1949-50 Bristol Rovers F.C.
1934 Bristol born Eddie Hapgood of Barton Hill
Captain of England and one of the greatest players of all time.
The late great John Atyeo signed to Bristol city in 1951
on a top wage of 12 a week the team's finest post-war star
and an England International player who brought eggs
for his team-mates from his chicken farm. He retired after 645 games to become a teacher in Warminster Wiltshire.
Ray Warren the best captain Bristol Rovers ever had
he played for the club from 1935-56 he died in 1988.
Dennis Roberts a giant centre-half who played for
Bristol City more than 500 matches in the 1930s.
1951 Ashton Gate a local derby between the two Bristol Clubs.
John Atyeo and the '58 World Cup
In May of 1957 John Atyeo had it all, an international forward with the world at his feet, idolised by fans and a goal scorer with an impeccable touch. However, after scoring the goal that clinched qualification to the 1958 World Cup, Atyeo was sensationally left at home.
His story is now being told by friends and former colleagues that knew him best in a new drama-documentary on BBC Radio Bristol. Atyeo and the ‘58 World Cup will take you through the character of the man, the player and how he coped with being left out of the World Cup squad that went to Sweden.
John Atyeo's international record was second to none; five goals in six England appearances including four in three World Cup qualifiers. His record with Bristol City was impeccable, never booked or sent off, and his unbelievable 351 goals in 645 appearances still stands today as the clubs record goalscorer.
Gentle John died in June of 1993, with the club a year later naming the home end at Ashton Gate after him. Drawing on experiences about the player from former team mates Jack Boxley, Jantzen Derrick and Sir Tom Finney, and about the man from close friends Max Lines, Tom Hopegood and Marina Dolman.
Peter John Walter Atyeo (February 7, 1932 - June 8, 1993) was an English football striker. He was signed from under the noses of League Champions Portsmouth in 1951 by Bristol City. He won six England caps from 1955 to 1957, scoring five goals.
Despite offers from Chelsea, Spurs and Liverpool that could have made him the most expensive player in England, he stayed with City throughout his career, making 647 appearances and scoring 350 goals by the time he retired in 1966. The new stand that replaced the Park End at Ashton Gate in 1994 is named the Atyeo Stand after him.
When John Atyeo died in 1993, his former team-mate Jimmy Rogers said: 'They broke the mould after they made him.' It is the kind of tribute paid to the recently deceased often enough, but rarely has it rung more true than in the case of Big John, whose 350 Football League and Cup goals and 597 League appearances for Bristol City will almost certainly never be surpassed.
The statistics go on: he is joint seventh in the all-time list of League top scorers, netted five times in six undefeated games for England and was a swashbuckling striker who was never sent off or cautioned in more than fifteen seasons. Yet facts and figures alone can never tell the full story of John Atyeo. Here was a player and a man who made what today would be extraordinary choices in his lifestyle and career.
Even then, his decision to remain a part-time professional with an unfashionable Second Division club bemused most of his contemporaries, and it certainly cost him his place in the international team. Yet, if he regretted spurning the advances of Chelsea, Liverpool and other big names, he always said no, he would do it all over again.
In his playing days, John Atyeo was a by-word for one-club loyalty and for fair play, but as Tom Hopegood and John Hudson have discovered through intensive research and interviews with family, friends and colleagues, he was much more complex than that. Readers will put this book down feeling they know the man much better than they would ever have dreamed possible.
Bristol City Football Club is one of two football league clubs in Bristol, England, (the other being Bristol Rovers). It plays in Football League One. Its ground is called Ashton Gate Stadium, located in the south-western portion of the City. Gary Johnson has been the team's manager since 23 September 2005, succeeding Brian Tinnion.
The Bristol City kit this season has been produced by sports brand 'Puma'. Home colours for 2006-7 will revert from all red to the traditional red shirts and white shorts. The away kit will be white with gunmetal grey shorts, and a black third kit will also be used. In the past a variety of away combinations have been used, particularly white shirts and black shorts, but yellow, green-and-purple, all black, all white and 'champagne gold' have also been seen in recent years. The club's nickname is 'the Robins', and a robin featured on the club's badge from 1976 to 1994. A recent attempt by the club to alter the clubs badge was abandoned after the club was slated fiercely by fans and many supporters still choose to sport the clubs old Robin and suspension bridge badge.
