What a treat! A bonus edition of RRD, thanks to Crawley playing into the second week of May – and not down to postponed matches due to the state of the Town Meadow pitch! With no previous play-off campaigns to look back on, I thought I would firstly revisit season...
Retro Red Devils
Home | News | Retro Red DevilsRetro Red Devils 20 – Memories, “Too Much Soccer” and Scuppered by the Mariners!
The end of another season . . . or maybe not? Lots of memories from our most successful season for several years, especially for the regular away fans who have finally been rewarded for their dedication with some brilliant away performances. Let’s just hope we can...
Retro Red Devils 19 – TOWIE, Cumbria & Town Meadow Disappearing Stand
Who cares about the Wrexham result! Well, lots of us, I guess, but I am still basking in the superb wins at Newport and Mansfield! I also really liked the Mansfield local paper headline about Mansfield being humiliated by ‘classy’ Crawley, which showed considerably...
Retro Red Devils 18 – Taunton, Dover and Donny!
Having ranted in previous articles about the growing number of late match postponements in the last couple of years, I was made aware of the plight of Taunton Town, who have had multiple postponements at their Wordsworth Drive ground this season. The said ground has...
Retro Red Devils 17 – 1939 Annual Dinner, “Spurs” matches, Hatters & Magpies Stars?
My last Retro Red Devils article featured my rant on “soft” postponements of matches in these current, more cossetted times. Needless to say, it was followed by our match against Barrow being called off a day early due to a waterlogged pitch. There had been alot of...
Retro Red Devils 16 – Soft Pitches, Late Nights, Supporters & Social Clubs
I read the Barrow manager’s views on their postponement last Saturday, when the game against Bradford was called off just prior to kick-off as one small area of the pitch was not allowing the ball to bounce as it should. My personal opinion is that it is ridiculous,...
Retro Red Devils 15 – Crisis at Crawley, Donkeys, Brighton under Clough & Walsall/FGR.
No, not the crisis of 2023 but 50 years earlier in the 1973/74 season where, by the end of February 1974, we were rooted at the bottom of the Southern League South Division having not won a game since 1st December 1973. That December day we had a surprise 1-0 home win...
Retro Red Devils 14 – We won the Cup! (Mowatt Cup), Played Celtic (Cork Celtic!) & Morecambe as well!
In the last few days of our exhibition at Crawley Museum, I bumped into a couple of people who had found relatives of theirs amongst the hundreds of photos on show – pictures they certainly weren’t expecting to see. Strangely, both of these visitors’ relatives played...
Retro Red Devils 13 – 1967/68 “Promotion here we come”, No reason to Bragg!
No, I am not referring to the present day (but who knows, after that brilliant win at Bradford!) but a season I have written about several times in the past: 1967-68, our fifth season in the Southern League. I was recently loaned some old scrapbooks by ex-player Vic...
Retro Red Devils 12 – Various Dons, What are the Laws?!!, 60 years of Inconsistency
It doesn’t seem to matter which “Dons” we play at the moment, we can’t get a result. After a very poor first half against the AFC version, we did the opposite in the first half of the MK version, but just cannot convert the chances we make. It’s a story told often...