Erith & Belvedere   8

Windsor & Eton      2

Corinthian League, 19 April 1946 (Good Friday)

Erith & Belvedere   9

Maidenhead             3                     

Corinthian League, 20 April 1946 (Easter Saturday)

Continuing the series counting down the 100 most memorable games in our history.  Today, an Easter to remember, although history has forgotten who scored 22 goals!

Cheating a little bit today, as we’re taking two games together to provide an entry in the list.  It was the first post-war Easter, and the world was slowly returning to normal.  Earlier in the month, Lovely Cottage won the first Grand National to be held since 1940, and the week before these games the immensely popular radio show “Workers’ Playtime” was broadcast from Vickers in Crayford.  During Easter week the world champion Joe Davis played a 3-day billiards exhibition in Erith, raising the impressive sum of £100 for Erith Hospital.

The Deres were looking at exciting times as well – on Good Friday, 19 April, the new licenced bar opened at Park View, for Supporters Club and Park View Social Club members only, presided over by the club’s honorary secretary Harold “Salt” Gurr.  But who would have thought that the first two afternoons of the bar opening would see Deres record two wins and an aggregate score of 17-5?!!

Neither team were exactly mugs – Windsor and Eton were challenging Deres for third place in the Corinthian League (although the league only comprised 9 teams at this stage, its first season of operation), while Maidenhead would finish fifth.  Deres finished ten points behind the inaugural champions Grays Athletic, with Slough Town second by three points.

However, not only do we not know who scored in these memorable Easter matches, we don’t know who played in them either.  The Kentish Times listed 18 players to cover the two matches, and these were as follows:

J Edmonds, T Cackett, Pat O’Brien, George Stevens, Jim Townsend, Bob Prescott, Stan Aldous, Jim Dashwood, Albert Ansell, Johnny Clements, Fred Wright, Vic Ansell, Billy Reay, E Golding, J Myers, Harold Gurr, Charlie Russell, Len Farthing.

It’s worth noting that these were the first games for which Jim Townsend was listed on the teamsheet since 1938, and he had spent much of the war in a Japanese PoW camp and working on the Burma railway.  Since Fred Wright was the joint top scorer of the season with 17, it’s probably fair to assume that he was on the scoresheet at least a couple of times.  But the beer will have been good, and post-war spring was on the way.