October 25 Newsletter

October Newsletter

Greetings to all. 

We thought we would start by recognising the part that Milan Mandaric played in this club after buying us out of administration in 1999. He gave us some of the best years of football that we’d seen for many years and players like Prosinecki and the fantastic 2002-3 team that stormed the Championship. And then he kept us in the Premier League. Thank you Milan. We will have more on him in our next magazine, due out at the end of this month.

Apart from the sad news about Milan, October has started well for the Society. On Tuesday this week we had both our AGM and our evening with Simon Inglis. Thank you to all those who attended. The AGM minutes will be posted on our website soon and the Committee was elected for the forthcoming year so we can carry on our work! 

Mick Comben outlined the work of the Society during the last year and thanked various people for their efforts. We’ve had a great 2024-25 with the highlights including the following - over 2,000 guests taken on a stadium tour since last summer; our social media site is the most visited Pompey site on BlueSky; over 150 major articles have been posted on our socials throughout the year with numerous articles posted on our web-site; there’s been the start of a proper, physical, PFC museum at the City Museum; we’ve launched the monthly 'Past Chimes’ show on Express FM; brought out a new digital magazine; run external speaker and ex-player events; captured various items of memorabilia like the Jimmy Dickinson England shirt and the Jack Warner collection; completed the project to list every player that has played for us internationally (and there are a lot!); commenced the project to thoroughly research every player that has ever played for us and allocate them a 'unique player number’ so that we can say that they were number X to have represented PFC (our first goalkeeper, Matt Reilly, has the distinction of being player number 1 for PFC and we are up to the 1970s so far); we have brought more order to our archive and various collections; introduced a new membership system; raised around £20,000 for the Peter Harris medal appeal; delivered the Hall of Fame dinner in April; published ‘The Making Of A Modern Pompey”; worked hard to sell all our books and other items such as the signed and framed photos of players; doubled our membership; delivered the South Stand anniversary storyboards; connected with dementia home Admiral Jellicoe House to set up a football zone for the residents; captured fans memories digitally; run pop-up shops; and much more! The main thing that we unfortunately havn't moved forward as much as we would have wanted to is the capture of all kinds of data onto our website such as players details, scanned programmes for every match both home and away, pictures of players, newspaper reports from every match, and that kind of thing. We plan to work on this over the next few years as it is a big job. We also need to finish sorting out the whole archive and properly cataloguing everything that we have. But we should be very much “cup half full” about our year's work since the last AGM.

Mick will always talk proudly about the Society at length and so of course the AGM was bound to overrun on Tuesday! But for once we’ll let him off as the list of good things that he had to cover was a long one. But as we ran out of time, if anyone who was at the AGM wants to raise anything further than just email us on history@pompeyfc.co.uk 

Please remember that we still have a vacancy for a Treasurer, but Paul Boynton will not walk away until someone comes forward. Thank you to Paul, and “thank you” to everyone who has helped, given money, or attended an event during the last year.

After the AGM, nearly 80 people then attended the Simon Inglis event. The history guys from another football club said to us that “you did well to get him” so this was a real coup for us. We spent Tuesday afternoon taking Simon around the ground with Colin Farmery taking his usual super photos, this time for Simon to use in his forthcoming book which will, by the sound of it, refer to Fratton Park a lot. Simon is a great presenter and in the evening covered the life and times of Archibald Leitch, the designer of our South Stand. And Simon showed us just how significant Archie was to the whole history of ground design. We were joined by the editors of the Groundtastic Magazine and also one of Archie’s relatives, his great, great, grandson, Sam Easton. Our colleague, architect Michael Saunders, our “go to” person re the history of the Fratton Park stadium, supported throughout. As it was all just so interesting that we ran out of time to do everything that we wanted to cover, specifically on Fratton Park, so watch this space for another event on this early in the new year. Simon said that he enjoyed himself immensely, and Paul Boynton drove him safely to London afterwards. 

