Come On You Wands!

I have always maintained that the best way to attack an opponent's goal is through the use of wingers. Like a pincer approach if we were talking about a battle strategy. Back in the time between 1967 and 1973, wingers were out-and-out strikers who hogged the flanks on a football pitch. Nowadays, of course, we have wing halves and even overlapping full-backs that all do the same job as the old-style wingers. Famous wingers since the Second World War have included Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, George Best, John Barnes and, of course, more recently we have Bukayo Saka and Jack Grealish. Yes, there are plenty more wingers in the modern game, if we delve a bit further to reveal them. If I knew the names of any female wingers in the women's game I would name some here, too but, it is remiss of me that I don't. Not having followed the women's game anywhere near as much as the men's game, I hold my hand up and say, "guilty as charged". But this post is about the w...

It was something I had never thought about before. I wasn't disabled and nor was anyone I knew within football. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, of course, disabilities were not always recognised as... disabilities. People with disabilities either had to make do with the few (none!) facilities that a football ground had to offer or, they just couldn't go to watch their local team and support the club. Surprisingly enough, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA, for short) didn't become law in the UK until 8 November 1995. It was after that date that football clubs had to get their arses into gear and start providing adequate facilities for their disabled supporters. And that applied all the way through the football pyramid. The DDA is now known as the Equality Act 2010. Due to the lack of appropriate space, Oxford Road would never have been able to be converted for people in wheelchairs to attend matches there, so it's just as well that the Wands had arranged to play all th...

By now, I should imagine that most people around the world have heard of artificial intelligence (AI, for short). But, I wonder, how many of those billions of the planet's citizens know about all the trouble and strife they could get themselves into if they do not remain vigilant about AI? It is a question worth asking and, more importantly, worth answering because folk can land themselves in a right old pickle if they do not remain aware of, or if they are not guided along, the right path in the first place. I tend not to use AI for my research or writing, not only because I can get into bother with it if I let my guard down but, I was brought up in a time that was pre-computers and most definitely pre-AI. Yes, like most people in 2025, I have learnt to adapt to robots taking over the asylum. But AI is not the be all and end all of everyday life. For those people relying heavily on AI nowadays, it's a sad situation, as yes AI may make menial tasks a lot easier to accomplish bu...

  It was a time of pre-EEC and EU for the United Kingdom, inflation was a word that none of us knew, decimalisation crept into our vocabulary during this period and, it was a time when Cray Wanderers fielded an uncle and nephew with the same name at the same time. The 1960s for Cray at Grassmeade were still at bouyancy level before the storm of the head-on collision with eviction that was to come later in this period. In retrospect, the nuns of St Philomena's (the club's landlords) must have been planning the sale of Grassmeade long before the official announcement that they were to 'chase the money' by selling the ground to property developers. It's just a pity that they never let the club in on their little secret so that we could plan the move away a bit better. But, on the field of play, the Wands kept churning out some decent results against not only their stronger Metropolitan League rivals but also some attractive clubs from other leagues. Cray had some decen...

I am not a mathematician. In fact, when I was at school, my maths markings went down considerably in the second year at secondary school after we were provided with text books that didn't have the answers in the back! Yes, the school or educational authorities back then really did goof; in my first year we were given maths text books with the answers in the back. All us pupils had to do was 'fake it' with the workings out and, as long as the answers came out right, we got high markings. I was one of the top maths stars during that first year, mainly because I had quickly worked out the 'secret' that most of the less bright kids in our class didn't. I was buggered if I was going to reveal my little discovery at the back of the book. I think there were about four of us in our class who had quickly found the door to an easy first year of mathematics — probably the most boring subject in the history of schooling. My theory on maths is, if you can count your change w...

In part one of this mini-series, I wrote about the goalkeepers who kept custody of the Grassmeade goalposts. In this recollection, it is the turn of the defenders. Unlike the goalkeepers, there were plenty more defenders available for the club to choose from. Some came and went while others became benchmark warriors in the Wands' defence. In a way they were the players who never received much credit but, without their sterling effort in every match, the Wanderers would most definitely have struggled to put up a good fight against many of their stronger Metropolitan League rivals. Peter Clark and Alan Bishop shared the right-back position during the late 1960s, until Clark's departure during the 1968-69 season. After that, Bishop made the position his own until he was replaced by Peter Deadman. Across from the right there was Alan Howe, a member of the famous Howe family that frequented lower league EFL clubs in the London area during the 1960s, at left back. Howe was a solid de...

