Olympian 2

Posted on July 6, 2012 by kwchas

Following on from the Grenville Millington article, another former Chester player played a key role in the Great Britain team that reached the Semi-Final of the football competition at the 1948 Olympics in London. Eric Lee played in all of Britain’s fixtures in the competition and by all accounts emerged with a great deal of credit. Legendary former Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby, who coached the Olympic team, rated him as potentially one of the best half-backs in the game at the time.

Eric was born in 1922 and signed for Chester after being spotted by manager Frank Brown as a 17 year old playing in local football for Hoole Alex. During the war he served in India and Burma and made his full debut for his home-town club in the first post-war fixture at York City in August 1946. Over the next 11 years Eric played 363 league games for Chester placing him fourth in the list of the club’s Football League appearances. In recognition of his service he was awarded a benefit game against Liverpool in 1952.

Eric Lee

Throughout his entire time on the books at Sealand Road Eric remained as an amateur as he advanced his career in teaching. Chester themselves offered Eric a professional contract and at least one other unnamed club offered a similar deal but, perhaps with an eye to the future, he turned them both down. Although this decision cost Eric the opportunity of playing at a higher level it did open the door for him to represent his country at an amateur level. During the 1946/47 season he was a regular at left half for Chester where his performances earned an England amateur call-up against Wales.

By the following campaign Eric had started his teacher training at Loughborough College which restricted his appearances for Chester. These limitations did not always go down well at Sealand Road and it appears that there was some discussion and doubts about whether the Chester team should be disrupted to accommodate him.

Despite these doubts and a lack of match practice, a late call up to appear in a representative game against a University eleven in Bristol saw Eric impress the selectors who proceeded to pick him for an FA X1 in an Olympic Trial match at Portsmouth in February 1948. The FA X1 consisted of players from the likes of Yorkshire Amateurs, Bromley and Sutton and Eric captained the team that beat Scottish amateurs Queen’s Park 4-0. The Sporting Chronicle reported that Eric had a good game and he was chosen to play in another trial match at Hampden Park in May.

For the second trial Eric furthered his ambition to get into the Olympic team as he played for the Stripes against the Whites. In the first half he played at left half and switched to centre-half for the second 45 minutes as the Stripes won 4-1.

On June 19th Eric was selected at centre half for the final British Association Olympic trial team to play Holland in Amsterdam. Although the British team were beaten by a last minute goal Eric was reported to have played brilliantly and this was followed by the news that he was one of 23 players to report to coach Matt Busby for special training in readiness for the Olympic Games. This good news was accompanied by the announcement that he had also re-signed for Chester with the prospect of increased availability in the new season.

A final warm-up game was played against France, in Nantes, on July 25th before the Olympic competition opened with a First Round fixture against Holland at Arsenal on July 31st. Playing at centre-half Eric helped Britain to an unexpected victory over the Dutch team and five days later a 1-0 win over the French at Fulham earned the side a place in the semi-finals. The Daily Dispatch reported that Britain’s strength against the French had been in the half-back line and Eric was said to have played better than he did against the Dutch.

In the Semi-Final Yugoslavia deservedly triumphed over Britain by three goals to one but Eric emerged as one of the successes in the game and was described by one radio commentator as “iron-curtain Lee”. Two days later Denmark defeated the British 5-3 in the Third and Fourth place play-off game to deny the players a bronze medal.

After the tournament Eric returned to his teacher training at Loughborough while continuing to establish his reputation at Chester as an ice-cool player, calm under pressure and a master of the sliding tackle.

Eric left Chester in 1957 and emigrated to Canada where he took up a teaching job, initially in Manitoba before moving to Quebec. A Physical Education and geography teacher, Eric took up a position with Saguenay Valley High School in Arvida, Quebec in 1960 where he later became Principal. In 1970 he moved to Ottawa where he lived until his death in June 1999. The two photos below are taken from Saguenay Valley school yearbooks and I’m indebted to Francois Lafortune of Arvida for supplying the photographs and the information on Eric’s life in Canada.

As a postscript the Lee family had a more recent link to the Olympics with Peter, the youngest of Eric’s three sons, having an illustrious career as an ice hockey player. In 2006 Peter was assistant coach to the Switzerland Ice Hockey team at the Winter Olympics in Torino as well as at Vancouver in 2010.

