A brief history of Wycombe Wanderers
Hello all,
I hope you'll regard this as a genuine post rather than shameless spam!
I have a blog called A Brief History of Team on which I'm attempting to write a, well, brief history of each Football League club, a project that will probably take years if not decades. The good news is after a few random picks I'm working my way backwards through the alphabet so you lot were high on my list!
My brief history of Wycombe Wanderers was finished this month. Now you lot probably won't learn anything but the blog is intended to share club stories with other clubs' fans, so I'd really appreciate if any of you could take a look and advise me of anything I've gotten wrong or missed out before I start promoting it:
That link will probably set off some kind of alarm so please be kind, mods. I know what it's like as I run a fan forum myself (www.ltlf.co.uk). I'm a Forest fan so I might stick around to talk Martin O'Neill with you all.
Thanks,
Alex
PS. Gutted for you at the weekend, what a game!
Comments
I'm definitely not someone who could fact-check for you, given that I can barely remember what I did yesterday, but that's a very well written, not too wordy, good brief history to my eyes.
The only thing I might call out would be the sentence that ends "and that summer he handed control of the club to a supporters’ trust in an amicable deal." - I think most supporters would suggest it was far from amicable, and it leaves out some crucial details about Steve Hayes running us into massive debt to try to force the club's hand into allowing a stadium move.
Below should read Enfield and Dagenham, as Wimbledon had already joined the FL and were never a member of the Alliance Premier.
The club were well supported home and away, but they declined to follow long-term rivals such as Enfield and Wimbledon into the nascent Alliance Premier League (founded 1979), England’s first truly nationwide competition for non-Football League clubs,FN4 because of concerns about travel costs.
But not bad and concise!
If you were ever to come down to Wycombe, there is a local history section in the town library which has a very detailed section on Wycombe Wanderers history. Loads of books which would no doubt give you a bit more detail and fact check. However, it is evidently meant to be a concise history, so that is a very good article.
Really enjoyed the article. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
On the whole, a well written article. The Steve Hayes era had a near apocalyptic effect on the club, at the end, which could be highlighted, his arrest had absolutely no connection to the club's affairs. As such, possibly not worth including?
Good article. Two very minor corrections - I believe we won the 1931 final 1-0 rather than 2-1, and the Middlesbrough game was the main match on ITV's "The Big Match" but it wasn't shown live.
Thanks all, will follow-up on those fact-checking bits.
Regarding the Steve Hayes stuff, it's hard to get a feel for these things from the outside. As I'm sure you know, Forest are going through an apocalypse of our own with our current owner and you might think it's a fairly recent development judging by the media coverage, but Fawazgate (as no one is calling it) has been building up for the last four years or more, almost since the start of his reign. Impossible to summarise! I read an article that implied the sale was "amicable" but I suppose these things can turn out to be different in retrospect.
Agree about his arrest not being relevant, I only mentioned it because it fit my theme of the melodrama of modern football, but it's perhaps best relegated to a footnote.
What to include and what not to include is inevitably subjective and it is an interesting read.
Personally I think in any history of WWFC , you have to include the run to the FA Cup semi final and arguably the league cup semi final a few years later. Don't think any other Lg1/2 club has done both. Also think you have to mention that but for the width of a Bristol crossbar, the club would have left the league in 2014 and very possibly ceased to exist at all.
There remain some factual errors re ownership. The club moved into private ownership in 2004. Although the owners put money into the club, there was no £3m (or even £3) payout to the club members. Hayes then took over sole ownership from these private owners in 2009, again with no payment for their shares. He spent a lot of his money (in loans written off on his departure) while in sole ownership - he also owned Wasps rugby team who shared the ground at the same time.
Hayes ownership was controversial. A section of the fans (widely represented on this forum and its predecessor) were and are extremely anti- his reign. Other supporters (and indeed the Supporters Trust who now own the club) were more sanguine and indeed Hayes is welcome at and has been applauded by Supporters Trust meetings. Overall there are mixed but often passionately held views about this period.
Consensus on wording of this section will be hard to reach (!), but I am sure if you email the chairman of the supporters trust, he would be happy to give his views on that era. Apart from that I will put my tin hat on and press "post comment".