Monday, November 11, 2019

BRIGG TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB'S CENTENARY MATCH AGAINST SHEFFIELD UNITED


This historic and probably unique picture shows Brigg Town Football Club players and officials at The Hawthorns during the 1964/65 season when our local club famously celebrated its 100th anniversary.
The caption attached to the old print we've just scanned suggests that the Zebras, in their traditional black and white stripes, were playing a team representing Sheffield United - another club founded in the mid-19th century.
We have vague boyhood memories of spectating at this centenary fixture.
Brigg Town's long-serving chairman, Harry Williams, is second from right - wearing a jacket and tie. He's next to the referee who we think may have been G. A. S. Brooks, also a leading local football administrator.
Len Sharpe (ex-Scunthorpe United) and Mick Stothard are among the Brigg players.
Sheffield United - The Blades - have long favoured red and white striped shirts which would have clashed with Brigg's strip. So they changed to white for this friendly.
Note the original metal and wood stand on the far side of the ground, adjoining the Woodbine Avenue prefabs (sadly not in view, although we can just see a council house in South View Avenue beyond).
Players at this time changed in a green-painted wooden structure close to the back gardens of properties in Hawthorn Avenue.
Could this be the only surviving image from the centenary of Brigg Town FC (founded in 1864)?
Perhaps Jimmy Huxford and his colleagues who are now running the club might be interested in the original print to display on the wall in their clubhouse at the E C Surfacing Stadium, as it's now known. If so, Brigg Blog will be happy to donate it to their archive.
Brigg Town moved from the Brocklesby Ox ground, off Bridge Street, to Hawthorn Avenue circa 1960.
In the mid-1960s the main stand and clubhouse had yet to be established in its current form - several extensions being added over the years.

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