Having missed the Brighton game due to being in Manchester, and Wigan due to saving my money for Burton away (now postponed for international duty – I hate those international breaks!), hopefully nothing will keep any of us away from the Red Devils versus the Reds this week.

One person who will have a special interest in the Crawley v Barnsley game will be a family friend of ours in Chile, Elizabeth Robledo, whose dad, George, started his professional career at Barnsley during the Second World War before moving with his brother Ted to Newcastle United where they had much success, particularly in the FA Cup in the 1950s. George was the first foreign player to top the scoring charts in England and would go on to score the winning goal for Newcastle in the 1-0 victory over Arsenal in the 1951-52 FA Cup final, with his brother also in the winning side.

That goal appeared to make an impression on an 11-year-old boy by the name of John Lennon, who drew a picture of George scoring the goal, and years later used that sketch on the cover of one of his solo albums (pictured).

Elizabeth has followed our progress through the years and visited the UK several times, the last time in the spring of 2022 when she unveiled a blue plaque on the house where George and Ted lived with the rest of their family when playing for Barnsley. When staying with us here in Crawley, she also visited Broadfield Stadium where we bumped into our co-owner Preston Johnson and the pair of them had a short conversation (in Portuguese, I think!).

Elizabeth Robledo meets Preston Johnson

Quite a few ups and downs in our fortunes since that day, as there have been over the longer time since we first met Barnsley on 9th August 2014 at Oakwell for our first away game of our third season in League One. I noticed in the programme that the Barnsley manager at the time was Danny Wilson, in his second stint as Barnsley manager after ending his playing career there in 1995.

Barnsley August 9th 2014 Line Ups

Izale McLeod scoring

Although we would gain a fine 1-0 win that August day (Izale McLeod our scorer), I don’t think we can be blamed for Wilson later losing his job at Barnsley, unlike the times he was sacked at both Sheffield United and Swindon Town shortly after defeats by the Red Devils. He was able to survive that surprise win of ours at Oakwell, but the season was not going well for Barnsley when he finally went on 12th February 2015. That date, coincidentally, was just two days before the return League One fixture at Broadfield when, with Paul Heckingbottom (recently taking over at Preston after Scott Lindsey was reportedly in the running for the job) in joint interim charge, we ran out 5-1 winners (McLeod, 3, Sonny Bradley and Marvin Elliott).

Looking back at the August match, I happened to see in the Barnsley programme for that day a report of their Under 21s match the previous week against Newcastle U21s, which Barnsley won 3-2, although the main thing that caught my eye was that a young Adam Campbell scored one of Newcastle’s goals!

From the same game but featuring in our home programme for the following league game, at home to Swindon, was our regular “Face in the Crowd” feature, which I thought I would reproduce here as it shows a few of the “usual suspects” in this small section of our 215 fans who made the trip to Barnsley.

August 9th 2014 Red Devils fans celebrate at Barnsley

We would win that Swindon game 1-0 this time, with a McLeod penalty, and in fact McLeod also scored the goal in a 1-0 win in the League Cup tie against Championship side Ipswich between these two league victories. Sadly that season saw us relegated back to League Two on the last day of the season, but now we are back!

I am writing this before Tuesday night’s match at the Amex, but irrespective of result, I thought I would include a few items from a match almost exactly 70 years ago in what was another fairly momentous occasion for Crawley.

1st September 1954 Grand Re-Opening Programme v BHA – Part 1

1st September 1954 Grand Re-Opening Programme v BHA – Part 2

This was when we entertained a strong Brighton side at Town Meadow on 1st September 1954 to celebrate the re-opening of the ground after some extensive upgrades, including a new main stand, banking to the top end and work to sort out pitch drainage. Safe to say the last of these didn’t work, but with much of the building work being done by volunteers, it was something to celebrate after a season playing at Ifield Green while the work was completed.

Although not of utmost importance, we did win the game 1-0 against a fairly strong Brighton side managed by Billy Lane, with our goal scored by Tony Blake.

Grand Re-Opening Local Paper pictures

I particularly like the picture of all the kids watching the game on the equipment in the adventure playground behind the top end of the ground (roughly where the Nuffield Gym now stands in the Leisure Park on Ifield Avenue). I have also added a couple of pages from the match programme, including some of the local adverts for a trip down memory lane for some of us older fans.

As can be seen from the Football League tables for that 1954-55 season, Brighton were playing in the Third Division South. At the time, the Football League was set up as First and Second Divisions with the Third Division regionalised into North and South Divisions. Brighton finished sixth in the South and Barnsley as champions in the North divisions that season.

1954-55 Football League Third Div. North & South tables.

While this last week’s opponents were enjoying their relatively exalted status in the Football League, that friendly victory over Brighton would be a lone highlight in a desperate season as we finished bottom in the Sussex County League Division One, condemning us to Division Two football the next season.

Despite our success in building up Town Meadow facilities over the previous couple of seasons, we had lost a number of players to the newly formed Crawley Ramblers and this was reflected in our results, with a high turnover of new and inexperienced players tried and discarded.

The 1955-56 season, however, saw an upturn in our fortunes – albeit at a pretty low level – as we would finish second in Division Two, one place above local rivals APV Athletic. Although this would guarantee promotion back to County League Division One, the club had bigger ideas and would try successfully for acceptance into the Metropolitan League the following season.

So 1956 saw us start a new adventure against young players from clubs such as Chelsea, West Ham and Brighton, and our path to professional football was well and truly started (we would turn semi-professional in 1962, and join the Southern League in 1963).

I am sorry if some of this is well known to regular readers, but I am ever mindful that we might be introducing some new supporters to the delights of proper football and the Red Devils!

Mick Fox – mjfjo@yahoo.co.uk