Bristol City reached the 1909 F.A Cup final where they lost to Manchester United, but they did win the Welsh Cup - despite being an English team - in 1934. In 1907 they finished runners-up in the league, which is their highest-ever final position.
In 1982, Bristol City became the first English team to suffer three successive relegations and just before falling into the Fourth Division they almost went out of business. But a takeover deal saved them from going under, and by 1990 they were back in the Second Division. Another relegation followed in 1995, when City finished second from bottom in the new Division Two, and a return to that division three years later lasted just one season.
Most of their seasons since 1999 have been spent challenging promotion, but so far all of their promotion challenges have been unsuccessful. - - Bristol City currently play at Ashton Gate stadium, which has an all-seater capacity of more than 20,000. There have been plans, if the need arises, for expansion work to be carried out at their current ground. There have also been proposals to build a new stadium, the first option being a 36,000-seat stadium at Hengrove Park. In 2002, the local council was looking at possible sites for a new 40,000-seat stadium which would house both City and Rovers, but these plans were scrapped and would not have been welcomed by many of either of the two clubs' supporters. Ashton Gate's current capacity is fairly big, and it would probably take promotion to demand an expansion.
Bristol Rovers are a professional football team based in Bristol, England. They currently play in Football League Two.
The club's official nickname is 'The Pirates' - reflecting the maritime history of Bristol. A pirate features on both the club badge and the badge of the supporters club. The local nickname of the club is 'The Gas', (from the gasworks next to the old Eastville Stadium).
It's colours are blue and white quartered shirts, white shorts and blue socks. Away colours for the season 2002/03 were black shirts with a diagonal gold sash and black shorts - designed by a Rovers fan and reflecting the original Black Arab kit of 1883. This marked the club's 120 year existence.
Their main rivals are Bristol City although there is also some animosity with teams such as Swindon Town, Yeovil Town, Cheltenham Town, Cardiff City and Swansea City.
Early years - The club was formed in 1883 as The Black Arabs (taking the name the Arabs from a rugby team that played on an adjoining pitch and adding black because of their kit colour), and renamed Bristol Rovers in 1897 after briefly being called Eastville Rovers and Bristol Eastville Rovers. The club joined the Southern League in 1899, and were founder members of the Football League Third Division in 1920.
Modern times - Bobby Gould was Bristol Rovers manager until the summer of 1987, when he moved on to Wimbledon and won the FA Cup in his first season as manager. He was replaced by Gerry Francis, the former QPR and England star. Under Francis, Bristol Rovers won the Third Division title in 1990 and the following year finished 7th in the old Second Division, their highest ever league finish to date. Francis then returned to QPR as manager and was briefly succeeded by Martin Dobson, who made way after just four months for Malcolm Allison, who in turn stepped down in March 1993 to make way for John Ward.
Ward was unable to save Bristol Rovers from suffering relegation to the new Football League Second Division in 1992-93, and he quit three seasons later after failing to gain promotion. His successor Ian Holloway lasted four-and-a-half years before being sacked as Rovers found themselves in a relegation battle. The battle was lost under returning manager Gerry Francis, and he resigned in December 2001 with the Pirates struggling near the foot of Division Three. Successor Garry Thompson guided the club to a shock 3-1 away win over Premiership club Derby in the Third Round of the FA Cup, but he was sacked after the club narrowly avoided relegation to Football League Two.
Former player Ray Graydon was appointed to succeed Garry Thompson but another year and a half of poor performances resulting in his sacking in January 2004. His successor Ian Atkins lasted just over a year in the job before getting sacked in September 2005. The team was left without a manager following Atkins' dismissal, and veteran player Paul Trollope was appointed first-team coach, with Lennie Lawrence becoming director of football in a two-tier management structure.
