Tag: books

Remembrance Day reflections

johndewhirst

Poppyremembrance

We remember

The Great War of 1914-18 was a conflict that has a particular poignancy for Bradford City supporters with four serving and seven former players of the club having lost their lives. The fatalities included Jimmy Speirs, team captain and scorer of the winning goal in the 1911 FA Cup Final replay as well as Bob Torrance, acclaimed as man of the match in the replay.

Whilst it is important to remember the sacrifice of the club’s players we should also recognise that the so-called Great War of 1914-18 impacted greatly on the football club. Indeed, what tends to be overlooked is that numerous supporters of the club were also among the war dead and injured. In turn the war touched upon the families of Bradfordians. In the aftermath of the war nothing was quite the same for either the city of Bradford or Bradford City. Aside from the personal tragedies, the city had lost its German community and the finances of Bradford City AFC were depleted to the extent that the club lost its first division status in 1922.

Historic links between sport and the military in Bradford

The war also redefined the links between the football club and the local military. When I undertook my research on the origins of football in Bradford, it became apparent that the historic ties between sport and the military in the district had long since been forgotten. This is ironic given the constant reminder provided by the traditional club colours of City and Avenue / Northern having been derived from military connections. My belief is that after the carnage of the Great War the military heritage tended to be overlooked, not necessarily for ideological reasons but because it was probably seen as outdated, if not irrelevant as people looked to the future.

The early history of Manningham FC – established in 1880 and the predecessor of Bradford City AFC in 1903 – had strong links with the citizen soldiers of Bradford. The generation of men involved with establishing ‘football’ clubs in Bradford during the second half of the 1870’s was typically connected with the Volunteer – or territorial – army units in the town and ‘athleticism’ in the widest sense was considered to be a form of military training by virtue of its health benefits.

The Volunteers had been established in 1859 to provide a home defence force to protect the UK from invasion and in Bradford the principal units were the 3rd Yorkshire (West Riding) Rifle Volunteer Corps and the 2nd Yorkshire (West Riding) Artillery Volunteers Corps.

One reason for the popularity of the Volunteers was that they provided recreational opportunities and in particular access to new sporting activities such as gymnastics and ‘football’ (which in Bradford meant rugby). There was even a dedicated side, Bradford Rifles FC established in 1875 which comprised of a high proportion of Bradford Caledonian FC players (one of the oldest clubs, established in 1873 and also the biggest), a number of whom subsequently became associated with Manningham FC in leadership roles.

This connection encouraged a natural sympathy towards the military but so too did the proximity of Valley Parade to Belle Vue barracks where the 3rd YWRRVC was based. Closer still were the artillery barracks adjacent to Cottingley Terrace just off Valley Parade. Both were used on various occasions for meetings as well as changing and training facilities by Manningham FC and the infant Bradford City club. (The story of the Bradford Rifles is told here on VINCIT)

The dominant political culture at Valley Parade and Park Avenue prior to World War One was unquestionably Conservatism and it was second nature for the two clubs and their membership to espouse patriotism. A good example of this was the decision to adopt claret and amber in 1884. This came at a time of patriotic fervour associated with the Sudan crisis and the excitement that Bradford men might actually go to war. Arguably it was the same enthusiasm thirty years later with spectators at Valley Parade being actively encouraged to enlist to fight on the western front.

The traditional sporting colours of Bradford were red, amber and black whose origin can be traced to the original Bradford Volunteers of the Napoleonic era. The colours of the local West Yorkshire regiment with whom the 3rd YWRRVC was affiliated were claret and amber.

The Valley Parade War Memorial

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In addition to the 1911 FA Cup heroes Jimmy Speirs and Bob Torrance, the war dead included the two former England internationals Evelyn Lintott and Jimmy Conlin as well as James Comrie, George Draycott, Ernest Goodwin, Thomas Jenkinson, Ernest Kenworthy, Gerald Kirk and Harry Potter.

George Draycott, Ernest Goodwin, Harry Potter and Bob Torrance were serving players of BCAFC at the time of being killed in action. The club recorded twelve serving players as members of the armed services during the conflict demonstrating the extent of involvement in the war. Those players were as follows:  Sgt Dicky Bond (prisoner); Sgt Irvine Boocock; Major Frank Buckley (wounded); Sgt Alexander Doolan; Pvte Jock Ewart (shell shock); Pvte Oscar Fox; Pvte Jack Hargreaves; William Grimshaw; Air Mechanic Peter Logan; Pvte McCriedie; Air Mechanic Frank O’Rourke; and Lieut Harold A Walden.

Subsequent to erecting the memorial in the Valley Parade reception in 2015 two other war fatalities of serving and former players have been identified whose names are not listed. They are Ernest Kenworthy who played two games for the club in 1906/07 and Thomas Jenkinson, a local player who was selected for the club on one occasion in 1915 (it is unclear whether he remained a registered player but it is assumed otherwise). It is quite possible that other former players who were killed in the war that we are not aware of will subsequently be identified and that there were more than the eleven listed above. (Most likely it will be junior or squad players that have not so far been identified.)

