Search: 'Sam Bartram'

The Championship has been a strange division, full of surprises yet lacking in quality, reports Tom Green

It’s easy to see why away fans might enjoy visiting The Valley. Tucked away in a quiet south-east London neighbourhood, it’s a proper football ground, modernised and expanded but still on its old site five minutes from the train station. The club “superstore” is more like a corner shop and pre-match catering still tends to mean fish and chips or a kebab. While there are plenty of expensive players’ Range Rovers in the car park, the statue of post-war Addicks goalkeeper Sam Bartram that looms outside the West Stand is an effective reminder of the club’s history.

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It is now 19 years since a non-League team knocked a top-flight side out of the FA Cup, but at Anfield David Nicholls saw Havant & Waterlooville come closer than anyone dared imagine

Comments flooding on to the havantandwaterlooville.net forum after the 4-2 replay win over Swansea suggested that the success had reaffirmed many fans’ faith in the FA Cup. Away ties had meant that Cup fever took a while to build, especially as the Hawks always have to fight Pompey for elbow room in the local press. The Hawks have struggled to establish a distinct identity, given their location on the edge of a large estate built to accommodate Portsmouth families displaced by Second World War bombs – the social housing is still administered by Portsmouth City Council, despite being well inside Havant Borough. However, the Cup run has now put H&W on the map, even internationally: magazines in Canada, Australia and Japan requested accreditation, while Spanish daily Marca dedicated a full page to the Anfield build-up.

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The Story of a Goalkeeping Legend
by Mike Blake
NPI Media, £14.99
Reviewed by Tom Green
From WSC 246 August 2007 

Buy this book

Every club has its legends. In modern times the player most loved by Charlton fans has been Derek “Killer” Hales, a man whose fighting spirit came to epitomise the Addicks’ struggle to survive. For the previous generation, however, the undisputed hero was goalkeeper Sam Bartram.

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Manchester Utd equal highest ever winning points margin. By Neil Rose

The long-term significance
Unlike Chelsea the previous season, Manchester United refused to bow to Football Association pressure not to compete in the fledgling European Cup after winning the league. However, on May 15, 1956, Birmingham City became the first English club side to compete in Europe, taking part in the International Inter-City Industrial Fairs Cup, for cities that hosted industrial and trade fairs. Games coincided with fairs and thus the tournament took three years to complete. In 1957 Birmingham lost in the semi-final to eventual winners Barcelona after a play-off in Basle in the days before the away-goals rule (which would have benefited Barça anyway). The competition evolved into the UEFA Cup. In a game dubbed “Old World meets the New”, England beat Brazil 4-2 at Wembley, during which the Brazilians – two years away from their first World Cup win – briefly walked off the pitch in a dispute over a penalty. Stanley Matthews, recalled at the age of 42, gave a virtuoso performance. His opponent on the flank, Nilton Santos, whom the Brazilians had said was unbeatable, reportedly told him at the end of the game: “Mister Matthews, you are the king.”

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John Williams comes off his line smartly to grab a chunk of goalkeeping history

I’m not sure how it is with you, but when I think back to childhood footballing days, things seem decidedly hazy. Detailed accounts of the hours we spent playing and watching are pretty much beyond me now.

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