspaper sold normally by teenagers riding around on their bicycles after dark with a bag full of them, bellowing ‘Pink Un! Football Results!’ Men would scurry into the street to try and catch him before he disappeared around the corner. 

Larry Wealthall, Corby goalkeeper in the early 60s was one of those teenagers; “I sold the ‘Pink Un‘ for McBryan’s on Rockingham Road for sixpence a dozen. It was very profitable while price was twopence ha’penny, because I never had change for a threepenny bit! The next season price increased to three pence so I gave it up.”

Besides the day’s Football League and Scottish League results, the ‘Pink Un’ also gave a weekly rundown of the fortunes and match reports of all the local amateur clubs, recalled by Graham Henderson, Steelman exile in Australia; “It was amazing how they got all those match results and reports in such a short space of time. Remember us often saying ‘that takes the biscuit’. We were also pissed off if the ‘Pink Un’ boy had sold out or we had missed him.”

Though there were variations of the sports paper around the country, some were called the ‘Green Un’, our ‘Pink Un’ was different. Along the top of the back page was a series of caricatures, each depicting one of the local teams by their nicknames and a cartoon. The Steelman had the predictable ‘Tammy’ on his head, looking delighted if Corby had won, glum if they drew and with a plaster on his face if they had lost. Meant to assume that he had been in a fight and an argument over the defeat! 

Which tells you something about how the folk of Corby were perceived by our county cousins, a legacy of the 1930s and 40s so-called ‘Invasion of Scottish and Irish immigrants’ seeking work in the steelworks.

Other caricatures included ‘The Friar’, a fat bloke in a robe who represented the Poppies of Kettering. Wellingborough had the Doughboy, which presumably had something to do with the town’s flour factory Whitworths. Peterborough, the ‘Posh’, had a gentleman looking like Fred Astaire with a Top Hat. Also included were the Fenmen of Wisbech, the Linnets of Kings Lynn, the Hatters of Luton, the Tulips of Spalding, the Cobblers of Northampton, the Hares of March… 

For the team with the most impressive result of the day went the coveted ‘Pink Un Biscuit’ which looked like a Digestive. The biscuit was the first thing you looked for. If Corby Town was on it, especially after an away game, the excitement in searching for the match report was tangible. You could say the biscuit was the forerunner to the ‘Man of the Match’ award. And later on…in the 1990s.. the ‘Scotch Pie Man of the Match Award’. Presented to a player in the club bar after a game by Corby’s jovial impersonators of ‘Saint and Greavsie', John Crawley and Kenny Hughes. The bemused player receiving a rousing round of applause and the pie for his endeavour. Great fun and an innocent world away from the ‘wonderful game’ of the millennium.

But back to 1958..

In the beginning…the streets were alive with the sound of music… Connie Francis’ ‘Lipstick On Your Collar’, The Coasters’ ‘Charlie Brown’, Jerry Keller’s ‘Here Comes Summer’, Lonnie Donegan’s ‘Battle of New Orleans’, Russ Conway’s ‘China Tea’, Craig Douglas’ ‘Only Sixteen’.  Wafting in the wind from the Tannoy, and adding an extra ingredient of pre-match excitement at the Occupation Road Stadium, if that isn’t too grand a description.   

In truth, Occupation Road was probably one of the best, certainly better, non league football grounds in the country. Boasting newly installed sixty foot floodlight pylons in each corner and officially turned on for the first time in February of this year with a ‘Grand’ celebration match between the Steelmen and an ‘All Stars XI’ of ex international players. The Board of Directors, led by Mr F.C. Deeley, was there ever a more appropriate name for a football club chairman? were rightly proud of the lights. There was less than a handful in the country at this point. It was a sign of ambition the Directors proclaimed. Backed up by the appointment of  new player/manager, former Manchester United, Leicester City, Derby County and England international Johnny Morris for the inaugural season of the revamped non-league pyramid, the North West Zone of the Southern League, Exciting stuff but greeted as bullshit by most Corby supporters. Ambition? Just six years previously the board had released their record goalscorer, centre forward Ernie Middlemiss when Ernie had asked them if they would match an offer he had received from neighbours Kettering Town. “The Poppies offered me an extra fiver a week, I told the board, and they said ‘Go’.” Ernie Middlemiss had scored 134 goals in 135 games in three seasons. They obviously thought he was on the wane. 

Fred introduces Johnny to his Board.

Apart from the streets being alive with the sound of music, they were also alive with the sound of children. Kicking a ball about on street corners. Much to the annoyance of residents and nightshift workers trying to get some zzzz. We were regularly being chased to the nearest local patch of green. We weren’t called the ‘Baby Boomers’ for nothing. The post war years had seen a massive and sudden boom in the population thanks to returning servicemen desperate to get their leg over. 

Around town, every town as well you would assume, football matches of 20 a-side would take place on the green pastures, of which there was plenty.

Our patch was on Studfall Green. The sides included Dick Dighton, who would later make the grade as goalkeeper with Coventry City, Peterborough United, Kettering and Corby. Graham Henderson who gave up football for the guitar and headed for the Antipodes. Ian ‘Bomber’ Wilson who made a name for himself as a hard driving midfield enforcer, dirty bleeder in other words, with a number of local amateur clubs. Stan ‘Snowball’ Watkinson was as blind as a bat which didn’t stop him from becoming a well respected local referee. John Crawley was equally as short sighted as Stan but remembered fondly for booting an irritating dog, which was interfering our game, right up the ass! Fido was sent into orbit much to everyone’s delight and we carried on. 

Frank Clayton followed Stan by taking up the whistle. He too became a well respected ‘man in black’. John Sweeney, now living in Canada, was yet another who gave up playing to officiate and earn the soubriquet ‘well respected.….’ Funny that. How come they were all ‘well respected’? Some of them must have been crap. 

