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100 YEARS OF COCONUTS
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Nice to see you - 2018 Open Day

7/29/2018

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There we were, minding our own business and showing supporters round The Story of the U's, Coconuts' mini-museum in the Supporters' Club.

The next minute, the tiny space was jam-packed with fashionable beards and tracksuits.

We were delighted to welcome the entire Cambridge United first-team squad to our display during the club's open day at the Abbey Stadium yesterday.

Gary 'Deegs' Deegan was particularly taken with the 1950s-vintage shinpads, and keepers Dimitar 'Dimi' Mitov and David 'Fordey' Forde could only marvel at their predecessor Rodney Slack's gloves, hand-crocheted in the 1960s.

The gloves were hand-crocheted, not Rodney.

Meanwhile, over by the Abbey Arms, Marvin 'Marv' the Moose was 'avin' a go at the coconuts, and many a child went home wondering what to do with their prize, the whiskery fruit of the Cocos nucifera.

Thanks to the Abbey Lounge/Cambridge United Supporters' Club and to Cambridge United and its community trust for their continued support for 100 Years of Coconuts.

See you all again next year. Meanwhile, if you'd like to visit The Story of the U's and learn more about the story of your club – or if you don't know what to do with the kids during the school holidays – contact us here or drop a line to 100yearsofcoconuts@gmail.com.
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To the Bridge

7/28/2018

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An edited version of this article appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the game against Luton Town on 3 March 2018.

When talk turns to big clubs’ practice of ‘stockpiling’ young players, whereby the closest most will ever get to first-team football is on loan at another club, the word ‘Chelsea’ often crops up.

With good reason: at the time of writing, Roman Abramovich’s pet project had 38 players out on loan, and goodness knows how many other youngsters queuing up behind them.

The West London giants have always had an eye for young talent, but there was no question of stockpiling when they snapped up the 19-year-old Ian Hutchinson from United in 1968. Nor is there any suggestion that the Pensioners had anything but the best of intentions for the career of Abbey United’s youthful George Alsop when he left for Stamford Bridge in the early 1920s.
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George Alsop in 1925. Photo: Cambridgeshire Collection at Cambridge Central Library
We don’t know exactly when the Barnwell-born lad departed for the Smoke; nor do we know how Chelsea came to find out about young Alsop’s talent. He was after all playing his home games on Stourbridge Common, in the depths of Cambridgeshire League Division Three, when he came to their notice.

Nigel Browne’s research into Barnwell families of the early 20th century – part of a Coconuts team’s scrutiny of the everyday lives of people in east Cambridge during World War I – shows that our George Alsop was probably born in 1902 and was living with his parents at 481 Newmarket Road in 1911.

It’s possible that his dad sold his East Road wheelwright’s business to Donald Mackay, whose family still runs the engineering and hardware emporium. It’s also possible that his mum was one of the Ivett family who helped to found the Ivett & Reed stonemasonry company on Newmarket Road.

We are going to find out about other aspects of Alsop’s life. One thing we do know is that he was some player.

The late Andrew Bennett’s book Newmarket Road Roughs (available for purchase through the CFU online store) reveals that he marshalled the Abbey United defence in 1921/22, the club’s first season of competitive football. Then he was off to Chelsea.

You’ll search in vain for internet mentions of George Alsop in a Chelsea FC connection. We’re making enquiries of the club historian, but it seems that, having made the enormous leap from the Cambs League to Football League Division One, Alsop got no further than Blues’ reserves.

Restored to the Abbey team as centre half and captain by 1924, he made an immediate impact in the season’s opening Cambs League Division One match at St Ives, scoring both goals in a 2-0 win.

Two weeks later, after a 6-2 defeat of Cottenham in which he again scored twice, the Cambridge Daily News raved: ‘He was originally a forward, and it was in that capacity that he was signed by Chelsea about two years ago. He was then a good shot, but he has not only benefited by his sojourn with the professionals in that direction, but in all-round football ability.’

Alsop was prominent in Abbey’s progress over the next few seasons; he’s pictured below in the middle of the front row of the all-conquering 1924/25 team.

​But by the early 30s his influence was declining and, having appeared 160 times and scored 62 goals, he played his last Wasps game in 1932.

We have much to discover about this fascinating personality, and perhaps you can help. If you have any information about George Alsop or his family, please email 100yearsofcoconuts@gmail.com.
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Abbey United in 1924/25, location unknown. Captain George Alsop is sitting in the middle of the front row, behind the Creake Charity Shield.
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And I would rather be anywhere else

7/26/2018

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​In 1979, the political and cultural magazine the New Statesman published an article by journalist and broadcaster Russell Davies, a 1967 graduate of Cambridge, in which he exposed the U’s to the searching glare of the media spotlight. The article gives those who were never lucky enough to visit the Abbey Stadium in the late 1970s an accurate impression of the experience to be expected on a wet and windy March Saturday.
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Davies was reporting on the match that took place at the Abbey on Saturday, 10 March 1979. United lost the Second Division fixture 0-1 to Notts County in front of 5,157 spectators. The game’s lure had been irresistible, said the writer.
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Mick Leach: joined Tom Finney and Derrick Christie in attack for a time
‘What! The oldest League club in the world against a home side boasting hot-shot £300,000 property Alan Biley, in whom Spurs are trying vainly to suppress an interest?’ It was a spectatorial must, said Davies.