The next big event coming up is a “Memory Morning With Mick Mellows” who played for us from 1973, being one of new Chairman John Deacon’s first signings. We can’t wait to hear his memories of Deacon, a figure who polarised opinion during his time at Pompey. Mick Mellows won Player of the Year in 1975 and is bringing with him some of his memorabilia such as a bottle of sherry presented to the players for the 75th anniversary of the club. And no, you cant have a taste!! The event is at 10.30am on November 25th in the Legends Lounge at Fratton Park. Hopefully Johnny Moore will do the interviewing again for us. 

Our membership numbers continue to increase. Our membership secretary, Richard Wilson, says "I am delighted to tell you membership numbers now approach 200, and the offer for our members has been strengthened this past year. If you would like to join us on this journey, do let us know”. Thanks Richard.

Other items to mention this month are:

MEMORABILIA

Thanks to Collections Officer Mick Hall who successfully bid for us on a collection previously owned by former player and trainer, Jack Warner. Jack started his career with Preston and made over 200 appearances for Pompey after moving here from Southampton. After the first World War he became Pompey’s trainer for many years so we were delighted to get the collection featuring his gold Pocket Watch - to commemorate promotion to Division One in 1927 - plus his 1934 FA Cup Runners Up gold medal and two very rare photos of Jack by Southsea photographer and club official Stephen Cribb. It’s a nice collection that was on display at the AGM and it will soon go into the Museum or perhaps into our new cabinet in the South Stand. We are buying a cabinet to go on the mezzanine floor above the main reception to Frogmore Road and on the route to some of the lounges. This means that many fans will see the items each week and pride of place will be taken by Jimmy Dickinson’s England shirt purchased recently, plus a pair of his shorts and one of his caps. Plus the Peter Harris medals. We’re hoping to secure a sponsor for the cabinet. 

If you have any items of memorabilia that you wish to donate to us then please do let us know.

CITY MUSEUM

We have met with the City Museum people in the last month and agreed how we want to up-date the collections of Pompey memorabilia on their top floor. Committee members Phil Magrath and Greg Hills are leading the project to set it up and will regularly refresh the displays. They will now be setting up an exhibition of Milan Mandaric items, plus having a cabinet devoted to Peter Harris items as well as one for a collection from the George Smith family. George was our manager during the sixties and there are some fascinating items to go on display. One of our old turnstiles, made by the famous turnstiles manufacturer Ellison & Co, we think from 1925 when the South Stand was built, is in the room already, so we can show that to guests and tell them more about its history. Admission to the City Museum is free, it has some nice PFC items already on the top floor but we’ll let you know when it’s fully set-up with the new collections. Mick explained at the AGM that the club’s “museum” already exists but it just isn't in one physical space and includes:-

• The JD statue and boards on the wall about the great man
• The Hall of Fame by the statue
• The list of fans who saved the club on the side of the North Stand
• Displays inside the ground in both North and South stands such as the new South Stand timeline boards 
• The war memorial in Carisbrooke Road 
• The Championship corridor in the South Stand
• The trophy cabinet in the boardroom 
• The cabinet on the mezzanine floor
• Our web-site which is constantly being added to

To this list we now add the physical museum at the City Museum in Museum Road in Old Portsmouth and we hope to add the definitive list of International players soon to a suitable location in the ground. 

PAST CHIMES

Thanks to Richard Atkins-Greg as usual for this. Every month there is another great show to listen to on Express FM. September’s guest was Gemma Hillier, also in our club Hall of Fame. We loved that episode and loved hearing about her time with us and about her beach soccer career. There were some fascinating stories about England playing beach soccer and Team GB travelling abroad, winning a silver medal. Richard has now recorded the likes of the great Ray Crawford, Vince Hilaire, Colin Sullivan, Kit Symons and of course Gemma who we believe may be the first woman on a combined Hall of Fame wall at any football club in the country. Coming up in the next couple of months, Andy Awford will be the guest for the November episode and for October we’ll be going right back to the beginning of the football club, looking at the life and career of the great Bob Blyth, who over forty years did about every job it was possible to do for Pompey. If you want to listen to any of the past episodes, then this is the link:

 https://www.mixcloud.com/pompeyonexpress/  

And if you have any problems with that or if you have trouble finding it, please email Richard on pompeylegend1954@gmail.com and he will do his best to sort it out.

