Hopefully the blues will be for our visitors and not ourselves this week, but we know it will be an incredibly difficult task, especially if we give away goals as we did at Peterborough last week.

That 4-3 defeat brought back to me memories of the last time we played there, on 25^th April 2015, coincidentally also in League One, in a game that was to prove our last away game in that division until this season as we threw away a lead late on to lose 4-3 when a win would have guaranteed League One football for another season. We would still have one more chance to escape relegation, at home to Coventry City the following week, but after taking a lead early in the second half (through Mathias Pogba) and looking fairly comfortable, we conceded twice late on to confirm our relegation.

But let’s look for more positive League One precedents that might give us hope against Birmingham.

How about 9^th April 2013, again in League One, when we travelled to Bramall Lane to face Sheffield United and came away with a fantastic and deserved 2-0 win (Billy Clarke, Paul Hayes after a Harry Maguire mistake), one of my all-time favourite awaydays.

That away win was followed in our next two home games with victories over Coventry on 13^th April 2013 (2-0 – Clarke, Conor Essam) and Preston North End on 23^rd April (1-0 – Mike Jones) to help guarantee a top-half finish in our first season in League One.

Arguably our biggest scalp in League One would come a year later, on 18^th March 2014, at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers, a game that had been postponed from January.

Taming the Wolves – Line up

TELEPHOTO IMAGES / 07967642437
Crawley’s keeper Paul Jones punches the ball clear during the Sky Bet division one match between Crawley Town and Wolverhampton Wanderers at the Checkatrade.com Stadium in Crawley. March 19, 2014

In front of a midweek crowd of 5,680 packed into Broadfield, Wolves had taken a fortunate lead on 24 minutes through a deflected goal but within eight minutes we would be in front through Clarke and Matt Tubbs, holding on for a deserved 2-1 win, condemning Wolves to their first defeat in eleven games. Incredibly, they had also only conceded two goals in their previous ten games and had nineteen clean sheets in the league up to that point!

Hopefully we can replicate that sort of performance and results against Birmingham to send us into Christmas on a high note, along the lines of that magnificent victory at Charlton a couple of weeks ago. That result made me think of my dad, John Fox (former Crawley Town goalkeeper), who often travelled to the Valley in the 1940s and 50s to watch Charlton with his brothers Peter and Toby. I am sure they would be amazed to think of how far we have come since those days when we were plying our trade in the Brighton League or Sussex County League.

Whatever the outcome of the Birmingham game, though, I hope it will not replicate our previous meeting with The Blues, a 5-1 thrashing at St Andrew’s in the League Cup first round in August 2017. A weakened (or rotated, or some other nonsense) Red Devils side had nothing but a fine strike from Panutche Camara on his debut to show for a pretty tame cup exit. Luckily I had been warned about our weakened side before making a late decision about going to the game, and decided to stay at home. Fair weather, I know, but if the club weren’t taking it seriously, why should I?

You may have noticed (but probably not!) that this RRD is number 32, and be wondering what happened to number 31 (but probably not!). Well, that one was penned for the Stevenage game, but a combination of Reuben having too many Christmas parties to attend and (fortunately for him) a postponement of the game on the Saturday due to concerns over an airborne East Stand meant that article never saw the light of day. However, before you besiege Reuben, I can assure you that that piece will be published (with some alterations) when we play the rearranged Stevenage match in February.

I was writing that article while also trying to put together a last-minute article for the Reds magazine for this month, and if you have seen that you will see that it touched on some of our Christmas games but also the terrible winter of season 1962/3, when the Arctic conditions meant we went from mid December to March without playing a home Metropolitan league match.

A snowy Town Meadow

I bring that up as while researching a few facts on our Boxing Day opponents Leyton Orient, I came across a programme from 27^th April 1963 and a home match for our reserves against Whitstable in the short-lived Seanglian League.

Firstly, I noticed that league also featured a Leyton Orient ‘A’ side, our first meetings with them as far as I can find (we would also come up against Gillingham reserves), but also that despite it nearly being May, we were still trying to recover from the effects of the terrible winter. We would draw that game with bottom-of-the table Whitstable 1-1 and as shown in the fixture list would still have lots of games taking us to the end of May – and that was without games not yet arranged (although they may have abandoned the Seanglian League as so many teams were far behind with fixtures).

Seanglian League table for May 1963

Seanglian Fixtures for May 1963

In the same programme I also saw the league table for our first team in the Metropolitan League. There were also many games left to play for most teams in that league as well, especially Woodford Town who, coincidentally, we would travel to that Saturday. Our programme editor in the Whitstable programme noted how poor our pitch was and that it was “in a bad way after two games played on it in atrocious conditions”. One of those games was a fine 3-2 win (Dave Robertson, Barry Roffman, OG) over a young West Ham side on 20^th April 1963.

1963 April Metropolitan League table

The team for the Whitstable game had, somewhat surprisingly, Lou Cooper at centre forward, a surprise as he would end the season as the first-team leading scorer, with 20 goals (in only 20 league games), although I noticed that most of those were in the first half of the season – not sure how many he also scored for the “stiffs”?

Another “legendary” figure I noticed starting out on his Red Devils career that 1962/63 season, with only three appearances, was Dave Cockell, still remembered fondly by us older fans as the archetypal midfield “enforcer”.

Dave Cockell Midfield “enforcer”

Both our teams would slog their way through almost to the end of May, with the Met League side, after winning the Woodford away game 2-1, also winning the five remaining games to achieve a very respectable sixth place finish in a league won by Arsenal ‘A’.

Although we would carry on in the Met League for one more season, that would be with our reserve side, as we would begin a new era in the Southern League from the beginning of the 1963/64 season, having turned semi-professional during the previous season.

Christmas is – or was – often noted for some crazy sets of results, and looking at our first December in the Southern League, that was certainly the case. We started on 7^th December with a 6-1 home win (Ray Carter, 3, Tony McCall, Ken Parsons, 2) over Clacton Town only to suffer a 4-2 defeat (McCall, Tony Armstrong) at home to Dover a week later. Things got even worse on 21^st December when another Kent side, Ashford Town, hammered us 6-1 (Robin Kent) to send us all into Christmas wanting to forget about football.

However, Boxing Day took us back to Kent and the short journey to Gravesend and Northfleet, now known as Ebbsfleet United, where we came away with a superb 6-0 victory (Parsons, 2, Carter, Roffman, 2, OG) to set us up nicely to entertain them at Town Meadow on 28^th December in the return match. A 5-0 win (Parsons, 2, Carter, Roffman, 2) changed the Christmas mood completely and sent us into 1964 on a wave of optimism – before we lost the next five matches in a row!

Hopefully not quite such a roller coaster of results this festive period, but whatever happens, a merry Christmas to all and let’s hope for a successful new year!

Mick Fox – mjfjo@yahoo.co.uk