‘Cambridge United is still a small club in resources and outlook, and on a day like Saturday it seems to get smaller. A Fenland wind, rotten with damped-off celery stalks, came bowling straight down the ground from the Allotments End, where there is no stand – just a shallow open terrace, caged off for visiting supporters (on this occasion no more than a couple of hundred or so).

‘Every so often, an insulting spit of rain put a fine wet edge on one’s discomfort. “The club shop is open,” barked the tannoy, “for the sale of mugs, rattles, scarves, badges … “ “… And players,” remarked a police sergeant authoritatively.’

Biley had failed a fitness test behind the main stand, Davies learned, and Tom Finney and Derrick Christie were going to play up front. As it turned out, they were joined for a time in attack by Mick Leach.

He continued: ‘It proved, actually, to be a game rich in dwindling veterans. Cambridge had the ex-Norwich defender Dave Stringer, who looks less mothballed than most, and the far from wieldy Bill Garner as substitute, while Notts County trotted out the most aptly named of all centre backs, Jeff Blockley, and relied heavily in midfield on Arthur Mann, ex-Manchester City, and on one of the most widely deplored of the World Cup Scots, Don Masson.’

Davies remembered being astonished by Masson’s distribution when he was at QPR, ‘when for a brief time that unfulfilled team seemed almost potty with talent. Here he was player-coach, and possibly too much the latter; but on such a kick-and-rush day, anyone hitting the ball with less than full power tended to look fussy.

'It was plain almost at once that Cambridge was a side used to getting good results from traditional crosses curled away from the keeper but that nobody this time was going to get much joy from these.

‘Someone in midfield was heartless enough to knock the stuffing out of Cambridge’s tiny Steve Spriggs, the only player in any Division, I believe, over whom Brian Flynn of Leeds towers majestically. It had been a hasty, raw, red-eared half, not much appreciated by 5,157 shivering souls.

“‘Tell you wot,’ volunteered one bloodshot observer of the play, ‘I wish I had some o’ this to put on moi garden.’” But even though the pop-song chosen to enliven half-time was Elvis Costello’s Oliver’s Army (refrain:  “And I would rather be anywhere else but here too-day …”), there was as yet no real sign that this was going to be a really classic misery day for home supporters.

‘It all started about five minutes after the interval, when a header by Finney beat the keeper and was handled by a back on its way, so it seemed, over the line. The referee first signalled a goal, then consulted a linesman, then commuted the sentence to a penalty; and we all watched, not very thunderstruck as Finney muffed, scuffed, bumbled and trundled the kick vaguely towards the left-hand post.

‘Goalkeeper McManus could not have flopped on it more gratefully if he’d been his namesake Mick, applying the deciding shoulder-press to the Wild Man of Borneo.’

The misery continued, wrote Davies, with Christie being stretchered off and Stringer being booked ‘for the most innocuous trip since the Owl and the Pussycat went to sea.'

Ninety minutes passed without a goal. But in injury time, a wind-assisted clearance from McManus put Mann through and he ‘torpedoed’ Malcolm Webster with ease.

United had been unlucky on the day, Davies reported, and had had ill fortune all season, injury to newly signed striker Gordon Sweetzer being a typical misfortune.
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Russell Davies. Photo: BBC
‘But then I wonder, thinking of this small, abashed crowd in its rudimentary ground (only one half-pitch-length grandstand and precious little covered terracing) whether Cambridge are not simply embarrassed by the possibility of good fortune.

‘A run of results such as they have sometimes had this season – away wins, for goodness sake, by 2-0 at Brighton, 3-1 at Stoke and 2-0 at Sunderland – would have put them up where those clubs are. But I don’t believe that the Abbey Stadium (more abbey than stadium) can handle the idea of success.


‘What would they do with it, in a town where it is notoriously difficult to drag the public out of range of their five-bar Belling Glowmaster simulated hearths?

‘Perhaps the lesson of the medieval cathedral is appropriate here; the people need to be shown success – buildings, acreage, splendour – before they can be relied upon to come and worship.

'So Cambridge must soon take the risk, and build. Alan Biley may find, next time he emerges from behind the grandstands, that he’s been cashed in to buy another vale of tiers.'
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Coster living

7/20/2018

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This is a revised version of an article that appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the game against Cochester United on 2 September 2017.

They’re off … and as they pass the Abbey Church in Newmarket Road it’s Warren and Ellis jostling for the lead. Ellis last year’s winner, of course.

Past the brickyards, and at the Paper Mills it’s Warren making the pace. Out on the muddy Quy road it’s still Warren, looking remarkably fresh. He reaches the turn at Bottisham Swan in style, with Ellis looking good too, but trailing. My word, this is fast.

