Category: Andrew Bennett - 100 YEARS OF COCONUTS

100 YEARS OF COCONUTS

‘The Moose that Roared’ - On sale now

6/14/2020

100 years of Coconuts are pleased to announce the release of the latest Celery & Coconuts publication ‘The Moose that Roared’.

The latest instalment in Andrew Bennett’s acclaimed history of Cambridge United books he created, which have being put together will be popular for u’s fans.

The Moose that Roared will be volume four of the books documenting the clubs history. This volume features one of the most successful periods & exciting times for Cambridge United fans & with a foreword from a legend from that period in Shaggy it should be an exciting read for fans.

There will be limited stock available for the latest volume of the book, but you can pre order today for just £22.99 including post & packing to avoid missing out on owning another piece of great U’s history.

To pre order your copy of the book please visit the CFU store here.

CLICK HERE TO BUY

Heroes of the Hall of Fame

3/25/2019

Six star performers on and off the pitch were inducted into the Cambridge United Hall of Fame during a celebratory dinner in the Abbey Lounge, home of the Supporters' Club, on Thursday, March 21.

Players Terry Eades, Steve Fallon and Tom Finney, manager Roy McFarland, commercial powerhouse Bill Cawdery and club historian Andrew Bennett joined their peers in the Hall of Fame, which is managed by 100 Years of Coconuts and recognises outstanding contributions to the story of the football club.

Eades, Fallon, Finney and McFarland were chosen by United supporters via online and paper voting, while Cawdery and Bennett were selected for induction by a Coconuts/ Cambridge Fans United electoral college.

‘The Cambridge United Hall of Fame recognises the work of people who have changed the history of the club significantly, one way or another,’ former Coconuts chair Pat Morgan told the press.

‘It doesn’t matter whether their contributions were on the pitch, in the dugout, in the boardroom, in the offices or on the terraces.

'The Cambridge United team is not just 11 players on the park on a Saturday; it’s every character who has ever played a part in the never-ending story that unfolds each week.’

Three of the new Hall of Famers were present to receive their mementos of induction: defenders Eades and Fallon and striker/midfielder Finney.

Mark Cawdery received his late father’s memento and Sam Wilson accepted his uncle Andrew Bennett’s award, while diners were able to watch a recording of McFarland’s acceptance speech.

The new inductees joined the existing Hall of Famers who have been inducted since the launch of the scheme in 2016: commercial manager Dudley Arliss, player/supporter Russell Crane, players Alan Biley, Dion Dublin, Wilf Mannion, Rodney Slack and Paul Wanless, player/managers John Beck and John Taylor, team managers Bill Leivers and Richard Money, stadium manager Ian Darler and supporter extraordinaire Lil Harrison.

Bennett’s induction to the Hall of Fame also served as the inauguration of the annual Andrew Bennett Award, which is intended to recognise extraordinary inputs to the club and its community.

It was instituted in memory of the late honorary club historian, archivist, writer and author of the Celery & Coconuts history of Abbey United/Cambridge United, who died in February last year.

Cambridge United director of football Graham Daniels presided over the ceremony, which was also attended by many supporters and ex-players including Andy Beattie, Alan Biley, Derrick Christie, Sam Harris, Peter Hobbs, Keith Lockhart, Rodney Slack and John Taylor.

Visit photographer Simon Lankester's Flickr account to view full coverage of the evening.

Top, celebrations for Hall of Famers past and present; above, Mark Cawdery (right) receives a memento of his father Bill's induction into the Hall of Fame from Ian Darler. All photos by Simon Lankester; visit Simon's Flickr pages to view coverage of the entire evening

Cambridge United Supporters' Club chairman Paul Mayes (right) presents Terry Eades with his Hall of Fame memento

Existing Hall of Famer Alan Biley (left) with new inductee, and former teammate, Tom Finney

Former centre-back partners Andy Beattie (left) and Steve Fallon renew their friendship

Roy McFarland receives his memento from former Coconuts chair Pat Morgan on March 12 at McFarland's Derbyshire home

Sam Wilson (left) receives a memento of induction into the Hall of Fame on behalf of his uncle Andrew Bennett from 100 Years of Coconuts committee member Ian Elliott

These I have loved

1/19/2019

It’s a daunting task but a hugely rewarding one: since Andrew Bennett died last February, Coconutters have been wading through the vast amount of stuff he left us.