'Smash and Grab'
The 1970s Bristol Rovers strike duo gathered a cult following.
Alan Warboys and Bruce Bannister forged a famed attacking partnership for Bristol Rovers in the early 1970s. In the 1973-74 season they scored 40 goals between them (22 for Warboys, 18 for Bannister) and gained Rovers promotion from the Third Division. Warboys was an old-fashioned No 9 whose battering-ram approach earned him the Smash nickname, while the smaller Bannister would prey on any chances created. He was Grab. They have been friends for more than 30 years. Warboys works as a lorry driver and lives near Doncaster, while Bannister runs a sports shoe store in Bradford.
AW: I loved my time at Bristol Rovers because it was such a family club. There used to be a dog track around the pitch at Eastville with a bar area where all the players would go with their families every Friday afternoon. All the kids sat at one table while the players and their wives were at another. Bruce was already at the club when I arrived, in March 1973, and that's when our friendship started.
BB: I lived in Doncaster and Alan in Leeds so we used to meet on the A1 and drive down together. Within a few games we had struck up an understanding and once things started happening for us on the pitch it snowballed. In the November the club came up with the 'Smash and Grab' idea and made Wild West-style posters of us. I've still got one. Our next game after the posters came out was away at Brighton, where Brian Clough had just taken over. We were in the middle of going 27 games unbeaten from the start of the season and when Chelsea's game against Leeds, who also hadn't lost all season, was cancelled, all the attention turned to our match. The ground was packed because there were no games in London and 20 were called off overall through bad weather. I ended up getting a first-half hat-trick and Alan scored four. The 8-2 win made our name.
AW: It was an unbelievable performance. I finished with a cut eye and needed stitches. While I was on the treatment table Cloughie walked in. He told me that the cut must have been self-inflicted, because his defenders hadn't been near me all afternoon.
AW: I was the old-fashioned target man who used to fight for every ball, while Bruce picked up the pieces. As long as I made a nuisance of myself, I didn't even have to win the ball because Bruce would always be on to it. We had a winger called Kenny Stephens who used to whip crosses in. I went to the back post while Bruce attacked the near post. Michael Spinks: big hat, big house - and his brother Leon loves him too.
BB: Kenny would sell that many dummies that he could be a real pain . Great player, though.
AW: Our partnership was so successful that it was obvious when, in 1976-77, it started to dip. That's when they off-loaded us. I 'd started to slow down a bit . Fulham had George Best, Bobby Moore, Rodney Marsh and Peter Storey, so I jumped at the chance. All they wanted was a big fella up front to take the knocks. Bestie used to train in the afternoons instead of mornings so I'd stay behind just to watch . You've never seen a rush like when we played five-a-sides: everyone wanted to be on his team. I moved to Hull the next season and guess who was already there ...
BB: I'd moved there after a short spell with Plymouth. Our partnership wasn't quite as good at Hull - we were older. But it was nice to be alongside Alan again. I finished my career at Dunkirk and, from there, worked for the Professional Footballers' Association. I started my sports shoe store around the time of the jogging boom in the early Eighties and it grew from there. We now do most of our business online.
AW: It's nice to reminisce sometimes, though, isn't it?
Holloway Quotes - 'To put it in gentleman's terms if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She weren't the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee' - on the 'ugly' win against Chesterfield. This is perhaps Holloway's most famous quote.
'It's like the film Men in Black. I walk around in a black suit, white shirt and black tie where I've had to flash my white light every now and again to erase some memories, but I feel we've got hold of the galaxy now. It's in our hands.' - Holloway on QPR's financial situation.
'It was lucky that the linesman wasn't stood in front of me as I would have poked him with a stick to make sure he was awake.' - Holloway states his opinion about the linesman's performance in a game against Bristol City.
Holloway Quotes - 'I call us the Orange club - because our future's bright!' - on QPR's potential.
'He's been out for a year and Richard Langley is still six months away from being Richard Langley, and I could do with a fully fit Richard Langley.' - on midfielder Richard Langley's injury rehabilitation.