The runners are facing a stiff headwind on the return leg, but that doesn’t bother Warren.
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The costermongers' barrow race, from Newmarket Road to Six Mile Bottom and return, held on Boxing Day 1913, under starter's orders
As they pass the cemetery he’s streets ahead of Ellis, who looks beaten. Warren … Warren … Warren all the way. He flies through the finishing line at Abbey Street … and look at his time: he’s smashed the course record by two minutes!

The Boxing Day costers’ barrow ‘marathon’ of 1913 was dominated by Ben Warren from gun to tape, and his one hour, 26 minutes was indeed a record for the annual event.

It was a remarkable performance in heavy going – Newmarket Road was not the free-flowing highway we know today – and he picked up £2 5s 0d for his efforts.

Along the 12-mile route the 14 competitors pushed their costermongers’ barrows past builder William Sindall’s joinery works. If the race had been run in 1932, the contenders might have encountered Abbey United supporters on their way to prepare their pitch behind the works for the following day’s friendly against Bottisham.

The 1913 race attracted a large crowd – it was by then established as one of Cambridge’s festive season highlights, having started around 1890 – and volunteer collectors gathered a goodly sum for Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Another volunteer, the Newmarket Road shoemaker Thomas Thickpenny Cash, acted as timekeeper. His father Isaac Thickpenny Cash was active in the organisation of the race, and several other Cashes were involved.

Coconuts is very interested in the Cash families of early 20th century Barnwell. In fact, a small group of researchers has been delving into the archives in search of two family members who played for Abbey United in 1913, and may have been among the crowd cheering the barrow racers on.

The work was part of a research project run in partnership with Wolfson College and funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. The aim was to throw some light on the everyday lives of working-class east Cambridge during World War I, and knowing what happened to the lads who played for the pre-Great War Abbey was part of that.

We know that two young men called Cash, one with the initial H, turned out for the club in a 3-2 defeat to Watts & Sons on Midsummer Common on 29 November 1913. It seems likely that 16-year-old Harry Cash was the ‘H’ in question; in 1911 he was living at 147 Newmarket Road with aunt and uncle Catherine and William Bruce.

Young Harry was killed in France in 1917, while fighting with the Cambridgeshire Regiment, but his older brother William, who was also living with the Bruces in 1911, survived the war.

Were these Cash brothers Abbey United pioneers? We need to know, and if you have any information that could help, please get in touch at 100yearsofcoconuts@gmail.com.

Meanwhile, the outcomes of the Coconuts research are nearing fulfilment: a booklet will be published in the coming months, and there will also be a display at the Museum of Cambridge.

Before I go, I should tell you who finished third in that 1913 costers’ race: a certain J Doggett.
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Amber and black

7/17/2018

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The following is a revised version of an article that appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the game against Leeds United on 9 January 2017.

Before a recent match the Coconuts team were selling copies of Andrew Bennett’s Newmarket Road Roughs and, while they were at it, handing out Let’s Kick Racism Out Of Football stickers and badges. The chat turned to a BBC documentary, broadcast in November 2016, about West Bromwich legend Len Cantello’s 1979 testimonial match, Whites vs Blacks: How Football Changed a Nation.

You couldn’t imagine a game pitting a team of black players against an all-white XI taking place today. But back in 1979 black footballers were still a rarity in England, and the few there were often had to listen to horrifying, lengthy racist broadsides from the terraces. Thank God more enlightened attitudes have prevailed … at least in most places.

What a glorious contribution black players have made to the Cambridge United cause – and it started way back in the 1960s.

Ask any U’s fan of a certain age about the identity of the first black player to pull on an amber shirt and they’ll probably say it was Dennis Walker in 1968. We posed the same question to the late Andrew Bennett, and he put us right: the first black U was Attu Mensah.

The 20-year-old Ghana international came to England in 1964 and did the rounds of trials at Charlton, Norwich, St Neots, Newmarket and Cambridge City before landing at the Abbey.

His only U’s appearance was in the almost legendary Mithras Cup, in which United had drawn Hornchurch. In the second leg at the Abbey on October 5, Mensah scored his team’s second goal in a 4-1 win, dictating the midfield play and supplying pinpoint passes. ‘The crowd loved the Ghanaian, who responded to the praise of the fans,’ said the Cambridge Daily News.

Sadly, that was the last those fans were to see of Mensah. He moved on to Ely City, St Neots and Port Vale, and represented his country in the 1968 Olympic Games before moving to the USA to study, play and coach football.

The next black player to happen along Newmarket Road was Alva Anderson, who became the first Jamaican to represent United. He was studying for an economics and marketing degree at Fitzwilliam College, had earned a boxing Blue and had already played for Jamaica in a World Cup match.

His first appearance was at wing half in a 3-1 home friendly defeat of Luton in October 1965, and he made three Midland Floodlit League appearances before moving back to Jamaica. There he represented his country at both football and hockey and has since followed a distinguished career in sports administration and business.

It was three years before former Busby Babe Dennis Walker arrived. The 23-year-old had already become the first black player to play for Manchester United, and had appeared more than 150 times in four years for York City before joining the U’s.

Appointed team captain, he drove United on to the Southern League championship and the Southern League Cup in his first season. It was Walker’s free kick that Tony Butcher converted to open the scoring in the 3-0 title clincher against Kettering on 3 May 1969.