PE Teacher Eric in the 1960s

Deva Stadium Part 1

Posted on June 7, 2012 by kwchas

It’s 20 years this year since the Deva Stadium was constructed with the £3 million ground completed in a mere 30 weeks. The first game took place on August 25th 1992, against Stockport County, in the Coca Cola League Cup and I have recollections of a chaotic opening night with reports of wet paint and club operations being run from portakabins in the car park.

No-one could ever call the Deva Stadium the most attractive ground in the country and at best it can be described as functional but after 20 years it does seem to have finally developed its own character and now feels as comfortable as an old shoe. I still think it must be the only ground in the country with its own micro-climate as a howling gale invariable sweeps the stadium on match day as the rest of the city experiences a zen-like calm.

One of the problems has always been the low capacity and it’s a shame that the proposals for a more practical 10,000 stadium couldn’t be implemented. Granted attendances may not have reached this level but at least it would have given more flexibility and reduced congestion when the ground reached more than two-thirds full. Remember Preston , Stockport and Scarborough?

When the subject of a move to the end of Bumpers Lane first arose in the latter half of the 1980s various pie in the sky proposals were put forward. The most ambitious being a 15,000-20,000 capacity ground as part of a sports complex with restaurant, leisure centre and athletics track. Gradually this was scaled down until the tight timescales meant we ended up with the basic 6,000 stadium we have today. Bearing in mind the current requirements for training facilities it’s interesting to note that one of the initial planning applications from developers Morrisons included two practice pitches occupying half the current car park area. This was rejected by the council who offered the land at a low rent on the condition that stringent parking criteria were met.

Over the next few weeks I intend posting a series of photographs showing the building of the ground which started on January 28th 1992 with a turf-cutting ceremony. The first four photographs were actually taken as far back as February 1991 when the prolonged political machinations were still ongoing and no firm planning application had been approved. All four were taken from the end of Bumpers Lane looking towards Blacon and Sealand.

The second set of photographs were taken 12 months later at the turf-cutting ceremony.

Chairman Ray Crofts (with spade) alongside former chairman Reg Rowlands and vice-presidents Cliff Thompson (far left), Len Lloyd (second left). Also pictured are representatives from Morrisons while Harry McNally is partially hidden

Harry McNally digs the first sod with Les Perry from Blacon who won the special draw to make the first cut.

The cause of the drainage problems at the corner of the away end?

The ceremony was attended by more than 200 fans but the drama was still not over as an angry city council claimed that the whole event had been held on the land without permission as the rental agreement remained unsigned. The council were particularly annoyed that Morrison’s had started to move equipment on to the land and peg out the site and they only allowed the event to take place so as not to disappoint fans that had turned up. As a result an injunction was issued preventing any further work and the builders were evicted from the land immediately after the ceremony. Fortunately the problems were quickly ironed out and construction started for a second time on February 3rd.

Morrison’s themselves were desperate to get the ground completed as quickly as possible as they risked forfeiting a £500,000 bond left with the Football League if the new stadium was not completed by the start of the 1992/93 season. Construction moved swiftly on what was by now a very basic ground and many supporters regularly made the journey down Bumpers Lane, past the decaying skeleton of the Sealand Road ground, to take photographs of the new structure. Meanwhile, 40 miles away in Macclesfield, Harry McNally performed miracles by dragging the Blues away from a seemingly impossible situation in the third tier relegation zone.

I’ll post some more photos of the construction over the next few weeks. If anyone else has any interesting photos of the ground building please get in touch.

Green Day 1

Posted on May 23, 2012 by kwchas

Thanks to Fraser Warburton for providing his memories of the green kit:

When I first starting watching Chester they played in green shirts, old gold trim and white shorts. This sounds very appealing and I was rather pleased as the colours were very unusual, in a period of unimaginative and somewhat plain strips, but it was not a pleasurable experience to see the kit in action. The green, though by no means the dark ivy green of a hundred years or so ago, was by no means vibrant and was not as light as say Burscough’s kit. Neither did it have the brightening effect of a combination with white which we have seen in recent years with the hoops of Yeovil and Northwich. The ‘old gold’ is an intriguing description, but was in practice a dark (you could almost say ‘dirty’) yellow, and had the effect of muting the green. It was the official kit for three seasons, from 1959 to 1962. In the first two seasons it was combined with green and yellow hooped stockings, and in the last with yellow (‘old gold’).

