A town with football Pedigree
Believe it or not, Burton-On-Trent has a strong football pedigree. The town once boasted not one but two football league clubs - Burton Swifts and Burton Wanderers (later merged into Burton United), at the turn of the Century. The Burton & District FA claims to be the second-oldest Football Association in the world (after our pals at Lancaster Gate), formed in 1871. Burton is the only town (as opposed to city) to have had two Football League teams at the same time. This was the town's heyday off the football field as well as on it- a different brewery around every corner, and a dense network of railways criss-crossing the town, carrying Burton Ale to the far-flung corners of the British Empire.
No shortage of League football in Burton in the 1895-96 season.
Picture the scene...the air is thick with smoke, the whistle of a steam locomotive echoes through narrow cobbled streets as barefoot urchins scavange around in dustbins to eke out an existence...(but that's enough about Gresley, we're talking about the Albion here.) The Brewers were preceded by Burton Town, who carried the flag in the inter-war years, playing in regional soccer, but World War II brought an end to their short-lived existence, and in the immediate post-war years, when football in Britain was enjoying an unprecedented boom, with record attendances being set which still stand today, Burton was -shamefully- without a representative in senior football. The idea of forming a new football club was, as Rex Page writes in his Albion history "Wellington Street to Wembley" ironically, first mooted by a "self-confessed football hater" Alf Moss, a Burton Mail journalist, in his weekly column "A Burtonians Diary".
Baby Brewers
A public meeting was called at Burton Town Hall to, amongst other matters, give a name to the fledgling club.Town, Wanderers, Swifts and United having already been used up, the suggestions "Burton County" and "Burton Association" were roundly defeated ( lets be thankful for that), "Burton Borough" received 150 votes, but the overwhelming majority of the 700 present favoured the name "Burton Albion". And lo a football club was born. There was no shortage of enthusiasm amongst the Burton public for the new venture. 1,400 people turned up for a practice match for the first ever Brewers team -largely assembled from local players- and 5,000 packed into the Lloyds Foundry ground on Wellington Street for the inaugural match, against Gloucester City. Whilst not exactly setting the football world alight, Albion went about establishing themselves in the Birmingham League, and continued to attract large crowds to Wellington Street. A club record of 7,654 turned up to watch a Birmingham Senior Cup match against Nuneaton Borough in September 1951 ( people must have been hard-up for entertainment in the 50's) - and a fierce rivalry was built up in this period with Albion's neighbours from down the A444. Early Albion heroes included Nobby Hadfield, a "tough but fair" centre half who had won an FA Amateur Cup winners medal with Bishop Auckland, the legendary Jack Stamps who'd scored two goals for Derby in the 1946 FA Cup Final, and winger Bertie Mee - a future double-winning manager with Arsenal.
Cup Glory
"We don't want none of this soft Southern beer, so we brought our own!" En-route to The Valley - January 1956
The club won it's first trophy in 1954, beating Brierley Hill at Nuneaton's Manor Park ground to lift the Birmingham Senior Cup (then still a sought-after piece of silverware), but it was two more years before the Brewers made a name for themselves outside the Midlands, by virtue of a run in the FA Cup. Atherstone Town, Tamworth, Bedworth Town, Sutton Coldfield and Brush Sports (don't ask me), had all been accounted for by the time Albion despatched fellow non-league side Wycombe Wanderers in the First Round Proper, leaving only Halifax Town between Albion and a place in the Third Round. And the Brewers did a fine job against their first ever league opponents, earning a draw (thanks largely to an heroic display of goalkeeping by ex-Derby player Bill Townsend) to take the game back to Wellington Street, where they despatched of the Shaymen by the only goal.
1- Albion Captain and Player-Manager Reg Weston (left) shakes the hand of his Charlton counterpart Derek Ufton before the Third Round tie, and 2- the Charlton skipper leaps with Albion's Frank Bullock for this high ball in front of the towering East Terrace at The Valley
And so, in only their sixth season of football, the Brewers had climbed the mountain that all non-league clubs aspire to, and reached the Third Round of the FA Cup. There waiting for them were one of the biggest clubs in the country at that time- Charlton Athletic-including amongst their ranks legendary goalkeeper Sam Bartram. Four London-bound "Football Special" trains were laid on from Burton to take the Amber and Black clad fans to the Valley, and many more travelled by road. It was unquestionably the biggest day in the club's short history, and the fact that Albion received a 7-0 thrashing from the mighty Robins barely detracted from the occasion for the Brewers fans in a 29,000 crowd.
Bill Townsend tries in vain to keep out a shot from Charlton's Jimmy Gauld, making it 2-0 to the South Londoners, who went on to put seven past the Brewers keeper