He maintained his place at the heart of the side in 1969/70 and, once in the Football League from 1970 on, showed his versatility by filling in at centre half and up front when needed. He was granted a free transfer and moved on to Poole Town in 1972.
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Sadly, the trailblazing Walker died in 2003.His United record was 23 goals in 202 appearances, and he left many magical memories.
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The Melbourne FC side that won the Jamaica Senior League title in 1960 with Alva Anderson second from right, back row.
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Above and below: Dennis Walker in 1970.
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Small man, big reputation

7/13/2018

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Settle in for a long read on the brief Cambridge United career of England winger Johnny Hancocks, and the even shorter stint of fellow wide man Bobby Langton.

The news travelled fast round the workplaces, homes and pubs of Cambridge on 11 January 1960: United had signed two more Wilfs!

It was not much more than two years since the great Wilf Mannion's last game in Cambridge United colours. Now it seemed player-coach Alan Moore had compensated for the loss of the legendary inside forward by snapping up two fellow England internationals.

Johnny Hancocks, an FA Cup winner with Wolves and the possessor of three England caps, looked destined for the outside right position at Newmarket Road, while Bobby Langton, capped 11 times while playing for Blackburn, Preston and Bolton, was a powerful left winger with a terrific shot.

Their international careers had been overshadowed by those of the peerless Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney, but their reputations were safe.

Working against them was the fact that neither could claim spring-chicken status: Hancocks was 40 when he arrived at Newmarket Road (although the Cambridge Daily News generously knocked two years off that figure) and Langton was a year and a bit older.

The latter had not come far, having been released by Wisbech Town after three years' service when the seriousness of a knee injury became apparent.

Further misfortune followed when, on his way to Cambridge for his debut, Langton's car skidded off a road near Derby. It was an eerie echo of a similar accident in a nearby location two years before, when Langton was travelling with Northern Ireland winger Johnny McKenna. The Irishman never played again.

Langton also failed to make the following Saturday’s league game at home to Sittingbourne – the club agreed that he should stay in Bolton while his daughter was in hospital after breaking a leg.

Supporters were beginning to wonder if they would ever see their new outside left. A few days later, they got their answer: no, they wouldn't.

Moore informed the press after a 4-1 loss to Guildford that the Langton transfer was off. The boss, concerned by the player's knee problems, had wanted him on a month’s trial, whereas Langton had been holding out for a contract until the end of the season. 'I couldn't risk that,' said Moore.

Meanwhile, Hancocks had turned out three times for the U's, scoring twice. Supporters must have been pleased, although some were wondering if they were really watching a player who had played for his country and was sufficiently famous for his name to adorn a range of football boots.

Johnny Hancocks, born on 30 April 1919 in the Shropshire town of Oakengates (later swallowed up by the new town of Telford), was, to use the term favoured by journalists of the time, diminutive.

Just 5ft 4in tall, he had proportionately small feet, and these anatomical features have been the subject of as much debate and myth-making as his playing abilities.

Estimates of Hancocks's shoe size have ranged over the decades from a relatively substantial six-and-a-half to a truly minuscule two. For the truth of the matter, we can turn to an authoritative source: his niece Sheila, who told the Shropshire Star in 2008 that, while his mother took a size one shoe, her uncle Johnny was a size four.
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From top to bottom: Johnny Hancocks pictured in a Wolves Hall of Fame video; posing with fashionable centre parting to the fore; Johnny Hancocks signature leather football boots from the 1950s, sold on eBay in September 2017 for £105.53; Bobby Langton in the colours of Blackburn Rovers.
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Whatever their size, the Hancocks feet possessed astounding qualities, not least the ability to kick a football very hard. Sheila was sure she'd heard that one of her uncle's shots had broken the net, and Moore was in no doubt about his signing's shooting power.

'He was a little, round fellow,' he would recall in later years, 'about five foot nothing in height, going on 12 stone and with the tiniest feet I've ever seen … but could he hit a ball! Anything 35 to 40 yards out from a set piece would scream into the net.’

It’s said that, while most footballers would use two pairs of boots over the course of a season, Hancocks hit the ball so hard that he would get through five pairs.

It was the 'round' part of Moore's description that was worrying United fans in 1960, but it had not always been a cause for concern.

Hancocks was just 15 when he first appeared for Oakengates Town in the Birmingham League. Walsall, then playing in the Football League's Third Division South, signed him up in 1938 and he played a full season at Fellows Park before World War II intervened.

Still only 20, he joined up in 1940 and found his niche as a physical training instructor while turning out in representative games for the army and guesting for Wrexham and Shrewsbury.

The war carved a large chunk out of Hancocks's football career, but Wolves thought highly enough of him to fork out £4,000 for his signature in the summer of 1946.

He had joined one of English football's fastest up-and-coming clubs and, over the next 11 years, achieved stardom at Molineux, helping them to an FA Cup win in 1949, their first Football League title in 1954 and pioneer status with a series of floodlit friendlies against international opposition.

