Blackie Gray. I think the red head might have been Noel Baxter but the Melchester Rovers I fell in love with was the early 80s version, just before Roy Race got shot (by some actor called Elton) and before he left Melchester to be player-manager of Walford Rovers (obviously unconnected to the Eastenders version).Arrywithnobrain wrote: 13 Aug 2017, 21:30 I read about Melchester Rovers in The Tiger every week, following them up and down the country and in and out of Europe, when they were a legendary team and/or a team of legends, but this current set up is a shambolic shadow of a once great club. I haven’t missed a game in over forty years but I haven’t watched one either - preferring to pontificate about matters in a way that demonstrates my complete ignorance of the finer points of football.
Following the retirement of the immortal Roy Race, when “Tubby” Moreton filled his beaming face with a pasty for the last time and “Blackie” Blacksomething hung up his boots and “Ginger” Nutmeg (or whatever his name was) transferred to fierce local rivals Eggshitter City, I knew that the future was bleak for the pantheon of dreams that The Rovers had always been.
New management corrupted all that was important about the club: the talismatic red shirts with yellow sleeves changed every year to accommodate the god of Sponsorship and the array of yellow and red stripes, hoops and polka dots worn by the fans in emulation of their team made the Melchester Kop (which is uniquely along the length of the pitch rather than behind a goal) seem like a counter at a jumble sale; the stadium changed its name every time the local double glazing firm went bust and the traditional wooden stands with their time honoured fire risks were replaced by concrete edifices built to the latest Subbuteo designs that transformed into skating rinks whenever rain fell.
If things were bad off the pitch they were worse on it. Magnificent Melchester slid rapidly down the League and out of it, into a godforsaken non-league collection of part-timers and hasbeens which bore the name of something sinister like a betting syndicate or insurance company and were heading for extinction in a way that justified their new nickname of “The Dodos”.
Managers came and went more rapidly than the physio could treat an injured player and the latest recruit arrived with the club staring at the abyss of Sunday League soccer. He was a complete tyro with no previous managerial experience but he performed miracles and saved the club from relegation on the last day of two successive seasons. As a manager he was a novice but he did have some football pedigree for he was ... Roy Race: a one-club hero who as a player had amassed more England caps than Shilton, Charlton, Rooney and Moore combined and who had won more trophies with Melchester Rovers than Real Madrid, Celtic and Newton Heath could jointly lay claim to.
Players queued to play in trials for the club: two former European Footballers of the Year and an ex Golden Boot winner begged for the chance to play for free and Joe Hart indicated that he was available whilst resting from making shampoo commercials but Roy stuck to his time worn principles of hiring journeymen on extortionate wages that easily overspent his huge Sky money Budget.
Of course as soon as the club failed to win three successive games it was clear that this founder member of the Inter-Galactic Football Hall of Fame had absolutely no knowledge or tactical awareness of the practicalities of non-league football and that he should be replaced immediately by either an embittered youth coach living in a parallel universe or by an inveterate thread starter who is unsure of the spelling of his own name.
Melchester Rovers were never the same once the Kemp brothers joined them, prior to murdering people as the Krays.
especially sentence #1.