'It's all very well having a great pianist playing but it's no good if you haven't got anyone to get the piano on the stage in the first place, otherwise the pianist would be standing there with no bloody piano to play.' - after being criticised for using defensive players in midfield.
Holloway Quotes - 'I am a football manager. I can't see into the future. Last year I thought I was going to Cornwall on my holidays but I ended up going to Lyme Regis.' - asked whether QPR would be able to beat Manchester City.
'You can say that strikers are very much like postmen: they have to get in and out as quick as they can before the dog starts to have a go.'
'I always say that scoring goals is like driving a car. When the striker is going for goal, he's pushing down that accelerator, so the rest of the team has to come down off that clutch. If the clutch and the accelerator are down at the same time, then you are going to have an accident.'
'I've got to knock that horrible smell out of my boys, because they smell of complacency.'
'I have such bad luck at the moment that if I fell in a barrel of boobs I'd come out sucking my thumb.'
'Every dog has its day, and today is woof day! Today I just want to bark!' - Holloway after securing promotion to the Championship.
'When my wife first saw Marc for the first time, she said he was a fine specimen of a man. She says I have nothing to worry about, but I think she wants me to buy her a QPR shirt with his name on the back for Christmas.' - on QPR's new Danish striker Marc Nygaard.
'Paul Furlong is my vintage Rolls Royce and he cost me nothing. We polish him, look after him, and I have him fine tuned by my mechanics. We take good care of him because we have to drive him every day, not just save him for weddings.'
- on veteran striker Paul Furlong.
'We need a big, ugly defender. If we had one of them we'd have dealt with County's first goal by taking out the ball, the player and the first three rows of seats in the stands.' - after a defeat against Notts County.
'You never count your chickens before they hatch. I used to keep parakeets and I never counted every egg thinking I would get all eight birds. You just hoped they came out of the nest box looking all right. I'm like a swan at the moment. I look fine on top of the water but under the water my little legs are going mad.'
'There was a spell in the second half when I took my heart off my sleeve and put it in my mouth.'
'I don't see the problem with footballers taking their shirts off after scoring a goal? They enjoy it and the young ladies enjoy it too. I suppose thats one of the main reasons women come to football games, to see the young men take their shirts off. Of course they'd have to go and watch another game because my lads are as ugly as sin.' - about the new rule restricting footballers from removing their shirts during a match.
'Sometimes when you aim for the stars, you hit the moon.'
'I believe in what I am doing totally and once people speak to me they do too - I could sell snow to the Eskimos.'
'We've got a good squad and we're going to cut our cloth accordingly, but I think the cloth that we've got could make some good soup, if that makes any sense'.
- Despite popular belief, Holloway was in fact misquoted as saying 'soup' but actually said 'suit'.
'I want to try and spread the support with my Bristol connection. Rovers are in the bottom division so why can't I try and convert some of them into Argyle fans? We're in the West Country so it's not that far away. Only two and a half hours away in a slow car, an hour and a half in a fast one - or 10 minutes in a rocket! As long as you aimed it right, you'd be down here really quickly. Don't land it on the pitch, though, because you'd ruin it!'
'It was a bit cheeky wasn't it? But I don't think it was that bad. It would have been worse if he'd turned round and dropped the front of his shorts instead. I don't think there's anything wrong with a couple of butt cheeks personally. (...) If anybody's offended by seeing a backside, get real. Maybe they're just jealous that he's got a real nice tight one, with no cellulite or anything.' - on Manchester City midfielder Joey Barton mooning Everton fans.
1898 - The Warmley Football Club was founded in 1882 and is recorded as taking part in the very first organised match in the Bristol region against St. George. The following year three more clubs joined the League, Wotton-under-Edge, Clifton and the Black Arabs.
In 1886 the Gloucestershire Football Association was founded. The first four clubs being Clifton,
St. George, Warmley and Eastville Rovers. The last club was originally known as the Black Arabs who then changed their name again to Bristol Rovers. (Bristol City Football Club had yet to be formed.)