Words are not adequate to convey the size of our beloved club historian’s archive of writings, stats, reports, photographs … you name it, Andrew saved it.

It will take many a year to explore, sort, catalogue and communicate the contents of the entire hoard of treasure. The best we can do at the moment is to nibble away at the edges of the digital pile.

As we do so, we regularly unearth priceless examples of Bennettiana, and we’re happy to bring one to your attention today.

Around 2010, Andrew described his favourite U’s players from the 40-odd years that he’d been making his regular pilgrimages to the Abbey. He wrote:

My name is Andrew Bennett, I am 51 years of age and for the last 35 of those years I have been a resident of the village of Histon. I first nagged my Dad into taking me to the Abbey Stadium on 13 April 1970, for a 3-0 win over Gloucester City. It is well-nigh impossible to pick out just five players who have sported the black and amber over the last 40-plus years, but here goes …

Brian Greenhalgh. Peter Leggett was my very first U’s hero, due to his resemblance to my all-time footballing idol, George Best. But Greenhalgh stood out as something special: a graceful, flaxen-haired goal machine whose United career climaxed in the unforgettable 3-2 win over Mansfield on the last day of the 1972/73 season that clinched promotion to Division Three.

I can still hear the chants of ‘Greeeeen-halgh! Greeeeen-halgh!’ echoing around the old place as the crowd celebrated on the pitch with the players, then chairing them off. For a 13-year-old, four-eyed geek, life did not get any better than this. I never got to touch the hem of the great man’s garment, though.

Steve Fallon. It is my theory that as far as favourite players go, we eventually gravitate towards one with whom we identify most readily. Once I realised that I would never be another Best, or even another Leggett, I grew to admire a man with different qualities: consistency, stoicism, reliability, strength, loyalty, courage.

Just occasionally, very occasionally, Fallon would produce something quite extraordinary, a 25-yard wonder goal such as he scored against Grimsby on a sunny afternoon in May 1981.

He was there throughout the great days of the late 1970s/early 1980s, and he was one of the few who stayed when it all turned sour later on; if injury had not curtailed his career, he’d probably still be playing for us now.

Steve Claridge. You only have to look at certain players for their personality to all but jump off the pitch and rugby-tackle you to the ground. Claridge was a rebel: scruffy, insolent, a shambling maverick with rolled-down socks in a marvellous team that John Beck did his best to turn into dead-eyed robots, but did not quite succeed.

But what I liked most about him was his absolute joy when he scored a goal – an infectious, unbridled expression of the sheer fun of football at its best that he shared with us, lighting up the whole stadium.

He even came back after leaving us once, before going on to the even greater fame and fortune he deserved. Then he shared it all with us in a cracking autobiography.

Dave Kitson. As a ‘ginger’ myself, I always tried to look on myself as one of the chosen few, someone special who stood out from the crowd despite all evidence to the contrary. Then came Kits, the coolest man in town, an intelligent, articulate, supremely gifted footballer who managed to be simultaneously United’s best striker, midfielder, defender and passer of the ball whenever he played, and came across as even more Fonz-like off the pitch.

The most talented player I have ever seen in a United shirt, he was sold from under our noses by an incompetent board and he should have played for England. I still harbour a faint hope that he will.

Robbie Simpson. My most self-indulgent pick, I suppose. I have never wanted to talk to or get to know United players, for fear that they would turn out to be the self-obsessed, dim-witted, objectionable ninnies that so many higher level players really are. But when I presented Robbie with his player of the season trophy in 2007, he not only knew who I was but told me he loved my match reports and always got his dad to print them off for him.

He had had a great season, saving us almost single-handedly from relegation to the Conference South with goals of grace, skill and power, including a dramatic late

winner at Aldershot, and to discover that he was a humble, well-spoken, thoroughly nice guy as well made it all the more bittersweet that he had to leave us so soon. But then, don’t they all …

Honourable mentions: Dion Dublin, David Crown, Ian Measham, Wayne Hatswell, Martin Butler, Lionel Perez, Tom Finney, Alan Biley, Willie Watson.

