28th September 1985
Midlands Combination
Little Bloxwich Strollers v Enville Athletic
Programme Price: 30p
One of the reasons why I like to write these reviews is that it gives me an understanding of clubs that I wouldn’t have known anything about. This is true of today’s programme review and the home team, Little Bloxwich Strollers FC.
Before I go into today’s review I thought it would be nice to write a brief piece of information on what I have been able to find out after carrying out some research into Little Bloxwich Strollers FC.
Bloxwich is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, West Midlands and forms part of the Staffordshire/West Midlands border. The principal football club in Bloxwich was Bloxwich Strollers who were known to be playing competitive football by 1893. By 1895 the club were playing on a pitch situated on Little Bloxwich Lane and six years later they moved to play on a pitch in nearby Leamore. This was to become the club’s permanent base from 1910. The ground at Leamore was taken over by Bloxwich FC in 1933 and just one year later, sadly Bloxwich Strollers disbanded.
A few years after the end of World War II, Bloxwich Strollers were back representing their town in football and at the start of the 1952/1953 season they joined the Birmingham & District League. However, after two seasons of struggle, the club’s records were expunged leaving newly formed, Blakenhall FC to fly the flag for football in the area. Fast forward to the 1980’s and we see Bloxwich FC being accepted into the Midland Combination League as well as Bloxwich Strollers being reformed, initially as Little Bloxwich Strollers for the start of the 1985/1986 season.
Although there is much more to read on football in Bloxwich, for the purpose of this article (which is after all a programme review) that is where I will leave the history of football in the Bloxwich area for now.
In we go into the programme – this issues consists of 24 pages from the front to back cover and is a good all round effort by those who produced it.
With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 features three adverts whilst page 3 provides a list of club officials at Little Bloxwich Strollers for the 1985/1986 season. At the time of writing, Mr. Stan Rowlands was named as the club’s chairman whilst the first team manager was Trevor Clarke.
Page 4 sees a piece written on Enville Athletic and focuses on their current form. Pages 5 and 6 feature several adverts with page 7 showing a list of appearances made by the players at Little Bloxwich Strollers. Ken Gunter led the way with eleven starting appearances to his name.
Page 8 shows the team line up’s with the referee named as Mr R.J. Andrews from Dudley.
Pages 9 and 10 are both full page adverts with page 11 showing profiles of Little Bloxwich Strollers players, Vaughan Derby and Keith Webb respectively. Derby was at the time a 19 year old midfielder and was reported as having tremendous potential. Meanwhile, Webb had re-joined the club for a second spell.
Pages 12, 13 and 14 provides details on the club’s lottery and the prizes on offer and is followed on pages 15 and 16 with full page adverts.
Page 17 shows a list of previous results for the club during the 1985/1986 season. They opened their campaign with a 1-1 draw at Wilmcote FC.
Page 18 features a reserve team match report for Little Bloxwich Strollers reserves 5-0 home defeat in the Staffordshire County League Division One against Punjab Rovers. Manger, Tony Jones was extremely disappointed by the lack of effort shown by his players.
Pages 19 and 20 are both adverts with page 21 showing a dot to dot image for kids to complete.
Page 22 shows a list of honours won by the former Bloxwich Strollers Football Club after the Second World War. The club won the Walsall Challenge Cup in 1963 and the Parry Cup in 1958 as well as many other honours.
The programme is then concluded on pages 23 and 24 with several adverts.
Not a bad little programme at all and one that gave me an insight into football in the Bloxwich area.