Warmley, who played in white shirts and blue shorts, are still, even one hundred years later, remembered with some pride in the East Bristol region and quite rightly so. In the season of 1897/8 they actually won the Southern League title against some remarkable opposition. Until this time their home ground was behind the Tennis Court Inn at the bottom of Warmley Hill but with their new found fame they moved to the Chequer’s ground behind the public house in Ingleside Road.
This move saw a drastic change of fortune for Warmley and that season they incurred debts of £900 and were losing £22 each playing week. Any hope of saving Warmley F.C. vanished following an F.A. meeting at the Royal Hotel, Bristol, banning the club from using its own ground for four weeks due to an incident against Millwall on 7th January 1899. The last match of this great side was on 21st January that year when the club was disbanded.
A fascinating score list exists of their final season 1898/99, which includes:
Tottenham Hotspurs Home Lost 5-1; Oxford Cyguets Away Won 2-9;
F.A.C., 1st qualifying round Swindon Town Home Won 1-0; F.A.C.,
3rd qualifying round Bristol City Away Lost 4-2 (5,000 crowd);
Southampton Home Won 1-0; Millwall Home Athletic Away Lost 1-0;
Reading Away Draw 1-1 (9,000 crowd).
This should have been Warmley’s Home match but they accepted payment to change venue. Brighton United Away Lost 3-2 (3,000 crowd).
Sam Hollis (c. 1866 – April 17, 1942) was an English football manager, most notable for being the very first manager of Arsenal.
Hollis was appointed manager (or secretary-manager, as the post was known then) of Woolwich Arsenal (as they were known at the time) in 1894; before that team affairs had been managed by a committee of players and club members; one club official in particular, Bill Parr, often took a lead role managing the team, but he was not a dedicated manager, like Hollis.
Hollis had comparatively little football experience, having previously worked for the Probate Office and the Post Office. In the three years he was at the club, the team were solid but unspectacular, figuring around mid-table in the Second Division.
In April 1897 Hollis was tempted away by newly-formed Bristol City; he ended up spending three separate spells with the Robins. His first ended in March 1899 when he left to become secretary-manager of Bedminster. Bedminster merged with Bristol City in 1900 and Hollis lost his job. However, in 1901 he returned to manage Bristol City. During this second and most successive spell, City finished as Southern League runners-up and were promoted to the Football League.
He left in March 1905 and managed a hotel between 1905 and 1911, having previously ran a pub between 1899 and 1909. He took over as Bristol City manager for the third time in January 1911 and oversaw the club's relegation from the First Division back to the Second. He left Ashton Gate in April 1913, and in July that year took over as manager of Southern League Newport County where he remained until 1917. After that he left football altogether, and died in Nottingham in April 1942.
Alan Dicks (born 29 August 1934) is a retired English footballer and football manager. He managed Bristol City for thirteen years and managed clubs in five countries on three continents.
Born in London, he signed for Chelsea at the age of 17, though his playing time in the first team was limited to 35 matches in six years, and he played only one game in Chelsea's 1954-55 championship season. In 1958 he moved to Southend United, and in 1962 joined Coventry City as a player-coach under Jimmy Hill.
In 1967 Hill recommended him for the vacant manager's job at Bristol City. He took the job at the age of just 33, and held it for thirteen years. In that time he consolidated City's position in the Second Division, and eventually, in 1976, led them to promotion to the First Division - then English football's top flight. Dicks remained as manager throughout City's four-year stay in Division 1, but relegation and a poor start to the following season saw him leave in October 1980.
During the 1980s, Dicks managed clubs in Greece, Cyprus and Qatar (where he won the championship with Al Rayyan Sports Club).
He managed Fulham Football Club for one season in the early 1990s. The players considered him as being too lax, and in Simon Morgan's autobiography he claimed that his brothers (Morgans' not Dicks') went to Craven Cottage during his reign just to join in the amusing chants off 'Dicks Out'.
After leaving Fulham he moved to the United States and subsequently became head coach of Carolina Dynamo and then Charleston Battery in the A-League. He has now retired and returned to Bristol.