In August, 1917 Bradford City AFC announced the death amongst others killed in action of  Wally Smith who made 120 appearances for the club between 1905-09, scoring on 59 occasions. This appears to have been confused with another player of the same name who was KIA in May, 1917 and the fact that he died at his residence in Worksop likely discounts him being added to the list of war dead with a BCAFC connection.

Subsequent to the war, Jimmy Speirs and others with a Valley Parade connection were remembered first and foremost as fallen soldiers among comrades in arms. So many men had been killed that there was a reluctance to differentiate former professional football players as deserving of unique attention and the players would have concurred with this treatment. Nowadays the fallen players are afforded particular prominence whereas prior generations tended to remember them among countless others who never returned. The distinct commemoration of footballers killed in action has thus been a more modern phenomenon.

City players at the Cenotaph, New Year’s Day 1921

A memorial to the war dead of Bradford City was not erected at Valley Parade until 2015 and this hangs in the Valley Parade reception. (The person who made this possible was supporter John Barker of Farsley who arranged its production.) The memorial was funded by a badge sale that I helped organise through Bantamspast and the proceeds also helped fund a stone memorial to the Bradford Pals at Serre near the Somme battlefield in France.

bantamspast Bfd Pals badges

Further detail of Bradford’s military history is told my book ROOM AT THE TOP, available from Waterstones and Salts Mill or direct from BANTAMSPAST HISTORY REVISITED BOOKS.

John Dewhirst

I have written widely about the history of sport in Bradford: Links to my features on the history of Bradford sport

Read about Jimmy Speirs and Bob Torrance (published in BCAFC programme 2017/18).

Read about Bradford City’s tour of Germany in 1914

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The drop down menu above provides links to features published in the BCAFC programme, book reviews and sundry articles about the history of Bradford and its sport.

If you are interested in local sporting history, visit the dedicated online journal VINCIT where you will find further background about the military heritage at Valley Parade.

To know the past

johndewhirst

My new book THE BANTAMS OF VALLEY PARADE – A HISTORY OF BRADFORD CITY AFC – goes on sale on 15th September and will be available in Waterstones as well as Amazon. Copies can also be purchased through BANTAMSPAST. The cover price is £16.99 which is relatively cheap by modern standards. There has been an encouraging response to early production copies and I am hopeful that it will be well-received.

I was approached by Amberley Publishing last year about producing a history of BCAFC and whilst I had reservations about their more formulaic / template approach, they offered two major advantages which were appealing to me. The first was to make the book accessible to a wider number of people through their distribution channels and secondly, to be more affordable with a competitive selling price compared to what could be achieved through self-publishing as a BANTAMSPAST publication. Besides it saved me the effort of managing the process and allowed me to concentrate on the writing. For the avoidance of doubt this project has not been with financial gain in mind and is entirely a labour of love.

There hasn’t been a full history of Bradford City published since David Markham’s centenary book which was released twenty years ago and a lot has happened since. In fact the current moment feels like a turning point in the club’s history. I would imagine that in future decades supporters will look back on this era as more eventful and momentous than many prior periods that we could mention.

It is relevant to consider the historical context of where we are now. Last season for example was the first that the club has come close to successive promotions and average attendances were the highest since 1921/22. After so long, it genuinely feels as though we can be optimistic for the future and that the general direction of travel is upwards even if the club doesn’t necessarily improve on last season’s 4th place in 2026/27. It is also a time of significant anniversaries – 40 years since the rebuilding of Valley Parade, 30 years since the first visit to Wembley, 25 years since relegation from the Premier League and of course, 10 years since Stefan Rupp took ownership of the club. It feels timely to look back on the history of BCAFC and hence I encouraged Amberley to bring forward publication of the book rather than wait until 2027 as we had originally agreed.

The Richmond era was undoubtedly an aberration in the club’s modern history, a period of unprecedented success but also one that ended in calamitous failure. With the passage of time there has been a selective and nostalgic memory of reaching the Premier League which is hardly surprising given the achievement. What happened between 1994-99 in particular has become something of a benchmark to judge what has happened since as the measure of ambition. On the other hand, the extent of the financial crash that followed in the wake of relegation from the Premier League has tended to be forgotten despite its far-reaching implications.

The bumper crowds attending matches at Valley Parade nowadays is the product of innovative and affordable pricing policies by the club which has secured new supporters, many of whom are too young to have recollection of what happened when Geoffrey Richmond was in control. For many the impression is of him having been some sort of white knight. Cutting through the rose-tinted statements, Richmond cannot be exonerated and it is more relevant to see him as the predator who saw opportunity in Bradford in 1994 much as a vulture might identify his prey. For all the good memories of that time, it is the cold assessment of Richmond that cannot be ignored and needs to be highlighted. The memory of Richmond is also good reason to be wary about the future ownership of the club.

