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| 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 Soho Square), formed in 1871. |
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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. 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". Top |
| Baby
Brewers
A public
meeting was called at Burton Town Hall to decide upon, amongst other matters,
a name for 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. |
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| 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. Top Early cup success
The club won it's
first trophy in 1954, beating Brierley Hill Alliance 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. |
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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 sent
packing the Shaymen by the only goal. 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 Cup. |
| There waiting
for them were one of the top teams in the country at the 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. |
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