Cheerio
Harry

A great man remembered

11/25/2018

Andrew Bennett's family and closest friends were the guests of honour when a plaque commemorating the U's supporter extraordinaire was unveiled on Saturday, November 24.

The club historian, author, reporter, archivist and statistician, who died in February, is now commemorated in the central tunnel of the Habbin, from whose terraces he watched countless hundreds of United matches.

The plaque's manufacture, by Ivett & Reed of Newmarket Road, was made possible by a crowdfunding campaign that was over-subscribed many times over.

The surplus moneys – boosted by royalty payments from Andrew's Celery & Coconuts history of Abbey/ Cambridge United – will fund the annual Andrew Bennett Award, the details of which will be announced at the 2019 Cambridge United Hall of Fame induction dinner in March.

After the unveiling of the slate plaque, Andrew's ashes were interred next to the Habbin-side touchline.

It was a fitting conclusion to a moving occasion, and one that will ensure Andrew's enduring presence in a place he loved.

Top, members of Andrew's family including mother Joyce (centre) gather to remember the great man. Bottom, Andrew's ashes are interred by the Habbin touchline. Photos: 100 Years of Coconuts

Celery & Coconuts volume three – order now!

9/20/2018

The third volume of Andrew Bennett’s brilliant Celery & Coconuts history of Cambridge United, relating the incredible story of the 1970s, is available to order now.

With a foreword by star 70s striker Alan Biley, Champagne & Corona tells the tale of a revolutionary decade – one that saw the club continue its irresistible rise to claim a place in English football’s second tier.

Written in Bennett’s distinctive, expressive style and containing more than 150 illustrations – as well as the vital statistics of an amazing ten-year upwards surge – it will merit a place on any football fan’s bookshelves.

Champagne & Corona will be published in November by Lovely Bunch, the publishing offshoot of CFU heritage arm 100 Years of Coconuts, in good time for Christmas.

Champagne & Corona: get your order in now

Initial orders are being taken through the CFU online store and at the CFU caravan on a match day. Email 100 Years of Coconuts if you have any questions.

Champagne & Corona: The Story of Cambridge United Football Club 1970-1980
Paperback; 360 pages
£18.99 if collected from the CFU outlet; £17.99 for CFU members
£21.98 for postal deliveries; £20.98 for CFU members

In the master's footsteps

8/25/2018

George Alsop with the Cambs Challenge Cup, Milton Road, 18 April 1925. Photo: Cambridge Chronicle/Cambridgeshire Collection at Cambridge Central Library

An edited version of this article appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the game against Cheltenham Town on Saturday, 25 August 2018.

In February of this year, 100 Years of Coconuts lost its greatest asset: a one-man information storehouse and author extraordinaire in the person of Andrew Bennett.

It was a tragically heavy blow for Andrew’s family and for his legions of friends and admirers. And for a while, Coconuts people wondered how they could carry on researching and communicating the story of our club.

Moves are afoot to ensure his name and achievements endure: stand by for the unveiling of a memorial plaque in the Habbin, for news of the Andrew Bennett Award and for the autumn publication of the third volume of his peerless Celery & Coconuts history of the club.

But how could we hope to carry on Andrew’s work – his tireless ferreting out of information in libraries and archives, his compilation of stats, facts and info in dozens of databases, his cheerful and speedy answering of queries from football fans far and wide – in short, his work as Cambridge United’s club historian?

The short answer is that we couldn’t. But what we can do is have a bash at providing a second-best service – a sort of Andrew Bennett Lite, if you like.

Luckily for us and you, Andrew bequeathed to Coconuts his entire, vast archive of U’s-related stuff.

When I say ‘vast’, I mean ‘flipping ginormous’. If you chopped down all the forests in Scandinavia to provide enough paper, printed everything out and laid the sheets end to end, the result would stretch seven times around the world and then on as far as Godalming.

The size of the task of bringing order to the archive, and coming close to understanding it, is gut-grippingly terrifying. Merely opening a folder at random, to reveal thousands upon thousands of sub-folders and individual files, would be enough to induce panic in the most placid of Zen practitioners.

I was browsing idly the other day, clicking on files here and there, when I came across the photograph on this page.