I don’t know whether statistics would prove that the winter of of 1960-1 was unusually wet, but my overriding memories of the time were of watching soaked and drab green shirts on a churned muddy pitch against the background of the weathered concrete and corrugated iron of the old stadium on an overcast day. What wasn’t actually rusty was painted a dark rust-red colour; even the gravel on the Kop, where the flagged terracing finished, seemed to be crushed from the local sandstone. Muddy green, brown, rust-red – it was like camouflage.

So where did the green come from? For obvious reasons green isn’t the most practical colour to play a field-based sport in, and the few teams that use it tend to throw in generous dollops of white. Was it a memory in the mind of a director of the older green kit? Information was at a premium in those days, and no-one in my generation was aware that Chester had played in green until 1920. But that was only forty years before 1959, when the colour was reintroduced. Nowadays we’re well aware of Chester’s colours in the 1970s; in fact, next season’s kit is a bow to the 1974 strip. So it could have been a harking back to the past.

Or was it associated with Stan Pearson as manager? It was certainly dropped pretty sharply when he left. He was of course notably associated with Manchester United, and we have become aware in recent years that Newton Heath played in green and yellow. But this is last recorded in 1896 and in seems unlikely that in those pragmatic and non-nostalgic days that Pearson would have been influenced by this.

It wasn’t very popular. There was a feeling amongst the older generation that it was something of an aberration from the traditional colours of blue and white stripes, and even the younger supporters, who hadn’t seen the old strip, felt that it was a somewhat unnatural colour. So the change to the iconic pinstripe in 1962-3 was generally welcomed. If nothing else it was brighter and cleaner.

News travelled slowly in those days. Teams normally playing in predominantly blue colours still absentmindedly turned up with their change strip, which I remember annoyed me as a youngster. I was, for instance, looking forward to seeing Hartlepools United playing in their blue and white stripes and was less than impressed when they trotted out in red. By the time Chester readopted their blue and white in 1962 the penny had dropped that they played in green and we were treated to a succession of teams having to play in Chester’s old green shirts because they had brought only their (by now clashing) first choice colours. Take a bow again, Hartlepools United.

On a personal level, the colours caused me some embarrassment. In 1961 someone gave me a programme of a League Cup tie between West Ham United and Plymouth Argyle in which it was stated that Plymouth were the only team in the Football League to play in green. Ever sensitive to any slight to my beloved Chester, I fired off a somewhat snotty letter pointing out the true state of affairs and was a little ashamed to get a nicely conciliatory letter in reply.

Not a kit whose demise should be regretted. But I’m still fond of it because that was my bonding experience with Chester.

Everything’s Gone Green

Posted on May 9, 2012 by kwchas

I like the look of the new green away shirt and it will not be the first time that the club have played in that colour. At various times throughout their history green has been used as the first choice strip as well as an alternative when colours have clashed.

After temporarily disbanding in 1899 Chester emerged at their new ground in Whipcord Lane in 1901 and played in various combinations of green and white until 1920 when they switched to black and white stripes. It appears to have been a dark green shirt and team photographs suggest that the club also played in green and white stripes. More recently the club switched to green shirts with gold trim and white shorts from 1959 to 1962 but more of that later.

By the time Chester entered the Football League in 1931 they had already adopted what we now consider the traditional blue and white stripes but initially used green as a change strip. For their first ever Division Three North away fixture, at Wrexham, Chester were forced to switch to green because of a clash with the home side’s blue shirts. Hard to imagine now.

More recently, in an era of some truly awful shirts, City used green and black stripes as an alternative in 1995/96 and green and black checks in 1997/98. The 1995 option was actually described as jade and black and I personally rate it as one of the best away strips the club has used. The less said about the checked shirt the better.

When Chester changed from blue and white stripes to green and gold in 1959 it was reported in the Cheshire Observer that the switch was made to avoid changes when colours clashed at away grounds. These days it seems to be the done thing for a club to automatically revert to a different strip for away games but at the end of the 1950s clubs would only change shirts if absolutely necessary. Blue was a popular colour at the time and a number of other clubs appear to have changed in 1959 including Watford (blue to yellow) and Southend (blue to white). With Cardiff City reputedly changing from blue to red next season it’s interesting to note that there were no reported objections when the change was announced at Chester.

In changing to green Chester became one of only two teams to play in that colour alongside Plymouth Argyle. There doesn’t seem to be any explanation as to why green was chosen but it appears to have been chosen for its rarity value rather than as a conscious move to revert to the green used at the start of the twentieth century. There certainly seems to have been no rational reason why gold should be chosen for the collar and cuffs.