No wonder he was a favourite in the Black Country: his 378 games in the old gold yielded no fewer than 168 goals, no mean achievement for a wide player. The fourth highest goalscorer in the club’s history, he was the leading marksman for two consecutive seasons in the mid-50s.

He first played for England against Switzerland in 1948, scoring twice, but, as we’ve seen, his appearances were limited by the prodigious performances of Matthews and Finney. Niece Sheila Del-Manso believes other factors – a hatred of travel and his mother’s housekeeping eccentricities – also limited his impact on the big stage.

‘He could not travel,’ she explained to the Shropshire Star’s Toby Neal. ‘This held him back terribly. On the bus he would be sick.’
Sheila continued: ‘Johnny was held back because he could never bring the “big” people home … because of my grandma, Jane. If you put a carpet down she would take it up and hide it under the bed because it had to be kept. So there would be newspaper on the floor.
‘My grandmother was very clean
but such a funny lady.
That broke Johnny's heart.
He could never bring anybody home.’
‘Stan Cullis, the [Wolves] manager, wanted to come. My mum got the parlour sorted out and beautiful. After they had gone, granny whipped all the carpets out and put them under the bed.’

‘My grandmother was very clean but such a funny lady. You must never put anything on the floor on show. You must hide it. That broke Johnny's heart. He could never bring anybody home.’

Was Cullis so offended that he cut Hancocks’s Wolves career short? Probably not, but we do know that, after the gaffer signed West Ham forward Harry Hooper in 1956, the winger’s days were numbered. After seeing out a season in the reserves, he left to take up the role of player-manager at Wellington Town.

He had resigned that post and spent five weeks neither playing nor training when he agreed to ply his trade in Cambridge. It’s possible those weeks of inactivity exacted a drastic toll on his physique.

Hancocks made his U’s bow on 13 January 1960, at home to Norwich CEYMS in an East Anglian Cup first round tie, and won the game with a trademark blaster from distance in the 50th minute. The CDN was impressed by the goal, the new man’s ‘keen footballing brain’ and his ability to split defences with precise passes.

The following Saturday, he scored from the penalty spot in the course of a 3-1 Southern League Division One win at home to Sittingbourne.

By now, a few Abbey regulars were passing jocular remarks about Hancocks’s generous girth and unimpressive fitness level, but a CDN journalist, writing the day before a trip to Guildford City, reported: ‘… Alan Moore assures me that he is at present only three pounds overweight as compared with his Wolverhampton days.’

That visit to Guildford ended in a 4-1 defeat, and Moore must have been thinking about eating his words. The Surrey club’s supporters at Joseph's Road were royally entertained (United fans and management less so) when Hancocks, having failed to get to his feet following a tumble, had to roll over on to all fours in order to rise to the vertical.

When Sudbury Town visited the Abbey in the second round of the East Anglian Cup, Hancocks was in prime form, whacking home two free kicks and a penalty as the U’s won 6-1. But he was dropped when the team travelled to Trowbridge on February 13, and Barnwell tongues were wagging again.

Moore told the CDN that the star signing would address his problems by moving into lodgings in Cambridge and making strenuous efforts to get match-fit. But an announcement on 3 March 1960 made it clear that Hancocks was no longer a Cambridge United employee.

In seven weeks at the club, he had played six times and scored five goals.

Few supporters fell for the official line: that the player had been unable to shake off the effects of an ankle injury and felt it was in everyone’s interests if his contract was cancelled.

Moore was able to reveal later that his decision to end Hancocks’s association with the club had had its roots in the January incident that had amused so many at Guildford. Faced with a player who was loath to lose a fairly lucrative wage, however, he had had to think hard about how to achieve the desired outcome.

‘Suddenly it came to me,’ said Moore. ‘I rang Hancocks in Wolverhampton where he lived, and told him that he would have to come to training twice a week. He didn’t fancy having to travel to Cambridge an extra two times a week and he hadn’t trained for years and wasn’t intending to.

‘I told him that he was suspended for two weeks without pay, unless he agreed to train.’

Hancocks wasn’t a happy bunny but realised he might go without pay for the rest of the season unless he agreed to terminate his contract. Reluctantly, that’s what he did.

He wasn’t quite finished with football, playing the following season for Oswestry Town and GKN Sankey in the Cheshire County League. He was 42 when he called it a day in 1961, seeing out his working life at the Maddock iron foundry in his home town and retiring in 1979.

Still a Molineux legend and a fondly remembered bit-part player at Newmarket Road, he died at Oakengates in 1994.
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  • ​Read more about Johnny Hancocks, Bobby Langton and other players of their era in Risen from the Dust, the second volume of Andrew Bennett's Celery & Coconuts history of Abbey/Cambridge United, available from the CFU online store and the CFU caravan on match days.
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A noticeably portly Johnny Hancocks, on his Southern League debut, closes in on Sittingbourne goalkeeper Round during United's 3-1 win at Newmarket Road on 16 January 1960.
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Steve Fallon, man and boy

7/10/2018

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This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the game against Bristol Rovers on 30 October 2015.
 
It was good to see Steve Fallon back at the Abbey in March, when he took his place among those shortlisted for a place in the Cambridge United Hall of Fame.