Although not in the best of nick – Andrew downloaded it from a microfiche reader (always a hit-and-miss procedure) during one of his countless visits to the Cambridgeshire Collection – it does provide a priceless snapshot of a precious moment in the early days of Abbey United. And I hadn’t seen it before.

Can you make out the object in George Alsop’s hands? It’s the Cambridgeshire Challenge Cup, and the Abbey team that Alsop captained had just won it.

The date is 18 April 1925, the venue is Cambridge Town’s Milton Road ground and the day’s events – Abbey’s trouncing of Girton United by six goals to one – are being reported by the long-gone Cambridge Chronicle.

The bearded gent to Alsop’s right is Major Oliver Papworth, who presented the cup, and to his left is Cambs FA secretary Charles Dennant.

The Wasps had lined up: R ‘Percy’ Wilson; Joe Livermore, Bill Walker; Jim Self, Alsop, Bill ‘Pim’ Stearn; Fred Stevens, Frank Luff, Harvey Cornwell, Tom Langford, William ‘Fanny’ Freeman (kids: teams played in the 2-3-5 formation in those days). Cornwell had scored a hat-trick and the other goals had come from Walker, Langford and Freeman.

The Challenge Cup was just one of three trophies claimed by Abbey United that season – and they shared a fourth. Read Andrew's Newmarket Road Roughs for the full detail.

Cheerio
Harry

It's a record breaker!

8/7/2018

It was an unforgettable occasion for any Cambridge United supporter … the day Chelsea brought the FA Cup to the Abbey Stadium.

It was 1 May 1970 and, as Coconuts vice-chair Barry Benton remembers, the Pensioners had won the Cup just two days before, after a replay in a bruising encounter with Leeds United.

A couple of years before that, when they bought gangly young striker Ian Hutchinson from the U's, they had agreed to play a money-spinning friendly against United.

It was hardly surprising that United's record home attendance of 14,000 – a record that will probably never be beaten – was set that day. Every square inch of the ground was occupied as Chelsea paraded the Cup before kick-off.

Luckily, someone took a cine camera along to record the proceedings for posterity. We're immensely grateful to David Smith for providing the resultant film in video format. Click the button above to relive history.

Details of the events can be found in Risen from the Dust, the second volume of Andrew Bennett's Celery & Coconuts history of our club. Buy your copy at the CFU online shop or from the caravan on a match day.

Suffice it to say that, as the U's had a rather important fixture the following day – the home game against Margate that would bring them their second successive Southern League title – they wanted to take it easy, and a Chelsea reserve side took their place for the second half.

Moments from that Margate match are also preserved in David Smith's wonderful film. A George Harris penalty and a Bill Cassidy clincher effectively took United into the Football League.

Footage of the celebrations and of the Southern League championship shield being borne aloft in a sea of bodies brings it all back … precious memories of an amazing two days in Cambridge United history.

A foot in both camps

1/6/2018

An edited version of this article first appeared in the 24-30 May 2017 issue of the Cambridge Independent.

Andrew Bennett’s definitive history of Cambridge United, Risen from the Dust (available from the CFU store) picks up where the first volume, Newmarket Road Roughs, left off in 1951, and ends with United being elected to the Football League in 1970.

It’s memory-stirring stuff for us old codgers for many reasons, but perhaps the most evocative passages are those that cover the old U’s-City rivalry.

Younger readers will probably struggle with this: back then, the battle for football supremacy in Cambridge meant just as much to supporters as those in Liverpool or Manchester. We lived in a divided city.

Eagerly awaited derbies drew massive crowds, and as a fan you were either a U or a Lilywhite. But there have always been players who were happy to be either.

It started in 1921, when Abbey United loaned top scorer Wally Wilson to Cambridge Town for a big FA Cup tie against Kettering. As United began to rise up the Cambs League, their players started to attract regular attention from the bigger, wealthier Town.

During the 1920s, Bert Langford, Bill ‘Pim’ Stearn, Tom Caldecote, Frank Luff, Cyril Morley, ‘Erstie’ Clements and Harold ‘Darley’ Watson were all tempted to cross the river; at a time of rising unemployment, Town could offer the players off-pitch jobs.

