CCFC Programme History 29: Season 1936-37a – CCFC’s Pre Season Public Practice Match.
CCFPA’s former chairman Jim Brown and long time committee member Mike Young have been building up a collection of full programme images from CCFC issues pre 1945. We have currently exceeded 700 full programme images -home and away! All images are taken from the collection and copyright CCFPA (and must not be reproduced without permission).
Season 1936-37 was an important one for our legendary long-term manager Harry Storer and his players. For several 1930’s seasons the club had been knocking on the door of promotion back to the Second Division after losing their foothold there in 1925-26. Storer had built a series of attractive, high scoring teams regularly knocking in (literally) a ton of goals and 1935-36 saw their dreams fulfilled with promotion as Champions of Division Three South with a 2-1 home win over Torquay United in May 1936.
CCFC fans had been used to at least one pre-season public practice match at Highfield Road prior to the big kick-off where first-teamers and reserves were tested for the upcoming rigours. Obviously this season was particularly important given the higher standard of Division Two football to be expected.
This pre-season the club played a private practice match on 11th August before holding the first of two public games between the ‘Whites’ and the ‘Stripes’ a fortnight and a week before the season proper started. They produced a ‘team sheet’ style programme for the game whose front would be familiar to fans from the two or four page efforts produced for the odd Highfield Road fixture in previous seasons. Supporters were always eager to see a good selection of the club’s staff (including new signings and perhaps unfamiliar youngsters from the reserves) put through their paces. These public practices were closely contested games with teams mixing established first teamers and aspirants the games attracting surprisingly large attendances! The following week’s final practice game (a 6-4 victory for the Stripes) saw a crowd of 5,592 gather at HR.
Stripes 7-5 Whites at Highfield Road 15th August 1936 Att. 6,636
The only difference to the usual productions on the front page was the headline statement ‘Important Announcement Inside‘. Sadly since we only have images of two of pages we cannot tell you what that was and if it was contained as an insert! If anyone out there has images of any additional pages to the two provided please let Mike know on m.young9@ntlworld.com.
The other page we have an image of is the one which acts as the teamsheet for the match kickng off at 3.15pm in the afternoon.
The teams were as per programme. The ‘Stripes’ had the eventual first team defence that kicked off the season and the ‘Whites’ most of the attack.
Below are the full details of those CCFC players who actually turned out as below:-
Stripes
Bill Morgan; Jack Astley & Bernard Smith; Billy Frith, George Mason & Jack Archer; Harvey Pritchard, ‘Jock’ Lauderdale, Ellis Lager, Billy Lake & George Fitton
Whites
Horace Pearson; Vic Brown & Harry Boileau; Jack Snape, Tommy Crawley & Ernie Curtis; George McNestry, Billy MacDonald, Clarrie Bourton, Les Jones & Jimmy Liddle
It was certainly a high scoring game with both Scotsman Jock Lauderdale and Jimmy ‘Fred’ Liddle both getting hat-tricks and Billy Lake a brace. CCFC’s ‘goal machine’ Clarrie Bourton only scored the one! The Stripes scoring the first four ending up 4-1 at half-time. The order of scoring was as follows (we don’t have the exact times):-
Stripes: Lager (1st); Lauderdale 3 (2nd:10th:12th); Pritchard (3rd); Lake 2 (4th:11th)
Whites: MacDonald or Archer (5th); Bourton (6th); Liddle 3 (7th:8th:9th)
Bill MacDonald
Clarrie Bourton
Jimmy Liddle (in CCFC gear)
The season began on the 29th August with a 1-1 draw at Doncaster Rovers with George McNestry grabbing a 60th minute equaliser and the Bantam’s fielding the following team:-
Bill Morgan; Jack Astley & Bernard Smith; Billy Frith, George Mason (c) & Jack Archer; George McNestry, ‘Jock’ Lauderdale, Clarrie Bourton, Les Jones & Jimmy Liddle
George McNestry
The season got even better subsequently and CCFC would have been pleased with their final eighth place finish in their first season back in the second tier! Only a couple more ‘normal’ seasons were possible before the outbreak of the Second World War.
However before we look at the programme of season 1937-38 in our next post in this series we will look at the usual 20 page league programme for 1936-37.
