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The village football team was still thriving in the 1950's. Here two villagers, Les Pearce, a team member and Edith Peacock, a keen supporter, recall their memories of village football. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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. Back Row, left to right: Les Pearce, Ron Gilkes, ?, Stan Peacock, Les Pickersgill, Colin Doyle Front Row, left to right |
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Les Pearce: I first joined the Crawley Football Team in 1949 when I was 14 years old and always played Centre Half. The first game I ever played was against Lidlington but we didn't win. In fact we once went through a whole season and never won a game. But we did win a "Tom Finney Football" for being a 'good sporting team'. Tom Finney was a professional footballer who played for Preston and he would award a football to teams, who, like us, went through a season without winning a game. There was quite a lot rivalry. All the villages had their own team; Ridgmont, Woburn, Woburn Sands, and Aspley, and they would try to get the good players to sign on for their own team. You'd get lots of supporters from Crawley coming to watch the matches. You'd hear them shouting, "Come on, smarten yourselves up!. In later years when we'd got a really good team with players like Danny Healy, Curly Neale, and Ben Bowler in goal. We'd hire a coach from Lancasters in Woburn Sands and if there was enough room we'd get the supporters coming to away matches with us. For a while we managed to get in the First Division and stopped there for a few years. |
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