Update

Well, not much activity to report from the lat week or so.

The interview and photograph of Charlie Booth arrived and was just about worth the money. Mainly becasue of the photograph. We had never been quite sure if Charlie Booth featured in any of the photographs we had of Gainsborough Trinity, and evidently he does not! He should have done as we have the 1887 Gainsborough News Charity Cup winning side with trophy, a team which he played in. But the player who is sat in his position and for a time we believed to be Booth is far too old and not him.

One of the strong parts of our research is the number of illustrations. Hopefully there wo't be much of a problem with copywrite on them. Obviously I will be doing my best to clear copywrite on as many as possible. There is a likely hood that in some cases we won't get it.

Putting faces to the names of the players is important and brings them to life. Hence why I am so pleased to get a photo of Booth. It is from his Wolverhampton Wanderers days 3-4 years after leaving trinity, but it'll be the best we get. It may be the only surviving photograph of him. Although there probably is an arsenal photo buried away somewhere with him in the team.

The interview was not as good, but did fill in a few gaps. And combining this with other research we should be able to get a fairly decent pen picture together of a player who really is lost in History.

Favourite Victorian Footballers

All that news about Charlie Booth has made me think I should list a few more of my favourite footballers from the 1890's

This is by no mean a complete list and is not a list of the 'best' players as such more to do with character too. But obviously some were the very best. They are not in order either.

1. Jack Madden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Madden
2. Billy Bassett http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Crabtree
3. Jimmy Crabtree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Crabtree
4. G.O. Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Oswald_Smith
5. John Goodall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goodall
6. Earnest Needham http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Needham
7. Ambrose Langley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Langley
8. Steve Bloomer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bloomer
9. Jack Robinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Robinson_(footballer)
10. Tommy Crawshaw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Crawshaw
11. Charlie Howlett
12. Harry Walkerdine
13. Charlie Athersmith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Athersmith
14. John Reynolds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Reynolds_(footballer_born_1869)

I have said before. Our book will contain selected pen profiles of footballers such as these. They will vary in size depending on what research we have. So Madden will probably get 2 pages, where as others may have one paragraph. The idea is that it will act like a glossery at the back of the book, so as a significant player enters into the story we don't have to explain everything about them. Instead the reader can turn to the back and check out who they are and what they did. I hope thi will make our book even more significant for football history at this time.

There are of course many many more. Many people may wonder why I left out a big fat goalkeepr. In truth evidence would suggest hat he wasn't actually that great, nothing compared to Jack Robinson. But he was a great character, that is fo sure.

Good Ebay News

Yesterday I said that I had some news but didn't want to say until today. This was all because it was about an item that appeared on ebay and I was bidding on. Not that I would lose it to anyone reading this blog, but simply because I hadn't won it yet.

It was a Sports newspaper from 1892 containing a large interview (so I'm lead to believe) with Charlie Booth and a photograph of him too.

One of the best things about researching Fred is discovering other forgotten hero's of victorian football. I do find it facination stuff. They are far more intereting than any footballers around today, and in my biased opinion more interesting than nearly any set of plaers from any period of the game.

Chrlie Booth is one such Character.

He was the Gainsboough Trinity left winger before Fred. He used to train fred when Fred was 15/16 years old. He used to teach Fred in sprint racing but also spent many hours kicking long passes to eachother ona large field.

Fred used to steal eggs from the family hen coop to pay Charlie for his coaching, but he got caught by his parent! All was forgiven when fred started winning races and bringing back prize money.

Fred played against Charlie Booth for Gainsborough Wednedsday and with him on 3 occassions for Trinity.

This important mento of Fred is someone who got lost in history, but he went on to play league football for Wolves and then for Arsenal, which he was made captain. Unfortunately not much has ever been discovered about Charlie. And this magazine may well turn out to be the only thing that has ever been written at length on him.

Obviously I was keen to get hold of it. I can tell you that it took some very nifty ebay bidding to get hold of it within my budget. But I managed to stay cool and out thoght a very keen bidder, who would probably hve gone higher than me if he hd the opportunity.

I may well sell the article once I've finished with it though, as it was a little pricey for what it is. The going rate for these things is never over £10, but this was quite a bit more. Not sure why someone else would be so interested.

Historical Football Kits

I've been adding a few things to this website in recent days. Mainly helping out with Scotland's victorian kit design. It's a brilliant site, take a look.

http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/

A lot of work has gone into Fred's early performances in recent days. We have newspaper reports which list him playing for his school team. The earliest we have found is from 1883 when he was 13 years old. We have a couple more from a year latter. These along with all Gainsborough Institute, Gainsborough Wednesday, Jubeliee Swifts and Gainsborourgh Trinity matches are are all now in statistic tables, including all team line ups. This is Every Match he played (that has been reported) up to 1891

We do have the complete Alliance stats too for his first season at Wednesday and of course his League and cup stuff for Wednesday. But are currently missing friendly matches/united counties league matches/ and warncliffe charity cup matches for Wednesday.

We have all stats for Glossop, Leeds City and Watford. But unfortunately Southern United is very difficult to research. I have some but not all matches.

I have an illustration from the 40's that is of fred and says he scored over 350 competative goals in his career. I have for a long time dismissed this as a missunderstanding. But the more we get close to completing all the statistics the closer he gets to the total. I'm not sure it will catually get there, but it may be close.

Although our book will have a stats section it will not be the important part of the book, just an appendix at the back.


I have an exciting find, but due to one technicality I don't want to hare it just yet. Maybe tomorrow.

steady progress

Well, progress is being made, but it's a little bit slower these last couple of weeks. Time has been spent in Gainsborough Library looking for rogue matches Fred may have played in.

We found an extra one for the Gainsbourgh Working Mens Institute and another for Gainsborough Wednesday. We also found a couple of Lincolnshire FA repreentative matches.

I don't think we will ever get a full list of every game he played in. I'm sure that some willhave not been reported anyway. But it's very difficult to find all the Lincolnshire FA matches. I have struggled to find the odd Shefield FA matches to. I think I'm 2 Glasgow matches missing, and of course he may well not have played in those games anyway.

I think the biggest challenge would be all the united counties league matches and club matches (friendlies) that were played at the time by The Wednesday.