What a quiet couple of months since the last League Two match! Just a little matter of an EFL play-off final win at Wembley, followed a few weeks later by a comprehensive dismantling and rebuild of our successful squad! A great shame to lose many of the iconic characters from that winning team, but hopefully another set of heroes can emerge from this new season in League One.

We start with “The Tangerines” from Blackpool, who we first met on 1st October 2016 at Broadfield, when we were managed by the sadly departed Dermot Drummy. Looking through the programme for that game, Dermot mentioned in his notes that his only EFL appearances were in a short spell playing for Blackpool after his release by Arsenal in 1979.

First meeting with Blackpool October 2016

Another link to that Blackpool squad managed by Gary Bowyer was Jack Payne, who would go on to spend the 2021-22 season with us. Funnily enough, Jack played an identical 35 games for both us and Blackpool and scored one goal for each!

We would win that 2016 game 1-0 through a 69th-minute Mark Connolly header to move into the top half of the League Two table, and we would also gain a creditable 0-0 draw in the return match at Bloomfield Road on 7th February 2017.

Blackpool away February 2017

In another parallel with ourselves, Blackpool won the League Two play-off final that season, beating Exeter City 2-1, while after a strong start our season ended disappointingly in a 19th place finish, with Portsmouth winning the division over runners-up Plymouth Argyle, and Leyton Orient and Hartlepool being relegated to the National League. We would start the next season with Harry Kewell taking over as our manager amongst much hype and expectation, sadly not fulfilled.

In January 2012 we signed Blackpool’s Billy Clarke (for an undisclosed fee!) after his time at the club was badly disrupted by a serious knee injury. Thankfully Billy prospered for us and was a popular player in our League One days. He was Player of the Year in 2012-13, scoring 14 League One goals before leaving for Bradford City in 2014.

Billy Clarke action shot

Billy had been signed by our manager Steve Evans as a replacement for Matt Tubbs who, after scoring goals to take us to a second consecutive FA Cup fifth round appearance, was sold for a fee reported to be in the region of £800,000 to League One AFC Bournemouth.

Coincidentally, Matt would score on his debut for “The Cherries” and would also lay on a goal for Scott Malone, who has recently joined the Red Devils!

Anyway, enough of this more modern chat and back to a time before we were known as the Red Devils. Firstly I thought I would look back 100 years, but with Crawley little more than a village or small market town in those days (population, I think, just a few thousand), press coverage of local football was pretty scarce. At the time Horsham and Redhill were the major force in the area and Crawley only warranted a few lines at most in publications such as the West Sussex Times or Surrey Mirror.

Crawley FC 1920s

I did manage to find record of an early-season score in mid September 1924 (due to the cricket season, football started later in those days) when we recorded a 2-1 home win over Portslade Gas Works (see how far we have progressed!) in the Mid Sussex League. That season we were playing matches mainly at Victoria Hall Meadow but also some games at the Town Meadow. Much later, the latter would become our permanent home (1949 to 1997), but at the time it was still basically a field located near the “Town Barn” (hence the current road names of Town Mead and Town Barn Road in West Green) and often used for local sports or fairs.

I have included the map I drew for the recent Crawley Town FC exhibition which shows the approximate locations around the town of our previous grounds, along with some of the current or past buildings and road names to hopefully give you some idea where they were (you will need to zoom in for a detailed view).

1890s to 2024 Crawley Grounds location map (zoom in to view)

Moving on ten years to 1934, and coverage of Crawley had improved – although it would appear from reports that the state of the club was worse. A report from the West Sussex Times of August 1934 covers the club’s AGM, with Mr W Denman presiding, and reportedly a large attendance of members. Sadly – and some may draw parallels with this summer – the report mentions that only four of the attendees were playing members, as many had left the club for other teams (possibly Crawley Rangers or Crawley Athletic). Also the “gates” for matches had halved and a large part of our income was derived from whist drives and other off-field activities, which left us with debts of £11-13s, which in those days was a big deal for a small club.

It was reported, though, that a decision was made to continue the playing side but with just the one team playing in the Mid Sussex League (we had previously run a second side in the Redhill League, which the previous season had conceded 123 goals with only a couple of victories!).

To illustrate how bad things had become, I found mention in the West Sussex Times of 21st September 1934 that for our opening Mid Sussex League fixture – again against Portslade Gas Works – we had trouble fielding a side, partly due to cricketing commitments but also to the late withdrawal of four players. Apparently Portslade were a “smart lot” and had a much decorated Sussex coach, S Weller, which partly explains why we lost 16-0.

That 1934-35 season would be a real struggle, despite a strong core of non-playing members, and at the end of the season the playing side was put into hiatus until 1938, when we would join forces with Crawley Rangers and also incorporate Crawley Athletic to represent the town as a more united footballing force. Sadly World War Two would soon be upon us, creating another pause in the rise of the club from village football to EFL League One.

At times during the war, without the normal football calendar, our clubhouse behind Ancient Priors in the High Street would be used to entertain servicemen, including a large number of Canadian soldiers who were billeted in camps on the edge of town. In some sort of parallel, the County Ground home of our League Cup opponents, Swindon Town aka “The Robins”, would be taken over to house prisoners of war in huts on the pitch!

We have had several links with Swindon on the playing side over time, including losing Will Wright to them over the summer (welcome back, Will!), but surely Scott Lindsey has to be the biggest success, hopefully bringing more of it this season in a much more difficult league.

April 2018 Panutche and Swindon Town

One final link with Swindon, I have just heard the great news we have re-signed Panutche (hopefully now injury free), and coincidentally in his first season in 2017-18 he featured on the front cover of our programme – against Swindon! In a 1-1 draw (with Dion Conroy and Kellan Gordon in the Robins squad) Jimmy Smith scored our goal in front of over 5000 fans.

Come on Scott and the Red Devils!

Mick Fox – mjfjo@yahoo.co.uk