When football was football.

[mervyn]

Can you name the only team on that list whose name bears absolutely no relationship to where they play or have played?

 

[Southampton Hake]

Mervyn-- is Port Vale the answer?

 

[mervyn]

Mervyn-- is Port Vale the answer?

Yep. Apparently when the group who formed the club were looking for a name, one of them remembered a building of that name, nowhere near Stoke, and thought it would be a nice name for a club.

 

[Pogleswoody]

PS Oxford came in soon after in 1962 to replace Accrington and in one of the more quirkier items of footballing trivia, guess who Accrington replaced when they came back in to the FL 44 years later...

Following on from that who scored Accies first 2 goals back in the football league ?

Was it the kid from the milk advert?? :think:

 

[Pogleswoody]

Can you name the only team on that list whose name bears absolutely no relationship to where they play or have played?

Arsenal?? (A workplace not a geographical place)

I always thought that Port Vale was named after canal 'ports' and barge wharfs for pottery and 'vale' for the valleys where the canals and potteries were.(Canals not liking hills much! )

 

[Geoff Gartside]

Wow. That league ladder brings back memories. Boxing Day 1957 we'd just moved from Somerset to London, my uncle took me to see Spurs play Wolves at White Hart Lane. Well, "see" was being hopeful, I was a small eight year-old and standing on a packed terrace it was even difficult to lift me up, anyway Spurs scored late on and uncle from Wolverhampton wasn't best pleased. But I enjoyed it! Perhaps I'd be a secret Spurs fan!

I got a league ladder similar to yours Ian, but it came from The Beano. I took it to school and it was posted on the notice board with me shuffling the team cards every Monday to follow the league tables cut from our Sunday paper. I got to know the 92 team names, and the undying interest in football started. My school mates were keen on football, and as my Somerset accent waned and they got to understand what I was saying we looked for teams to support. 58-59 and who was top of the third division? They must be a team on the up, and from the West Country. I'll support them not Spurs...

Well done for keeping that piece of nostalgia. Wish I'd kept mine but I seem to remember it started to fall to bits after a couple of years of small boys surreptitiously moving "their" teams to the top of the league ladders thinking I might not notice.

Then I married a Spurs fan. And we moved to the West Country. Funny old game...

 

[Mark58]

Thanks Lundan Cabbie for the solution to my curiosity, was it just by accident that Swindon were omitted as we play them tonight.

Demportdave, the Accrington/Oxford exchange of Football League memberships is a real trivia gem.

I missed these charts being an addict of Gorgeous Gus etc in The Victor.

My weekly fix was The Valiant, where I would be able to follow the gripping football adventures of Ted Legge in Legge's Eleven. The fact that he was player-manager of a lower league side that gradually climbed the rungs made it far more realistic to that Argyle supporting young lad! :scarf:

 

[gru mpy]

Can you name the only team on that list whose name bears absolutely no relationship to where they play or have played?

You're half right Pogles - the people who formed the club met in a venue called Port Vale House (named after a point in a valley where pottery was transported by canal). Ironically this Port Vale House was in Stoke, one of the other '5 towns' that make up the City of Stoke-on-Trent (Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Burslem and Tunstall are the others. You will notice that that makes six towns, but Stoke is always known as the five towns or more commonly the Potteries.
Their original ground wasn't in Burslem but in Hanley, a shopping town about three miles from their present location. My father was a life-long Vale fan and grew up watching them at the old Recreation Ground until they moved to Vale Park, Burslem in the early 50s.
When I was a kid during the 60s I often walked past the old ground and it was a car park then, but you could still see a few bent and twisted crush barriers on a grassy bank - a sad site no matter whose old ground it is.
My old school looked down on Vale Park so I spent most of my time staring out of a window day dreaming!
God! I suddenly feel old!


Arsenal?? (A workplace not a geographical place)

I always thought that Port Vale was named after canal 'ports' and barge wharfs for pottery and 'vale' for the valleys where the canals and potteries were.(Canals not liking hills much! )

 

[Balham Green]

Mervyn-- is Port Vale the answer?

Yep. Apparently when the group who formed the club were looking for a name, one of them remembered a building of that name, nowhere near Stoke, and thought it would be a nice name for a club.

What about QPR?

 

[IJN]

Grimsby?

 

[mervyn]

Mervyn-- is Port Vale the answer?

Yep. Apparently when the group who formed the club were looking for a name, one of them remembered a building of that name, nowhere near Stoke, and thought it would be a nice name for a club.

What about QPR?

They first played at Queens Park, NW London

 

[mervyn]

Can you name the only team on that list whose name bears absolutely no relationship to where they play or have played?

Arsenal?? (A workplace not a geographical place)

I always thought that Port Vale was named after canal 'ports' and barge wharfs for pottery and 'vale' for the valleys where the canals and potteries were.(Canals not liking hills much! )

Arsenal’s first ground was at Woolwich Arsenal, so definitely place related.

 

[Lundan Cabbie]

Mervyn-- is Port Vale the answer?

Yep. Apparently when the group who formed the club were looking for a name, one of them remembered a building of that name, nowhere near Stoke, and thought it would be a nice name for a club.

What about QPR?

Queens Park is very much a place, between Kilburn and Kensal Green in North West London and one of QPR's early grounds was in Kensal Green (they have had more than a dozen).

 

[Southampton Hake]

Keeping the questions rolling.

5 of the listed teams in the Tiger ladder have played in the top 5 divisions of the English Football Pyramid, (the 5 division being the Confrence/National League Premier) at some time in the club's history.

 

[Pogleswoody]

Can you name the only team on that list whose name bears absolutely no relationship to where they play or have played?

Arsenal?? (A workplace not a geographical place)

I always thought that Port Vale was named after canal 'ports' and barge wharfs for pottery and 'vale' for the valleys where the canals and potteries were.(Canals not liking hills much! )

Arsenal’s first ground was at Woolwich Arsenal, so definitely place related.

Well yes but only if they were called Woolwich! o