We were nodding our heads as his old teammate Alan Biley said that of all the men he played with at United, Steve was the most suited to grace the top of the game.

He never played at English football's highest level. It's that division's loss: it is the poorer for never seeing Steve show just how good a footballer he was.

He's been associated with Cambridge so long, it’s easy to forget that he grew up near the other place.

Yes, he’s a native of Whittlesey and as an impressionable youngster professed a fondness for Tottenham Hotspur and Posh.

​Those youthful indiscretions have long been forgiven, for Steve matured into one of the greatest footballers and servants of the game our city has ever had.

Count ’em: 446 appearances (and the little matter of 30 goals) in all competitions for United, in a career that spanned 13 seasons.

Then he goes and makes a good fist of a job in the club’s commercial department while limbering up for a management career that took in Cambridge City, Histon, Soham Town Rangers and Histon again.

The years he spent in his first spell at Bridge Road, taking the team from the Eastern Counties League to the Conference play-off semi-finals, may have coloured some younger fans’ views of the man, but who will forget his appearance at the head of the United supporters’ solidarity march ahead of our last Football League game of 2005?

Ken Shellito didn’t say much worth listening to during his brief tenure as gaffer in 1985, but it was nail-on-head stuff when he explained why he made Steve his captain: ‘I thought [he] should have the job because he is Cambridge United … In the time I have been at Cambridge I have never heard anyone say a bad word about him as a player or as a person.’

It was a much more successful manager, Ron Atkinson, who had brought Steve from Kettering to Newmarket Road in March 1975.

We think of him as a centre back of skill, strength and intelligence, but it was as a left back and in midfield that he established himself, before teaming up with the likes of Brendon Batson and Dave Stringer as his central defensive career flourished.

Those illustrious names would later be joined as defensive partners by such black-and-amber legends as Lindsay ‘Wolfie’ Smith, David Moyes, Andy Beattie, Keith Osgood and Chris Turner.

He knew where the goal was, too, as an unforgettable, 40-yard volleyed screamer at Gillingham in January 1978 showed.

He was at it again, from closer range this time, as United overcame Exeter 2-1 later that season to climb into the Second Division.

Top clubs like Tottenham and Derby offered sums up to £200,000 for his services, but his United career was far from finished.

Steve was a tower of strength throughout United’s amazing six-year spell in the second tier and beyond, as the club’s fortunes plummeted in the mid-80s.

By now the number of knee operations was beginning to mount and, finally, he was forced to call it a day in November 1986, at the early age of 30.
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Top to bottom: Steve Fallon shows a large crowd what he's made of; in action against Sheffield Wednesday; scoring the goal against Exeter that took United into Division Two; with mascots at the Abbey Stadium.
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It was time to start forging that second career, and time for us to thank our lucky stars that we had the chance to admire the skills and commitment that made Steve an Abbey legend.
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Out with the new; in with the old

7/7/2018

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This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the November 2017 issue of Amber News. With those puzzled by the introduction of a bridge motif on United away shirts in mind, Andy Fox, our resident badge and shirt expert – you might almost think of him as the Coconuts badger – tells the story of the classic United emblem and argues for a return to our roots.
 
My dad used to say we had a proper badge once. And he was right.
 
Here’s a short history lesson. (Sorry if that sounds patronising; I know a lot of you have graced this earth and supported United a lot longer than me.)
 
The pics reproduced here show our original badge … well, more or less. Let me explain.
 
Despite becoming Cambridge United in 1951, rendering the old ‘AU’ motif redundant, we didn’t have a badge until someone came up with this idea. It was designed and created in 1963, in time for the cover of the 1963/64 programme, and remained there until the late 1960s.
 
It’s incredible to think that we have never worn this badge on a shirt. OK, yes, there was a hybridised version on the yellow (eek!) and black quarter shirts between 1996 and 1998, when kit supplier Patrick went through one of its retro phases.
 
It’s equally astounding to note that U’s players didn’t wear a badge on their shirts from 1951 to 1974, full stop.
 
Twenty-three years and no badge on the shirt … that’s weird, even allowing for the spell in the 60s when badges on shirts became rather passé. Did no one question it? Dad?
 
The images show us the coat of arms of the city of Cambridge adorning a shield. This will be familiar if you’ve ever jumped in a cab outside the station or clocked the design above the entrance to the Guildhall.
 
The CUFC monogram needs no explanation. Did Carlisle and Colchester exist then?
 
The original badge (shown on the programme bottom right) featured two smaller shields, to the left and the right. On the left was the motif of the Cambridge & District Sportsmen’s Guild, a fundraising outfit formed in the early 1960s and based at the Supporters’ Club. To the right was the badge of the Supporters’ Club itself.
 
Come 1971, these emblems had disappeared from the badge – evidence perhaps of less than harmonious relations between various parties. Some may say those differences remain to this day, although the Guild was dissolved many years ago.
 
Moving down, we see the ‘Abbey’ construction, paying homage, folklore tells us, to the Abbey Church (the Church of St Andrew, to give it its full name) on Newmarket Road. This should need no clarification: it gives its name to the district that I and CUFC inhabit, to the city council ward, to the parish of St Andrew the Less and apparently to a little sporting institution that commenced proceedings in 1912.
 