Another star of the ‘Green’ and later would became a significant figure at Corby Town as chairman was Douglas William ‘Bip’ Wetherell. A very successful businessman and entertainer, Bip, back then, was a speedy left winger with the nickname of Billy Whizz, tearing up the turf parallel to Studfall Avenue. 

Four of the Studfall Green stars reunited in the 2000s. L-r Clive Smith, Ian Wilson, Stan Watkinson and Dick Dightion.

Who could have known, back then in the 1950s and 60s, what lay ahead of some of these boys? A scenario which was replicated around the town on pitches at the Uppingham and Corby Boys Club, the Welfare Ground, the West Glebe Park? Norman Dean, Len Chalmers, Jim Fotherigham, Andy McCabe all had their fun here and went on to play for league clubs, Len becoming the first Corby born footballer to play in a Cup Final, and an unwanted statistic as being a member of the ‘Wembley Hoodoo’ club when he was injured in the 1961 Final playing for Leicester. Cup Finals had been marred for years with players breaking legs, a neck even. It would eventually, see the introduction of substitutes, but it took another four years after Len Chalmers had knackered his leg against the ‘Double’ winning team of Tottenham Hotspur.  

1958 was memorable for a number of reasons, the World Cup in Sweden and the magical Brazilian team of Pele, Vava, Didi, Zito and co.  Such exotic names. A tradition carried on by todays great Braziilians, Fred, Malcom, Bernard.. 1958 was also witness to the tragic Munich Air Crash involving Manchester United. Half the team, the famed ‘Busby Babes’ was wiped out. It was a depleted United side that played Bolton Wanderers in the Cup Final with their murderous centre forward Nat Lofthouse scoring both goals in the 2-0 win. Players like him would have goalkeepers cacking in their pants nowadays. One of the youngsters drafted into the United team that day was Alex Dawson who himself gained a reputation in the Lofthouse mould as, shall we say, uncompromising. In the early 1970s, Alex ended up at Occupation Road, putting the icing on a cake of a wonderful career with a couple of seasons with the Steelmen.

Television was still relatively new in those days, not everyone had one. We did, but I don’t recall the Cup Final being shown in our house. Highly unlikely as it was a Welsh household and rugby mad family. I do remember rugby internationals being on and the house full of my brothers, their friends, uncles and my dad getting pissed up and cheering on the Welsh team. Even remember them having a scrum in our front room! Great fun. Mam didn’t seem to mind, well she wouldn’t, she loved it all as well. But the point of this is I guess, I was the black sheep! I was the only football fan in the family!

My passion for the Steelmen started this year, the 58/59 season, joining all the other kids being drawn like disciples following the Pied Piper to the hallowed ground of Occy Road. A passion shared by Graham Henderson; “I vividly remember 5/6 of us walking down Occupation Road to a night game, and when we saw the floodlights switched on we quickened our pace to get there. It was so exciting”.

I have wondered many a time what my first game was. Being the tender age of 8 my main memories of those initial years seem to be more about playing ‘Tig’ or ‘Hide and Seek’ during the games. Running around, no doubt annoying adults, being a pest and generally an all round nuisance! It was like a playground! Proceedings would be halted if there was a penalty awarded or something, and all the kids would make a mad dash to get behind one of the goals. 

Funnily enough, a scene re-enacted a fews decades later by my son Gareth and his friends in the 1980s. ‘Enjoy the game?’ My wife Sue would ask him. ‘Yeah it was great mum!’ he’d reply enthusiastically. Used to make us both laugh!

Looking at and writing the history of the club I have eventually settled on my first game being on October 18th 1958, against a team from South Wales, Barry Town. 

Maybe it was the fact that it was Barry Town, a place where we used to visit on our holiday every year, that caught my attention. Whatever it was, it captured and fired my imagination. 

Getting to Wales in the 50s was a merciless journey. Ten hours on a bus. You could have gone to the moon quicker. It was like going to another planet! I remember feeling sorry for the Barry team having to suffer the torture of that trip which even today I can recall every bleeding place we stopped at! Hated it, we were always talking to ‘Huweee’ ..spewing up, but it was great when we got there.

Barry’s strip was silky green shirts, black shorts, they glistened in the sun. Looked brilliant. Corby, in the traditional black and white, equally looked great. In all honesty the only things I remember about that game was Corby’s goalkeeper Pat Egglestone getting carried off on a stretcher after diving at a Barry forward’s feet, his head covered in blood. Looked horrible and frightened me to death! The other thing I seem to remember, for some reason, was Corby’s centre half, South African Norman Neilson, a six foot seven giant of a guy, playing centre forward this day, blootering the ball right over the floodlights! Impressive. And I’m sure he blasted a goal for Corby from the half way line! Which with research turned out to be a direct free kick from 40 yards that went in off the crossbar against Cambridge City a month later.  Good old fashioned ‘Big Ham’ they’d call him nowadays! 

Egglestone carried off, Willie Morris reduced to a cripple, you'd have thought the Steelmen were well beaten but not so, according to the ET critic. 'The Steelmen should have waltzed through such mediocre opposition' he wrote. Bit harsh but he wasn't happy!
Something I didn't realise, or had forgotten was the pre-match entertainment provided by a dog show! As advertised. Quite an innovative idea by the Steelmen Board of Directors for the time!

For the record,, Corby’s team was Pat Egglestone; Johnny Poppitt, Willie Morris; Johnny Morris, John Croy, who took over in goals from Egglestone, Barry Parsons; Alec Harper, John Rennie, Norman Neilson, Jimmy Adam and Peter McKay.