It has taken BCAFC a long time to get back on its feet, not least impacted by the Rahic affair that represented both a unique and unforgiveable episode of internal collapse at Valley Parade. Historically, the record of corporate governance at Valley Parade has been poor. Like Richmond before him, Rahic brought considerable damage to the club.

The fundamental question asked by most is why Bradford City AFC has never sustained success and why the club has languished for so long in the lower divisions. Poor governance has been a factor in this but there have been other structural factors impacting on the club’s fate. Going back to the club’s formation in 1903 it was undoubtedly disadvantaged by its rugby origins and its relatively late conversion to association football. Hence my book begins by examining the background to Manningham FC at Valley Parade in the nineteenth century.

There has been a remarkable recurrence of the same themes through the club’s history that have reflected the handicaps it has faced – low capitalisation (ie financial backing); competition from Bradford Park Avenue / Northern-Bulls; and the expense of a stadium on a hillside. Neither should we under-estimate the impact of two wars which compounded financial difficulties and undermined the club’s financial reserves (or rather exposed the lack of) with far-reaching impact. All of this has been compounded by the high turnover of managers at Valley Parade and failure to invest in infrastructure – recurring issues in the club’s modern history that fostered a short-termist approach to decision-making. In just about every decade through to 2018 there were financial crises at Bradford City and corresponding instability, preventing any momentum to consolidate earlier success. An alternative title for the book would be ‘Why has BCAFC consistently under-performed for so long‘… ‘and why things might now be different‘.

Bradford City AFC has never had a Jack Walker (Blackburn) or Jack Hayward (Wolves) figure who invested their millions into their local club. Historically the ambition of the club was limited by monies that its directors could afford or were willing to inject and neither was BCAFC or Bradford football an attractive investment proposition. When Richmond bought the club in 1994 he introduced a dramatic change in how the club was run but it proved wholly unsustainable and destroyed value.

For all the criticism of Stefan Rupp, since 2016 he has injected more money in the club than all other directors / owners at Valley Parade put together. Love him or loathe him, he is the nearest that Bradford City has ever had to a benign owner. At a time when football supporters across the country look nervously at the corporate ownership of their own clubs – the examples of Leicester and Sheffield Wednesday being obvious cases in point and consider also the recent experiences at Reading or Blackpool – the way that a club is owned and managed is as significant as player selection.

As I narrate in the book, the club suffered recurring financial crises in every decade through to 2018, in fact it was with a frequency of roughly every five years or so. Since 2018 we have had more financial stability than has ever been the case previously. We haven’t seen Rupp injecting millions indiscriminately but we have seen the evolution of a well-run and stable football club. In the last couple of years we have seen the fruits and the return of a feelgood factor to Valley Parade. Recovery was kick-started by Mark Hughes in 2022 but the subsequent impact of Graham Alexander has been transformative.

My belief is that we could be at a key moment in the club’s history. It doesn’t guarantee success but the foundations are much stronger than ever before and more likely to drive sustainable progress. Consider also the relative position of the club. Many – if not most – clubs in the Championship and in League One are significantly loss-making and weighed down by debt. Even allowing for football economics, surely clubs cannot defy financial gravity indefinitely? Bradford City AFC does not own its freehold and has a limited asset base but the fact that the club is debt-free puts it in a stronger position. Is it any coincidence that three headline signings this summer have been from clubs facing financial pressures (ie Barnsley, Burton and Leicester) which represents a major transformation in the club’s bargaining power and prospects.

I am keen to encourage wider interest and awareness in the club’s history. To know the club’s past is to know the future and hence why I believed it important to make this book as accessible and affordable to as many people as possible.

The reader will discover a lot of previously overlooked and forgotten detail about the club’s history that I have uncovered during the course of research in the last ten years or so. Quite a lot of what you find online or has been claimed about the history of BCAFC is inaccurate, what can politely be described as representing a wishful or imagined interpretation of events and indeed that was my motivation for launching the BANTAMS HISTORY REVISITED series of books in 2014.

THE BANTAMS OF VALLEY PARADE includes personal memories from key moments supporting the club, in particular the earlier era of ‘Bantam Progressivism‘ in the 1980s when I was actively involved in the launch and production of The City Gent when that publication carried influence at Valley Parade. I also wanted to put on record what happened in 2002-04 and 2018 when I had involvement with the club in a professional, work capacity.

REVIEWS OF BANTAMS OF VALLEY PARADE FROM THE LINKS BELOW:

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I am hoping to arrange a number of talks in the next few months about the club’s history which follows the success of that at the Bradford Literature Festival. I hope that these will also allow for discussion and debate of the historic record. Updates will be posted on this blog and through Twitter @jpdewhirst.

The first of these is next month. My talk ‘The Origins of Football Culture in Bradford‘ at the Mechanics Institute, Bradford on 20th September 2026 can be booked here. Capacity is limited so early booking is recommended to secure attendance.

In the meantime I hope that the book is well received and if you don’t want to buy it, THE BANTAMS OF VALLEY PARADE – A HISTORY OF BRADFORD CITY AFC will be available in local libraries.