I read recently that Cray Wanderers welcome dogs and puppies with their owners to Flamingo Park. I found the report interesting and not only because I didn't know that dogs enjoy a game of football. I guess it must be their fixation with watching a ball being chased around a field by a bunch of grown men or women, something most dogs are usually akin to in their younger or formative years, when they have those sudden bursts of energy to run after a tennis or Sorbo ball after their owners have lobbed it several yards away. And, as usual when I read wacky out-of-the-ordinary stories, it got me thinking. I know of at least two dogs that made history in the world of football, for differing reasons, but have there been any more...? My first recollection is when somebody tea-leafed the Jules Rimet Trophy when it was on show during the World Cup tournament in England in 1966. From what I remember of the incident and how it was reported at the time, the bluebottles were totally clueless. A...

The fact that I can only qualify to write about players who donned the amber and black of Cray Wanderers, who entertained the crowds at Grassmeade between these years, is because 1967 was when I first started watching them at Grassmeade. 1973 was when we had to vacate the ground, by way of what is today referred to as a 'no fault' eviction, for pastures new and the delights that we never knew awaited us at Oxford Road in Sidcup. Yet, in that short period of time, man had allegedly walked on the Moon and Watergate was still fresh in the minds of everyone. Here in Blighty, Harold Wilson (Labour) and Edward Heath (Conservative) couldn't make up their minds between them who wanted to run the country. Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia, the war in Vietnam raged on and everybody went to San Francisco wearing flowers in their hair while listening to Scott McKenzie on their tinny little transistor radios. It was a time of Woodstock, the Northern Ireland troubles and decimalisation i...

It is almost a daily problem being faced in football during the transfer window. Clubs wait weeks, maybe months, or even years to sign a player. Then they get gazumped by another club with more spending power and it's back to the drawing board. With time running out, some clubs panic and set their sights on signing some player that they had never previously thought of grabbing, just because the position needs filling. Woe betide if that player then turns out to be a damp squib. It's described as 'the disappointment rebound'. Or, in plainer terms, "We can't get player 'A' so we'll have to settle for player 'Y'". So the football club suddenly drops its expectations and signs a much less rated player. And so it is in other aspects of life. I have recently been liaising with an online company which I had hoped would help me with Phase 2 of my current internet journey. Phase 1 was easily enough achieved through my writing and a skill in crea...

Running a website or, alternatively a blog site like this, often comes with routine maintenance that needs to be carried out. Due to constraints on my time, I cannot always complete updates to this blog site when nobody is visiting the site. It also cannot ever happen that way; it's like the Windmill, this blog site never closes (except when the Windmill Theatre did finally stop accepting paying customers through the door on 31 October 1964). Come On You Wands is available to be visited and viewed around the world, so there is never any 'down' time to work within — unless the blogger.com servers go down in which case 'down' time is out of my control. If you are paying a visit to this blog site and something suddenly disappears from view, for instance, the menu bar suddenly goes away or the fixtures/results page goes a bit haywire then please don't be too alarmed as it is probably me tinkering behind the scenes. I add my own HTML and CSS coding on certain aspect...

Following on from my previous article about the formation of 'The Cray Massive', I am pleased to now report that I have liaised with Mark Hunt, the Cray Wanderers Press Officer and he has brought me up to date with proceedings, for which I thank him. Mark started watching the Wands regularly from the 2011-12 season. Our paths must have crossed ever so slightly at that time, like ships that pass in the night, because I stopped being able to go to matches at the end of the same season.  It is interesting to note that we are both in agreement with the fact that Mark Simpson appears to have been the driving force behind the early creation of The Cray Massive. Mark Hunt recalls that he first heard about The Cray Massive from Mark Simpson, the latter stating that it was the adopted name for the loyal band of Cray Wanderers supporters that turned out in all weathers, win, lose or draw. That comment reminded me of my own years when following the club home and away. I have already writt...

 ...get a moneybags director! That was the old adage back in the time when football clubs were competently run by committees under the watchful eye of a chairman. Mostly unpaid in their respective positions, the committee members would take care of the day-to-day running of the football club in their care. The football club, in its infinite wisdom, would never enrol a committee member who was not up to the role of representing the club in whatever capacity. For about the first one hundred years of organised football, clubs were traditionally owned or run by local businessmen who were either supporters of the club they took control of, or they just wanted to get involved with a project to while away the hours. There was also a third reason; they needed to get away from 'er indoors for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon. Then, as the years rolled by, one or two football clubs became a bit anxious about falling turnstile receipts, lack of external funding and so on. And so the great ...