Richard is always looking for guests, those who have served the football club over the years, as players, supporters or working behind the scenes. The podcast is usually broadcast on the last Sunday of each month at 6pm, but it’s often repeated and you have the links above.

OUR NEXT MAGAZINE

Please don’t forget to let us know if you want to submit an article or an idea for our next magazine. Edition number two is due out at the end of this month and has some super articles in it plus of course something on Milan’s time at Pompey. Thanks to Colin for editing it.

FUNDRAISING

The fundraising pot is creeping towards the target for the Peter Harris medals. We have three months to go and need around £5,000. There is to be a bucket collection on Saturday, November 29th, at the Bristol City match so if anyone would be prepared to volunteer to shake a bucket with committee members, please let us know by emailing us on history@pompeyfc.co.uk and we really could do with a few more helpers for this, to give it one big final push to get to the target. We are also proposing to lay on a curry night in Southsea in November or December so more details of that will follow. And we have a special painting of Peter, donated by Bob Read, to raffle sometime before the Blackburn game on 13th December, the deadline for the fundraising. Spookily, Blackburn is also the team that Peter made his debut against back in 1946 - you couldn’t make it up! Again, more details of the raffle etc will follow, but together, those events should get us close to our target. 

TESCO

Many thanks to Colin Farmery for running another pop up shop at the Middlesborough game in the Tesco foyer. We sold books and memberships and met a long-term fan who was over here from Florida, just to watch his first ever Pompey match. We managed to record his story and that of his family who came from the area and this will go up on our web-site soon.

CAPTURING FANS MEMORIES 

Thanks to all those people that have responded so far. Steve Tovey will be in touch shortly to record your memories. Due to the responses we have decided to amend the competition slightly as follows;-

1940s/50s   September/October

1960s/70s  November/December

1980s/90s  January /February

2000s          March/April

If you wish to take part please email Steve Tovey on Tovey566@gmail.com giving your telephone number and game attended and Steve will do the rest. Thanks Steve.

ADMIRAL JELLICOE HOUSE

As we told you last month, we have been to Admiral Jellicoe House in Locksway Road, the purpose built care home for veterans of the Royal Navy. We’ve been donating items that they will use in a football corner to help residents who loved Pompey and the game in general, including the Fratton Park seats that we told you about last month. We’re hoping to get Alan Knight along to officially open it later in October and maybe get some photos in the local paper to help raise awareness of the fantastic work they do there.

QUESTIONS FROM FANS

An example of the sort of enquiry we can help with - a lady contacted us via Roy at the Central Supporters group, with two pages of signatures from her autograph book from the 1960s that had been collected by her brother. From the autographs, collected together, committee member Steve Tovey was able to work out the exact game that they came from as the lady’s brother had recalled that it was a midweek game and only one match played during the week had the right combination of players. Thanks to “Sherlock” Tovey. We’re always here if you have any similar puzzles to solve. 

PHS BADGES

As you know, we have had made up some History Society badges. They are for members only, and a member may buy a badge for £5, obtaining them from one of our events or by emailing us on history@pompeyfc.co.uk and we will put one aside for them and put the funds towards the medal appeal. We are going to extend the offer where if a member refers a friend who subsequently signs up to join PHS then they can get a free member badge. We will do that until the end of the year. To qualify, you need to email history@pompeyfc.co.uk and propose a new member who we will then follow up. Provided they sign up before the end of the year there will be a free badge available for you to be collected from us eg at a home game.  

That's all for now. We look forward to seeing you at the Mick Mellows event on 25th November. It should be a good one.

Play Up Pompey!

Pompey History Society