The change in colours marked the beginning of Stan Pearson’s first full season in charge. The former Manchester United and England international had taken over as player-manager in March 1959 but the new kit brought little luck and became associated with a particularly bad run in the club’s history. The “continental style” kit had its initial outing in the traditional trial game at Sealand Road when the first team wore it against the reserves and promptly lost 3-1. It made its first appearance in a league game at Notts County where Chester lost 2-1 after Eric Davis had given Pearson’s side a first half lead.

Eric Davis scores the first goal in green at Notts County

Chester managed to narrowly avoid re-election in 1959/60 but the next two campaigns proved disastrous with two bottom of the league finishes. The green kit outlasted Pearson who was sacked after a 1-0 FA Cup defeat to non-league Morecambe at Sealand Road in November 1961. By that time Chester were in the middle of a run of 26 league games without a win and the green shirt was seen by some supporters as one of the factors behind this run.

In December, after a 3-2 home defeat to Aldershot, the Cheshire Observer reported that one gentleman in the boardroom had put the blame on defeat on the green shirts. There certainly seems to have been a general feeling amongst supporters that the colours were associated with bad luck and that the green was not bringing Chester the luck of the Irish. Many fans also expressed their regret that the traditional blue and white stripes had been abandoned as this was still associated with many pre-war achievements.

At the end of March 1962 the club announced they were discarding the green and gold and replacing it with white shirts with narrow blue vertical stripes and the new kit was first used in a friendly against German side Hamborn in April. Chester had briefly flirted with white shirts and black shorts in the weeks leading up to the announcement although ironically they were wearing the green and gold when the long run without a win was ended with a 4-1 victory over Chesterfield.

I’ve never seen a colour photograph of the old green shirt but even in the black and white pictures it comes across as an extremely lacklustre kit. Next season’s away shirt looks a lot more vibrant and it’s impossible to imagine it having the same disastrous effect as the early 1960s version.

Don’t Stand So Close

Posted on April 5, 2012 by kwchas

After posting the last photographs of the old Sealand Road ground I was provided with some more superb photos of the Stadium by Fraser Warburton. There are plenty of photos of the main stand being demolished but it’s rare to see pictures of its construction behind the old wooden stand.

Building work started on the new stand towards the end of the 1978/79 season and Fraser’s three photographs were taken in May 1979 after the final home game against Sheffield Wednesday. In the short term the method of construction proved beneficial as it allowed the ground to remain fully functional but when the wooden stand was demolished it created an awful no-mans land which destroyed the character of the ground. The overall appearance was hardly helped by the chicken wire fence erected parallel to the touchline in front of the stand.

The first photo is one of the best pictures I have seen and was taken from the corner by the open Kop end. It shows the east wing still in place in front of the new structure.

The second photo is a closer view of the new construction taken at the same time as the first picture.

The next picture is actually taken from the Cheshire Observer and although the quality is not particularly good I thought it was interesting because it was obviously taken after the first two photographs but before the final one. It shows the west wing of the wooden stand (nearest the Sealand Road End) was the first section to be demolished.

Fraser’s final picture shows that demolition had progressed slightly and most of the west wing had been cleared but the metal struts holding up the roof were still in place as was the metal crossbeam following the old roof line. In addition the new stand roof had now been erected.

It’s interesting to see the edge of the central section of the wooden stand which was in place 10 years before the wing extension was built. This marked the end of the original stand which was the only seating available in the 1920s when Chester played in the Cheshire County League. The west wing was the first of the extensions to be built, in 1931, with the east wing added a few months later in time for Chester’s entry into the Football League. The banner photograph for this website shows work being completed on the second wing.

The final picture is taken from the Chester v Walsall League Cup programme, the first game in front of the new stand. It was taken 12 days before the start of the season. By now the old stand had been completely removed but there was still a certain amount of work that needed completing and very few seats were in place.

Once again if anyone has memories of the construction of the new stand I would be interested to hear from them. Even better, I would be fascinated to see any more pictures.

I will be adding more photos of the ground in future blogs but I have a long list of things I want to cover so I’ve no idea when this will happen.

Chester Football History

On The Borderline goes online

Tag Archives: Chester

Olympian 2

Deva Stadium Part 1

Green Day 1

Everything’s Gone Green

Don’t Stand So Close

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