In 1936, striker Harry Mann scored hat-tricks in his first two games for United, whereupon Town snapped him up. The exodus continued before and after World War II as Reg Kimberley, Joe Richardson and Den Smith moved north of the Cam but, once the U’s turned semi-pro in 1947, the flow slowed to a trickle.

Former Town players Tony Gallego, Len Hartley, Fred Mansfield and Stan Thurston all signed for United, although not directly from Milton Road. A turning point came in 1950 when Town’s top scorer, Neville Haylock, defected to the U’s, and Bill O’Donnell, Ted Culver and Len Linturn also later crossed to Newmarket Road, the latter causing a minor sensation in turning pro.

Matt McVittie, who played for both Cambridge clubs, scores for United in a Southern League Premier Division local derby match on 29 September 1962. City won 2-1 in front of a crowd of 6,892. Photo: Cambridge Evening News.

In 1958 City turned professional too. They signed the skilful Eddie Robinson from United in 1959, and when the U’s began employing only full-timers in 1960, hitman Brian Moore, wanting to keep his job at Pye Telecom, moved to Milton Road.

During the 1960s the rivalry intensified but the player traffic continued. United signed City full back Dai Jones in 1962, and a year later City exchanged cash and Willie Devine for U’s forward Freddie Bunce. United captured Barry Smith, Roy Poole and Billy Wall from Milton Road, while Frank Allen, John Hiner, Norman Bleanch, Matt McVittie and Gerry Graham (signed by former U Roy Kirk) moved north.

The clubs’ paths diverged in 1968 when City experienced relegation for the first time. From now on, players signing for the Lilywhites, such as Gerry Baker (1969) and Wes Maughan (1970), were surplus to requirements at United. When the U’s were elected to the League, decades of rivalry effectively ended.

But cross-Cam dealings have continued. The clubs may now be four pyramid levels apart, but players will doubtless swap amber for white as long as they exist.

Cheerio
Harry

Tony Gallego saves for Cambridge United at King's Lynn. Photo: Lynn News & Advertiser.

It was apt that Joe and Tony Gallego should play for both senior Cambridge clubs – which, at the time that they first appeared, were known as Cambridge Town and Abbey United.

It was our city that welcomed the brothers as refugees in 1937, when they fled their native Basque country to escape Hitler’s deadly Condor Legion bombers.

The Legion, flying in support of Francisco Franco’s Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, killed the Gallego children’s father when it bombed the Basque town of Guernica.

Their mother placed five of her kids in an orphanage, but they were soon on their way to Britain aboard the liner Habana. They settled well in Cambridge – and football played a big role in the process.

‘Football meant everything to us; it was the only thing we knew about,’ Antonio (known as Tony) told El Pais in 2012. ‘We got attached to Cambridge and made a lot of friends here through playing football.’

Goalkeeper Tony and winger José (Joe) signed for Town as teenagers. Tony moved to the Abbey in 1943 before rejoining Joe at Milton Road, spending time as a professional with Norwich and then returning to United in 1947.

Joe left Town for Brentford and went on to play for Southampton and Colchester, but came back to United in 1951.

The Gallegos stayed in Cambridge for the rest of their lives, Joe dying in 2006 at the age of 82 and 90-year-old Tony passing away in 2015. I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts rang out loud and proud at the funeral.

Review: Risen from the Dust

11/23/2017

Andrew Stephen, editor of the CFU fanzine Amber News, gives his impressions of volume two of Celery & Coconuts, Andrew Bennett's history of Abbey/Cambridge United.

I find it almost impossible to like books about sport in general and about football in particular. Most writers who know about their sport find it difficult to convey the sense of excitement generated by a live event. Being there, when something that matters to you is happening, is a deeply personal thing. Football writers increasingly kill off their subjects with a kind of trainspotter’s approach to statistics, or, in the case of the tabloid ‘journalists’, a desire to dwell on celebrity and gossip rather than the nuances of the game.

Of course, Andrew Bennett has been writing match reports, with flair, insight and no little humour, for years. And he is a man who can be trusted with the history of the world’s greatest football team.

