In the old days, if you left a Newmarket Road pub only to realise you’d still got a bit of a thirst on, you didn’t have to go far to put the matter right. Around the time Abbey United was formed, early in the last century, there was a boozer every 36 yards on an average stretch of the fabled thoroughfare.

Nowadays you’ll need stout walking boots if you want to visit the only three pubs that remain: the Wrestlers, the Corner House and the Burleigh Arms. But renovations at the old Seven Stars promise to bring a lost hostelry back to life – and reawaken memories of the shop that once nestled alongside the pub.

The fishing tackle emporium of the larger than life Percy Anderson met the needs of generations of Cambridge anglers, and it was for that pursuit that Percy was best known. Crowned UK national champion in 1974 and Europe’s top angler three years later, he rejoiced in passing on his skills and knowledge, running his legendary summer teach-ins for local kids for 40 years until shortly before his death, aged 75, in 2006.

Everyone who knew Percy has a story to tell; ask the likes of Ian Darler or Rodney Slack if you need to flex your chuckle muscle. Ian’s tale of the exposed rump is a belter, as is Rodney’s colourful recounting of the mannequin incident, and there’s plenty more where they came from.

But Percy’s competitive exploits were not confined to the riverbank: he competed at county level at indoor and outdoor bowls, snooker, pool and table tennis, and he was a very useful centre forward who flirted with football’s big time.

After rising through the Abbey ranks, he made his United Counties League debut in a 2-2 home draw with Corby Town in September 1950. The goals didn’t flow too freely – he scored three in 11 first team games – but First Division West Brom were interested and in May 1951, after netting four times in three trial matches, the 20-year-old Percy signed a professional contract. As you’ll see when you visit The Story of the U’s in the Supporters’ Club, the Throstles promised to reward United if ‘the boy Anderson’ made the grade.

Sad to say, he didn’t. After missing out on the Albion’s first team for two seasons, he moved on to Stockport County of Division Three North, for whom he played his only Football League game during the 1953/54 season.
Perhaps pining for the Cam, he returned to the Abbey in May 1954 and enjoyed a run in the side in the first half

I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts blasts out of the wind-up gramophone at Coconuts Acres night and day, but elsewhere you don't often hear our anthem played more than once in one day.

A wonderful exception to the rule occurred on Saturday, March 19, before the U's kicked off against Yeovil, as a tribute to Russell Crane (see obituary below). 

Coconuts rang out loud and proud over the PA as United and Yeovil supporters joined in a minute's applause in honour of the great man. That tribute followed a reading of these evocative words, which flowed from the pen of Andrew Bennett:

[On May Day 1952] United unexpectedly defeated the mighty Cambridge City 2-0 in the Cambs Invitation Cup final before a crowd of 9,814 at Milton Road, Crane scoring both goals in a five-minute spell during the first half. At the final whistle United’s ecstatic fans stormed the pitch and chaired Crane off to a rousing chorus of I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.

100 Years of Coconuts and CFU were saddened to hear of the death at the age of 90, on 10 March 2016, of Abbey/Cambridge United legend Russell Crane.

Russell was the only man to play for the club in five different leagues: the wartime East Anglian, the Cambridgeshire, United Counties, Eastern Counties and Southern. It was an indication of the respect that all involved with the club held for Russell, a U’s man through and through, when he was made honorary life president of Coconuts in November last year.

Born on 26 January 1926, Russell grew up in Ditton Walk, a stone’s throw from the Abbey United ground, in a United-focused household. His father Herbie was a jack-of-all-trades helper behind the scenes, a role he filled into the 1950s. He would take the team’s shirts home for his wife Sylvia to wash, and count and bank the gate money from home games.

Russell left school at 15 and it was at that age that he made his U’s debut on 13 September 1941, in a 4-2 defeat of an RAF XI. A diminutive, stocky, speedy left winger with tricky skills and a powerful shot, he made an immediate impact and by 1943 was earning rave reviews from the local press.

By now 17, he was called up for the Royal Navy. He took part in an ill-fated exercise designed to prepare Allied forces for the Normandy landings, and later served all over the world, but returned to play for United whenever he was on leave. Upon demob in 1946 he established himself as a regular in the side and adjusted easily when Abbey joined the semi-professional United Counties League a year later.

Russell blossomed fully during the 1948/49 season, when he was the league’s top scorer with 42 goals in 37 games, a club record. In a 4-1 win at Eynesbury he scored a stunning goal when he picked up the ball in his own half and dribbled past man after man before hitting the net. At Kettering, ‘his marksmanship and working of the ball bore the hallmark of class and the opposing defence never knew what he was going to do next,’ said the press report. He scored four goals in a game on three occasions that season, with two hat-tricks thrown in for good measure.