The ball, the goal and the verdant turf remind us what sport we’re talking about.
 
Finally, we have the scroll at the bottom emblazoned with United In Endeavour, the club’s (un)official motto – as much CUFC as black and amber, Coconuts, Harry Habbin, Corona soft drinks and Ian Darler.
 
It was coined in the 1960s, when so many volunteers, unified in their hard work, contributed so much to the construction of the Abbey Stadium, particularly the Habbin Stand.
 
I mentioned 1971 above. That was the last time we saw this badge (minus the two shields) in any way representing Cambridge United.
 
Decent as it was to see it on the cover of every home programme during the 1971/72 season, one cannot help but view this as a rather ignominious exit for such a glorious creation.
 
Come the start of the 1972/73 season, the ‘book and ball’ badge was on its way, finding itself on the shirt front at the beginning of 1974/75. Only United could take two seasons to get a new badge from the programme cover on to the shirt – more weirdness.
 
And now I look at our current badge.
 
How has this ‘effort’ survived over 30 years? How much thinking went into it? If you took away the scroll at the bottom, who would be able to tell whose badge it is?
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The classic Cambridge United badge represented (from top to bottom) on a flag in the Abbey Arms; on an embroidered patch available for purchase at the CFU caravan; on an arm tattoo; and on the cover of a 1966/67 programme.
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I give it a tick for its homage to the Cambridge coat of arms (the bridge castellations), but the rest of it … where’s the club’s motto, even? It’s a toilet seat if ever there was one.
 
Time for a new badge. I’m not naïve enough in this minimalist age (see Arsenal, Spurs, Fulham, Juventus, Swansea, Cheltenham) to think we could see the return of the old one, although Manchester City’s latest creation shows I can carry on dreaming.
 
Look at Swindon’s and Barnsley’s return to their badge roots. And Brentford – the bee has returned in its full glory; what a sting that was.
 
Could we not use, though, some of the features of the old badge: the Abbey setting, the ball and the United In Endeavour scroll, and introduce those into a modern design? With a bit more black and amber colouring, maybe?
 
Check out the new ‘old’ flag in the Abbey Arms. I wonder how many people know the history behind it. And there are plenty of nods to the past in the CFU caravan: embroidered patches, car stickers, mugs, coasters, caps, beanie hats, they’re all there.
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Bridge to the past

7/5/2018

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As these things always do, this week's unveiling of a new shirt – in this case the garment to be worn away from home in 2018/19 – has provoked lively debate on the information superhighway, as I believe it's called.

This year's shirt, fetchingly modelled on the right by our Greg, may not be to everyone's taste, but we at Coconuts salute United's nod to the history of our club and our city in the incorporation of a bridge motif.

'This year's jersey,' says the club, 'pays homage to the current club crest and its connections with Magdalene Bridge, previously known as the Great Bridge, located in the centre of the city between Magdalene Street and Bridge Street.'

You know, one of the bridges that are crowded with smart young men brandishing clipboards, hoping in vain to persuade me to part with a month's wages in return for a brief outing on a river already dangerously full of suckers. Sorry, that should be 'full of punters'.

'The bridge, which was built in 1823,' continues the club, 'marks the site of an important Roman-era river crossing that provided all routes, both long-distance and local, with a crossing point across the river Cam.'

​'But,' cries Disgusted of Prickwillow, 'Magdalene Bridge looks nothing like that! It hasn't got any castellations!'

That's true; the present bridge is not castellated. What we need to know here is that the motif on the shirt borrows from part of the city of Cambridge's coat of arms, which in turn forms part of the classic United crest beloved of 100 Years of Coconuts.

No need to mention names, but one Coconutter is so enamoured of that badge that he's had it painted on a wall in his house. Cast your eyes immediately to the right for this extraordinary piece of mural art.

At this point, we need to acquaint ourselves with the coat of arms in question (pictured below, right).

A proper description of the arms, in heraldry talk, is: 'Gules a Bridge of one arch surmounted by three Towers Or in chief a Fleur-de-Lys Gold between two Roses Argent the base barry wavy of the last and Azure thereon three Ships each with one mast and yardarm the sail furled also Sable.'

Need a translation? It goes something like this: Red background; a gold, single-arch bridge with three towers; above, a gold 
fleur-de-lys and two silver roses; below, wavy black lines and three black, single-masted ships with yardarms, their sails furled, on a blue background.

Let's not concern ourselves with the fiddly bits on top or the seahorses either side (although we prefer to think of the latter as hippocampi, creatures that, legend tells us, pulled Neptune's chariot). You can see quite clearly that the away shirt motif is a representation of the bridge in the coat of arms.

Have a look at the shield displayed in The Story of the U's, Coconuts' mini-museum in the Supporters' Club, pictured bottom right.

Again we have the bridge and again we have the fleur-de-lys and two white roses (all three symbolic of charters granted to Cambridge in medieval times).

Again we have the three ships, harking back to the time when the town was largely surrounded by water and much of its trade was river-borne.