I was nearly seven when the fifties came to an end but this book brings that vital decade vividly to life, explaining how Abbey United were gradually transformed into a much more professional outfit ready to dominate the Southern League. Those watching games in that era will tell you that Wilf Mannion, even at 38 years old, was the greatest player ever to play for Cambridge United. Volunteers continued to develop and sometimes build parts of the ground, players of pedigree came and went and the club’s directors became ever more ambitious.

For me, the acid test for this book covered the games between 1967 and our election to the Football League, my first three years as a fan.

Leaving aside scores and their significance, I was taken back to paying 1/6d at the turnstiles as a Junior, the smell of sweet pipe tobacco at the Newmarket Road End, buying pies from the Supporters’ Club on the terrace which is now the Disabled Enclosure and the expectation of winning every game.

As the pages turned, I could see once again Ian Hutchinson’s booming long throws, the bravery of Rodney Slack, the elegance of Robin Hardy and the class of George Harris. Life was simpler then; cash on the gate, only one manager, no ‘simulation’, no corporate pressures or obsession with image – but I digress.

And there were the downsides, like the fateful Easter when we lost twice to our big rivals Chelmsford City. The following season, having bought their four best players, we were ready to storm into the Football League. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Andrew is a fine writer and a real fan. If you like football, nostalgia and the story of a little club which became great because of its people, you’ll love this.

Risen from the Dust: The story of Cambridge United Football Club; 1951-1970 by Andrew Bennett. Published by Lovely Bunch. £19.99 (£1 discount for CFU members). Available online at cambridgefansunited.org/store/c4/Books.html and from the CFU caravan on a match day.

Rise and shine

9/26/2017

This article appeared in the Cambridge United programme for the match against Forest Green Rovers on 26 September 2017.

Several elements of the photograph on this page allow us to date it to the late 1960s/early1970s. The buzz cut, braces and button-down collar sported by the tall gent on the left, for example, were undoubtedly complemented by a pair of DMs, useful in the event of the aggro that was all too prevalent at the time.

The real giveaway, of course, forms the centrepiece of the tableau and permits us to pinpoint its exact date: 2 May 1970. The magnificent trophy held aloft by Malcolm Lindsay and his U’s teammates is the Southern League championship shield, and they had just won it by beating Margate 2-0 in the final league match of the season.

Play Spot the Player and you’ll pick out Jimmy Thompson, Robin Hardy and Terry Eades. Those of us who were around at the time could pass a happy half-hour playing Spot the Fan among the masses on the Abbey pitch.

It’s a memorable image, which is one reason it was chosen for the front cover of Risen from the Dust, the second volume of Andrew Bennett’s Celery & Coconuts history of Abbey/Cambridge United. It will be published next month; preorder your copy now from the CFU online store or the caravan in the front car park on a match day.

Another reason for the photograph’s choice is that it represents the culmination of two decades of sky-high ambition, dogged determination and sheer, unceasing hard work on the part of supporters, directors, officials and players. The rapidity of the club’s rise from local league part-timers to a position that made it almost impossible for Football League clubs not to elect United to join them was unprecedented. It will never be repeated.

In the early weeks of 1951, the year in which Risen from the Dust opens, the U’s were still called Abbey United and were grubbing around in the semi-pro United Counties League.

A limited liability company looking after the club’s affairs – a declaration of the ambition burning bright at Newmarket Road – had been set up the year before, but the change of name to Cambridge United and acceptance into the Eastern Counties League were still in the future. Even the Southern League, at that time the biggest non-League competition, was a very distant prospect.

The book recounts the story of the nineteen short years it took the U’s to surge upwards through the ECL and the Southern League, win the latter twice and its league cup three times and hammer irresistibly on the door of the Football League’s art deco headquarters in Lytham St Annes.

Over the course of 388 pages, Andrew (belated congratulations on your appointment as club historian, lad) covers all the great moments and talking points in his familiar, eminently readable style. They include the development of the Abbey funded and carried out by supporters, the sight of football legend Wilf Mannion in amber and black, the unforgettable derby tussles of the 60s, the incredibly successful pools operation driven by Dudley Arliss, the constant bitter argument over the issue of City-United amalgamation … it’s all there. And stats fans get page after page of the factual stuff.

It can be yours for the ridiculously low price of £19.99, or £1 less if you’re a CFU member. We look forward to taking your order.
Cheerio
Harry