He played at centre forward and inside left as well as on the left wing as United established themselves in the UCL. When they beat relative giants Wisbech in the East Anglian Cup in 1950, the local paper reported:  ‘If Abbey United are fortunate enough to win the East Anglian Cup this season, the name of Russell Crane should be engraved upon it in gilt letters. For it was the fighting spirit of this human dynamo of an inside forward when Abbey were a goal down after two minutes which largely inspired his team to a one-goal victory. Revealing all the menace of an angry wasp, Crane buzzed and harassed his way among the visiting defenders in a tireless pattern which did much to put a top-gear United on the winning trail by half-time.’

At the end of 1950/51 Peterborough United of the Midland League offered Russell a significant pay rise, but he declined to move out of loyalty to his hometown club. He told Coconuts TV in 2014: ‘As far as I was concerned it was a family affair, you know? My father worked up there, my mother did what she could do at home, my sisters [Edna, Ivy and Freda] all supported them and used to go up to the games …’

The renamed Cambridge United moved across to the Eastern Counties League in 1951. That season United unexpectedly defeated the mighty Cambridge City 2-0 in the Cambs Invitation Cup final before a crowd of 9,814 at Milton Road, Crane scoring both goals in a five-minute first-half spell. At the final whistle United’s ecstatic fans stormed the pitch and chaired Crane off to a rousing chorus of I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.

For the 1953/54 season Russell was converted into an attacking left back, a role he took to with comfort. He was awarded a benefit match in April 1956 to mark 15 years’ service to the club and around that time he turned down the offer of a trial with Ipswich Town.
He filled a variety of positions as United progressed to the Southern League in 1958, and he scored the club’s first goal in that competition, in a 3-1 defeat of Guildford City. That season was his swansong at United and after 18 years’ service, 502 games and 186 goals he remained in local football at Soham and Sawston.

A part-time professional player to the end of his U’s career, Russell’s off-pitch working life encompassed spells at a cable company in Regent Street, the Pye group companies Unicam and Telecom and an electrical wholesaler. He continued to live in the Ditton Walk area until the end of his life. He leaves a daughter, Jane, two sons, Russell and Stephen, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Coconuts has only recently heard of the death, on 27 September 2015, of former Abbey United player Sid High, who was for many years a prominent figure in the Waterbeach community.

Sid was born in the village on 30 September 1922 and spent his early life at Denny Abbey Farm, where his father was a horseman. After leaving school he worked at the village butcher’s, Bulls, but his heart was not in the job and it wasn’t long before he was able to take the first steps towards making a living from his lifelong passion: football.

He was on the books of Cambridge Town before making his debut for Abbey United against an RAF XI on 17 May 1941. A right winger, he became a regular for United during 1943/44, during which he was an East Anglian League ever-present. In one game he set up all four of Russell Crane’s goals in a 5-1 defeat of Bourn.

​Sid scored his only hat-trick for the Wasps on 13 October 1945 in a 7-1 thrashing of RAF Quy, but the result was expunged from the records when the servicemen withdrew from the Cambs League. That season he was selected to play for Cambridgeshire against Hertfordshire and Essex.

The two gents pictured right were revisiting their old stamping ground on Sunday, December 6 for the FA Cup game against Doncaster Rovers, as guests of 100 Years of Coconuts and Cambridge United. Len Saward (right) and Russell Crane eagerly drank in the atmosphere and shared the disappointment of other U's fans at the result.

Accompanying Len were his son Patrick and grandsons Jack and Charlie, passionate U's supporters every one.

We've written extensively about Russell, the newly installed Honorary Life President of Coconuts, in the recent past. Now it's Len's turn, and we can do no better than to reproduce the programme article about him that appeared on Sunday. Read on …

Football brothers: Bobby and Jack Charlton, Phil and Gary Neville, Rio and Anton Ferdinand, John and Clive Charles for starters. Glenn and, um, Carl Hoddle. The U’s have had a few, Alan and Gary Kimble being the most obvious examples.

If only Pat Saward had played for United alongside older brother Len, what a partnership that would have been, supporters of the older generation have been known to muse. The Millwall, Villa and Huddersfield wing half overshadowed Len in the fame stakes, winning an FA Cup winner’s medal and earning 18 Irish caps during a long career.

Ah but, you see, there are many who saw the brothers play who insist Len was the better of the two. He could have eclipsed Pat’s fame if he’d had more of the latter’s driven nature, the sages used to say over their pints of mild in The Globe. Look at what Wilf Mannion said about him, they’d declare, driving the point home with a jab of the pipe stem.

Len Saward, Golden Boy Mannion once said, was the cleverest footballer he ever played with.