Why is the bridge depicted as castellated? Your guess is as good as ours; maybe the Great Bridge did have castellations when the coat of arms was granted in 1575, although it's unlikely: all bridges in this location were built of timber until a stone crossing was put up in 1754.

If you're only interested in football and shirts, you can stop reading now, but we're not finished. We at Coconuts are equally fascinated by the history of our wonderful city and its buildings, and the story of the Great Bridge is immensely rewarding.

It goes back to at least the ninth century. By 1279, it was in such bad repair that carts often fell into the river, despite promises made by the sheriff (either Walter Shelfhanger – fantastic name! – or William le Moyne) that he would use the proceeds of a heavy 'pontage' tax he had imposed to rebuild it in stone.

He did nothing of the sort, preferring to patch the bridge up with hurdles and timber and probably pocketing the moneys he'd pulled in.
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Top to bottom: Greg Taylor in new away shirt; classic United badge; coat of arms of city of Cambridge; shield in The Story of the U's
Meanwhile, the keeper of the castle prison, just up the hill, was lining his pockets by pulling planks out of the bridge and extorting ferry fees from travellers wanting to cross the Cam. For centuries, other townsfolk helped themselves to building materials in similar fashion.

The bridge was rebuilt in 1483, and by 1494 a house had been built on it. In the 16th century, women said to have too much to say for themselves – judged 'scolds' by the town's elite, all of whom were men – were plunged into the filthy river on a 'ducking stool' that hung from the centre of the bridge.

At last, in 1754, along came James Essex, builder and architect of this parish, to design and erect the stone bridge that preceded today's iron construction, at the enormous cost of £1,609.

One last thing: Essex was married to Elizabeth Thurlbourne, daughter of a Cambridge bookseller. Is it stretching credulity to wonder if she was an ancestor of Ron Thulbourn, licensee of the Rose & Crown in Teversham and a director of Cambridge United Football Club between 1950 and 1960?

This blog was corrected and updated on 6 July 2018.

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What Roy did for us

7/3/2018

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An edited version of this article appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the game against Carlisle United on 16 April 2016.

Two characters who went on to play big roles in the Cambridge United story clashed when England played Northern Ireland at Wembley on 15 May 1974.

Roy McFarland, the home side’s assured, cultured 25-year-old centre half, was up against rather less cultured opposition in the shape of a certain Samuel John Morgan.

It didn’t go well for Roy: he was forced off with an Achilles injury after just 36 minutes, having come off worse in a challenge with our Sammy. He was neither the first nor the last to suffer that fate. 

It took him a year to recover, but he eventually played on, continuing his distinguished career with Derby County and earning 28 caps for his country before moving into player-managership with Bradford City.

Further spells in the gaffer’s chair followed at Derby and Bolton and, when Tommy Taylor left the Abbey Stadium, amid acrimony, for Leyton Orient, Roy applied for, and on 13 November 1996 secured, the manager’s job at Division Three United.
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Roy McFarland: inherited a club in limbo.
United fans approved when the gentlemanly Roy’s first home game saw their lads beat Orient 2-0, with goals from Jamie Barnwell and Michael Kyd.

Making his football philosophy plain by posting ‘The worst crime in football is to give the ball to the opposition’ in the dressing room, he set about signing the likes of Ian Ashbee, David Preece and Abbey legend John Taylor, and bringing out Paul Wanless’s qualities, but United dropped out of promotion contention in his first season. The U’s were, Roy Mac opined, ‘a club in limbo’.

As financial imperatives forced the sales of Danny Granville, Jody Craddock and Micah Hyde, he was battling the bank as much as the opposition. But he managed his slim resources well and, after a disappointing 16th place in 1997/98, brought glory back to Newmarket Road the following season.

With emerging talent in the widely differing forms of Trevor Benjamin and Tom Youngs and brought-in strength in the likes of Alex Russell and Martin Butler, Roy took the U’s on an exhilarating League Cup run that ended in penalties at Nottingham Forest, and then promotion to the third tier as runners-up.

‘Now the aim is to continue to make progress, while always remembering that the bottom line is the survival of the football club,’ Roy told the press.

Sadly, progress proved beyond the club’s reach and United finished 19th in 2000. To make matters worse, there were simmering tensions between boss and board, and they boiled over when chairman Reg Smart sold Benjamin to Leicester while Roy was on holiday.

‘Feeling betrayed, I told [the board] exactly what I thought of all of them to a man – not the wisest thing to do,’ he observes in his autobiography.

The unrest seemed to spread to the dressing room, and on 27 February 2001 Roy and United parted company. He left praising the fans but ruing the directors’ attitude.

‘There was a lot of mistrust between myself and the board,’ he recalled later. ‘That’s the way football is and sometimes if you look back, we’d both regret it.

‘I had four and a quarter years there and I loved them because it’s a wonderful part of the world and I worked with some great people.’ We think you’re great too, Roy.
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Left, directors Reg Smart and Gary Harwood field questions with Roy McFarland at a fans' forum. Above, Roy welcomes John Taylor back to the Abbey.
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