An edited version of this article appeared in the Cambridge United match day programme for the League Two game against Swindon Town on 17 March 2018.

If you would like to witness a vision of almost unparalleled ugliness, pay a visit to the Abbey Arms, behind the main stand.

The clock hanging on the wall behind the bar is not, in my opinion, a thing of beauty. Some people disagree; I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.

Made somewhere in eastern Asia and imported specifically for the purpose I’m about to describe, it was scavenged from a bin by a gang of Coconuts mudlarks a couple of years ago and forms part of the organisation’s collection of U’s artefacts.

Although I recoil from the sight of it, I admit this hideous timepiece has two uses: telling the time (although not accurately) and throwing light on an often-overlooked aspect of United history.

The clock’s inscription tells its story: ‘Presented to the directors of Cambridge United by the manager and players in appreciation of their generous acts and support during the Southern League double season 1968/69.’

Everyone knows that United won the Southern League title two years running, in 1969 and 1970, helping to ease open the doors to the Football League. But the club’s 1960s exploits in the Southern League Cup receive far less attention.

Having already claimed the trophy in 1962 and 1965, the U’s set out to win it again on a Fenland summer’s day in 1968, drawing 1-1 at Wisbech with a goal from Tony Nicholas. Mick Brown and Richard Habbin did the business in a 2-0 second leg win and United were, thanks to a bye, through to round three.

We're obliged to the generous Rod Bishop, who has donated the framed display on the right to The Story of the U's, the Coconuts mini-museum in Cambridge United Supporters' Club's Abbey Lounge home.

It represents an important piece of U's history, for it contains what is believed to be the first full-time professional contract offered to a United player – at a weekly wage of £3 plus another £1 'when playing for the first team'.

Signed by full back Bob Bishop (Rod's father) and club secretary Fred Ward, and witnessed by player-manager Bill Whittaker, it dates to 16 August 1952, when ambitious United were playing in the Eastern Counties League but planning for bigger things.

The display also features Bob among the team that took on Bradford Park Avenue in the FA Cup second round on 12 December 1953, and the biography that appeared in Brian Attmore and Graham Nurse's '100 Greats' book published in 2002.

Bob, an athletic, versatile and influential player who was equally comfortable at right or left back, played 202 games for the U's between 1947 and 1956, when he hung up his boots to take on the role of trainer. He got forward occasionally, as his tally of six goals shows.

His United career spanned three eras: he joined when the club was competing in the United Counties League and stepped back from the trainer role when it was playing in the Southern League, in 1959.

It's a splendid addition to The Story of the U's for which we thank Rod – a long-term United follower and no mean sportsman himself in his day, although he showed a puzzling preference for the oval ball.

​To arrange a visit to The Story of the U's, email 100yearsofcoconuts@gmail.com.

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.

The Cambridge football family lost a well loved member with the death on Saturday, 6 August 2016 of Mel Slack, at the age of 72.

Mel started 124 times and made ten sub appearances for the U’s between 1969 and 1971, starring for Bill Leivers’ side as it gained election to, and established itself in, the Football League. A hard-tackling midfielder, he played for Cambridge City when his United career ended.

Born on 7 March 1944 in Bishop Auckland (County Durham), he was on Burnley’s books as a youth before signing for Sunderland in 1961. He played twice in four years and then joined Southend United, for whom he played 107 league matches.
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He arrived in Cambridge in January 1969 after Southend gave United £5,000 plus Mel in return for full back Keith Lindsey. He made his debut on January 15 in a Southern League Cup game against Chelmsford, and competed with Dennis Walker for a midfield place for the rest of the season.

United became Southern League champions for the first time at the end of the season, and Mel also picked up a Southern League Cup winner’s medal, playing in the second leg of the final at Cheltenham as the U’s won 1-0 on aggregate.

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.