Len, who is at today’s game as a guest of 100 Years of Coconuts and Cambridge United, has earned himself a unique place in the Abbey annals. He was a wonderfully elusive inside forward possessed of a mighty shot who played for the U’s in two spells between 1952 and 1958, chalking up 170 games and 43 goals. He paid for the club’s first floodlights out of his testimonial fund, for heaven’s sake. Then he worked in Dudley Arliss’s commercial department, at first selling the pools tickets that helped United climb towards the Football League.

Aldershot-born Len arrived from Crystal Palace via Tonbridge and a £750 fee in September 1952, promptly scored on his Eastern Counties League debut against Stowmarket and finished the season in double figures.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: Russell Crane is to us the embodiment of the spirit of Abbey United/ Cambridge United. That's why we asked him to be Honorary Life President of 100 Years of Coconuts, and we're delighted to say he accepted.

This is a man who, growing up in a U's-devoted family just yards from the ground, made his first-team debut at the age of 15 in a wartime league. He proceeded to represent United in four other leagues, setting a club scoring record for a season of 42 goals in 37 games along the way, before moving on after 186 goals and 502 appearances.

CFU chairman Dave Matthew-Jones presented Russell with a memento on November 26 as a mark of our immense respect.

If there's anyone who embodies the spirit of Cambridge United, it's Russell Crane. Supporter, player and worker, Russell still lives close to the ground and is a U through and through. He and daughter Jane Lyon were the guests of 100 Years of Coconuts and the club on Saturday, for the Northampton game. Here are some pictures from the day and an edited version of an article that appeared in the matchday programme.

Russell Crane has as valid a claim as anyone to the title of Mr United. Growing up in an Abbey United-centred family a coconut’s throw from the ground, he was still a boy when he first pulled on the amber and black. He bowed out 18 years later having played 502 games, scored 186 goals despite playing many of those games at left back, and left his mark on five different leagues.

Now in his late 80s, Russell is today making use of the CFU audio description service through which volunteers provide visually impaired fans with a live account of the action. He hasn’t had to travel far to be with us today, for he lives very close to where he grew up in Ditton Walk. The Cranes were Abbey United through and through – mother washing the team kit, father counting the gate money and taking it to the National Provincial Bank in Trinity Street; like so many U’s people they gave their time freely to the club they loved – so it was natural that Russell should play for his local club. A tricky left winger with a cannonball shot who had represented Cambridge Schoolboys, he left school at 15 and was soon playing alongside fellow legends Harvey Cornwell and Wally Wilson in a 4-2 defeat of an RAF XI. The date was 13 September 1941.

The following season saw Russell playing in the wartime East Anglian League – the Cambridgeshire, United Counties, Eastern Counties and Southern Leagues were also to feature on his CV – and garnering enthusiastic reviews from the press. But there was a war on, and he was called up at the age of 17. His Royal Navy service took him to the ends of the Earth, but it didn’t stop him playing for Abbey when leave gave him the opportunity.

Russell adapted easily to the semi-pro United Counties League after the war, and his star rose to its zenith in the 1948/49 season, when he blasted 42 goals in a mere 37 games – a club record – and notched four goals in a game three times. ‘His marksmanship and working of the ball bore the hallmark of class and the opposing defence never knew what he was going to do next,’ purred the press. Two years later the paper insisted: ‘If Abbey United are fortunate enough to win the East Anglian Cup this season, the name of Russell Crane should be engraved upon it in gilt letters.’

Peterborough United of the Midland League came calling in 1951 as United prepared for life in the Eastern Counties League, but Russell was having none of it. ‘As far as I was concerned it was a family affair,’ he told Coconuts TV last year. ‘My father worked up there, my mother did what she could do at home, my sisters all supported them and used to go up to the games.’

His loyalty was rewarded when the U’s (by now Cambridge United) beat the giants of Cambridge City 2-0 in the final of the Cambs Invitation Cup, in front of a crowd of 9,814, at Milton Road on 1 May 1952. Russell scored both goals in a five-minute first-half spell, and at the final whistle United’s ecstatic supporters chaired him off the pitch, singing I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts as they went. As Andrew Bennett observes, the balance of power in the city was starting to shift.

Russell, converted to an attacking left back role by player-manager Bill Whittaker in 1953/54, continued to endear himself to the fans. In 1956 he was awarded a benefit match to mark 15 years of service, and fought off the attentions of Division Three (South) Ipswich Town.

It was entirely appropriate that he should score United’s first home Southern League goal on 30 August 1958, in a 3-1 defeat of Guildford City. But that season was his last for his beloved U’s and he played out the rest of his career at Sawston and Soham.

It’s unlikely we will see Russell Crane's like again, but the flame lit by him and other legendary players and supporters, united in endeavour, will never be extinguished.