Renaissance Man

I just found out that Fred will have a whole page to himself in a new Sheffield Wednesday book by Jason Dickinson. It's an updated 'Complete Record' style book and no doubt will be superb just like Jason's other books. Fred's page will be titled 'Renaissance Man' which made me smile.

I think Jason has a couple of books on the go at the moment, and Wednesday supporters should consider themselves lucky to have had Jason write their history because I can tell you that not many football clubs have history books that come close to those available on Sheffield Wednesday. Farnsworth's and Sparling's books are also brilliant.

Other news.

Well the book is coming along very nicely. A couple more chapters have been written and most of the major chapters are down in draft. The massive two chapters are the FA Cup run and the FA Cup final chapters. The research into these games is so big that it may take a long time to write them. But once done there really won't be anything quite like it from any other football club history. I hope so anyway.

I have some exciting news on something else I believe, but cannot write that on here at the moment.

Also, apparently Jack Madden has some stuff on display at the Scottish Football museum. I'm not sure it is worth the journey or me to go and see. I have visited the museum and if I am in Glasgow I will go again and recommend it to anyone who happens to be in the city. Traveling hundreds of miles just to see it is not recommended.

It is very much the 'Scottish' football museum. Which is fair enough. But obviously cannot compete with the Preston museum which holds the Fifa collection amongst others. Also, when I was there the Scottish museum was run by old men who would only talk about when Scotland beat England. I was there a few hours and that is all I could hear them talking about. But I must say that most Scottish people, including these old guys in the museum are great people. It is only the minority that are horrible to my sister because she was English. All she did wrong was not know what a potato Scone was.

There were som nice photographs from a victorian magazine from the 1903 England V Scotland match at Bramell Lane on ebay last week. They did not sell at a £10 starting price. I found that a little strange, I was tempted by them, but ultimately they are not connected to my story and it was an extra tenner for something I wouldn't have had much use for. Was kind of hoping someone would have some use for them.

My friend has recommended that I read Lost in France, the story of a Welsh Goalkeeper killed in WW1. It does look good and I've ordered a copy.

How's it going?

Well, I know I haven't updated this blog in a while, but I just haven't had too much to report in recent times. This in not through a lack of progress with the writing though, it is still coming on. I mainly report new research I guess and we havn't been focused on researh resently.

However a few things have turned up.

My dad was in Long Eaton and popped into their library and found a few excellent photographs. When Gainsborough Trinity played Long Eaton Rangers in their Midland League Championship winning season there was a big spectical to be seen with international cyclist using the track that cicled the pitch. One was Stillman Whittaker, a very famous world record holder. He was training for a world record atempt the following week, which he did indeed succeed at.

You can look up Stillman Whittaker on the internet, there is some stuff there.

My dad ound photographs of the track and one of Cyclists stood in line with their penny farthings. It's a great picture and from the correct year.

Other news is that my friend managed to get hold of a Sheffield Wednesday 1896 FA Cup winners mug. That's a really nice item!

And that a relative of Len Oliver the Fulham player who is in Fred's cinefilm found the video on Youtube and sent me a message. It's always nice to hear from people like that.

The current plan for the book is to self-publish 100 copies that are traditionally bound to a high standard. Sell as many to subscribers as possible and then sell remaining copies in the Shef Weds shop. It is sells well there may be a 2nd edition, however the priority is to get the book published to a high standard and make sure everyone who wants one gets one. Beyond that it doesn't really bother me if we sell many more. I think we are looking at 1 1/2 years to publication.