Back in 2014 Pete Goringe, the celebrated statistician for many years with Cray Wanderers, published a book. But it wasn't just any old book. At the time, it was a veritable bible of facts and figures relating to our football club since its inception in circa 1860. I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of that book from Pete and I still have it. From time to time, I refer to it when I am researching information from the club's past, or I just need to remind myself when a particular game was played. It has become crazy useful to me over the years and I certainly wouldn't want to be without it. I didn't have any idea how many pages the book has because Pete didn't number them. But, today, I counted them. There are 128 A5 inner double-sided pages of total Cray Wanderers playing statistics. And that's a lot of collated information. The book has started to fall apart because the two staples holding it all together have rusted over time and one has fallen out; the ...

The following article was printed in the Cray Wanderers matchday programme for the game against Maldon & Tiptree on Tuesday 2 September 2014 in a Ryman Isthmian League Division One North match. After Cray had been relegated from the Ryman Isthmian League Premier Division at the end of the previous season, the league officials decided in their infinite wisdom to place the Wands in the northern section of the competition. That meant enduring long distances to play the likes of AFC Sudbury, Wroxham, Needham Market and Dereham Town. They had to put up with two seasons of extensive travelling to away games before the Isthmian League relented and placed Cray into the much more user-friendly Division One South. Click this image (above) to see a larger version Back in 1887, a toy shop owner in Bradford, Yorkshire, introduced football cards which depicted professional players of the day. John Baines owned a dolls' hospital in North Parade and he possessed a horse-pulling cart. By all ac...

Where did the name come from? Where did the supporters come from? Here's my view on it... I know exactly where the name 'The Cray Massive' came from and who it was that accidentally and permanently inserted it into Cray Wanderers' vocabulary. No, it wasn't me, but this is very definitely an "I was there" story. Because I was there. It is a pity that, this educational article will never get into a matchday programme where it belongs but, I have to abide by the wishes of Cray Wanderers FC who have decided they don't want any of my articles to be printed in their publication for the 2025-26 season. No reason was given for my exclusion but then not everything in football is black and white, apart from Newcastle United and Notts County football shirts. And maybe Grimsby Town and Juventus shirts as well. In November 2005, Cray Wanderers played host to Staines Town in the FA Trophy. I know, because I was at that game. Cray won by a 4-3 scoreline, which und...

This following article was printed in the Cray Wanderers matchday programme on Saturday 8 March 2014, for the game against Lowestoft Town in the Ryman Isthmian League Premier Division, played at Hayes Lane, Bromley.  While it is only the eve of the 2025-26 season as I reproduce this item, and no clubs to my knowledge have ever faced relegation so early in a season, I would suggest you read it with a hint of caution about what happens when a big bubble bursts at a football club when you least expect it to. It might read like a horror story but it really happened on the Wands' own doorstep.  The article starts when Cray were all but relegated from the Ryman League Premier Division after five seasons, soon to be finishing bottom of the table, 23 points from 'safety'. I guess it is no longer a big secret, or a hope against hope that, Cray won't avoid the drop at the end of the current season. It is now long past the time when mentioning relegation should be considered a tab...

Back in the 1960s and 1970s (and, I dare say, several decades before then) the county and London cup ties were always played at weekends, with replays generally taking place the following weekends as required. The FA and Amateur Cups also went along those guidelines but, strangely, there never seemed to be any real congestion build-ups with league games; not even in the 1967-68 season, when Cray did really well in the cups and had to play games on both Saturdays and Sundays at Grassmeade at the end of the season.  Because Saturdays were seen as match days proper, most non-League football clubs of the era played full-strength teams; it was also borne out of necessity due to the fact that the first team 'squads' consisted mainly of 11 (only 10 before the introduction of substitutes) outfield players and one goalkeeper. The more affluent amateur sides had a nice array of 'fill-in' players neatly nestled in their Reserves' teams who could be called upon one week to ...

Have you ever heard of the saying "White Rabbits"? It is a two-word phrase that can either be used to greet someone (everyone!) on the first day of every new month, or it can be the first thing someone says when they wake up on those days. My mum always said it, without fail, on the first of each month and the 'tradition' soon rubbed off on me. I still say it to this day. My wife thinks I am bonkers! However, the reference to saying "White Rabbits" goes back to at least the 1940s in war-torn Britain and, unsurprisingly it has its connotations linked to the hope of bringing the person saying it luck and good fortune. It is a belief that RAF fighter pilots and their bomber crews said it as a protective measure prior to flying their missions. Sadly, I guess for them, it didn't always work. Yet, really, does it work? Interestingly, yes... and no. I have been saying "White Rabbits" every first day of a new month since before I was a teenager, which ...