Two life-long Crawley Town fans are putting on an exhibition about the history of the club at Crawley Museum. Crawley Observer and SussexWorld.co.uk columnist Steve Leake and club historian Mick Fox have put together the exhibition, which opens on Thursday, December 7. The pair have pulled together pictures, newspaper cuttings, memorabilia, trophies and much more for what promises to be a fantastic insight into the history of the club. Leake and Fox spoke about the exhibition at a fundraising event for the Museum at the Broadfield Stadium. They explained how they have had help pulling it together from fellow fans, the club itself and other outlets such as the Crawley Observer.
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00:00 [Background chatter]
00:17 I volunteer at the museum every week, every Thursday, because I love Torrey.
00:23 I love the town itself and the football club, obviously, because when I came down here I was only one year old.
00:30 My dad took me down when I was five. I've been watching for 67 years.
00:35 Some have been good, some haven't been so good. Have they, Annie?
00:42 We had a rough time in the 70s, haven't we? Well, we had a very young team in the 70s, and a lot of them have gone on and are names in Crawley football still.
00:52 So before last Christmas I asked Holly, who is the creator of the museum, if we could hold a Crawley Town Football Club exhibition.
01:01 Because the last time we exhibited anything there... [Background chatter]
01:07 Sorry, can you hear that? [Background chatter]
01:11 The last time we had a sports exhibition we were limited to two boards, I think.
01:16 Well, they're going to have to extend the museum now, I think, because we've got so much information, so much stuff to take with us, that it's going to be mind-blowing.
01:30 Holly said yes, we could have a museum, an exhibition rather, and we estimated that we'd need £1,500 to put on the exhibition.
01:41 I thought, how are we going to get £1,500? So I approached the owner, and I got a third of it.
01:49 Somebody then told me to be a naughty boy and approach one of the ex-owners, and I got £650 off of him.
01:57 Because he obviously wanted to put down the present owners.
02:02 And then we had people like Kevin Aylard, who's over there somewhere, who donated some money for us.
02:09 Steve Herbert, who isn't here tonight. Simon King, Sarah Markham, you all know Sarah.
02:16 And myself from the sale of Tin Pot and Proud, which is a book which is over by the museum stall over there.
02:25 We are going to sell them tonight, if you want them.
02:30 It's got to be £10 or above, because that's what they're priced at, £10.
02:37 It's cost me money to bring them down here, but every time one of those is sold, that's more money towards the museum,
02:44 to put on further exhibitions in the future.
02:50 But Paul will tell you about fundraising for the museum later on.
02:56 I then got together with somebody else who's been supporting the Reds all their life, and that's Mick.
03:02 And we got together to start six months of hard but interesting and rewarding work, creating the upcoming exhibition.
03:09 And now Mick's going to tell you about the awards that he's been busy creating.
03:14 I think the first thing I need to do, judging by one or two of the people here, I need to apologise to them for some of the heckling I may have given them sometime in the past.
03:23 I'm not looking at Mick in particular.
03:28 You had it perhaps worse than some, because you'd always talk to us, Mick, after another defeat, so thank you.
03:35 I've been at probably 60-odd years. I don't really know.
03:40 My dad played for the club in the late '40s into the '50s.
03:46 He played the last ever game at Yetmansfield, the league game, and he played the first ever game at Town Meadow in 1949.
03:54 And then he used to bring me down here, or down to the ground, when I was, I don't know, three years old.
04:01 So I never used to take any interest in the football, but there was always some interesting things to do and play with at Town Meadow.
04:08 I don't know whether people know, everybody knows about it, but it was a big sight.
04:14 But one of the things I never did do with my dad, I never quizzed him too much about his time with the club.
04:21 And it's like a lot of memories, they just disappear as people go.
04:26 So I'm hoping that this exhibition and the museum itself will stir a few memories and get a few more people to share their memories and photos and everything,
04:38 particularly to do with the football club, but the whole town as well.
04:44 But anyway, I've got about, very briefly, go through the boards that I've been doing.
04:53 Most of my boards are pictorial, so there won't be a lot of reading in any of those.
04:59 Over the back there, one of the first things is a small map of where our old grounds were, so if anybody wants to look at that later, that's just a draft of it.
05:11 We basically played from one end of, from London Road down through the High Street, down to where we are now,
05:18 with a little excursion out to Eiffel Green in the 50s, while we were basically repairing the Town Meadow pitch, which never worked.
05:28 So one of the boards is that, that's the grounds through time.
05:32 Then I've got two boards showing Town Meadow from 1949 through to 1997, from its derelict stages through to being quite a nice ground at the end of its time.
05:45 Then there's one board where we are now, showing it being built and various events at its time.
05:55 The second set of three boards is Teams Through Time, going from the early 1890s running through, probably to, yeah, we've got current 2023 side, but we're missing a few teams.
06:16 So if anybody, when you come along to the Museum, if you've got anything to add.
06:20 We've got Dennis Moore, one of our old players here, sitting with Vic there.
06:24 I must say, I recognise Dennis's face, but because I haven't got a team photo with Dennis playing in the early 70s, Dennis, wasn't it?
06:33 So if anybody's got any, can fill any gaps for us.
06:37 So we've got boards with that.
06:39 We're also doing a board of related teams, mainly from the early 1900s, Crawley Athletic, Crawley Comrades after First World War, the Rangers, Crawley Wednesday, the Ramblers, also Crawley Miners.
06:55 Then we've got three boards of supporters, pictures, fanzines, letters, other memorabilia. Most of the letters were complaints to the Crawley Observer that they were going to give up watching Crawley because we were so rubbish.
07:10 A lot of those were in the 50s though.
07:13 Then we're on to promotion years. We've got four boards of those, '68, '69 and 1983, '84 together. Vic is from the '68, '9 promotion side.
07:26 2003, '4 when we went into the conference under Francis Vines.
07:31 2010, '11 going up into the Football League and 2011, '12 going up to League One.
07:42 Then we've got a couple of boards of giant killings which Steve and I are doing together. It's mainly FA Cup and League Cup games over the last 20 years, but we've got one or two others, the 1991 to FA Cup run where we ended up at Brighton.
07:58 Don't mention the score.
08:02 We've got a couple of boards of advertising, posters, fundraising, sponsorship and other memorabilia like that.
08:09 There's going to be quite a lot of Manchester United stuff. We've got a couple of big shirts to go on the wall at the museum.
08:17 We've got a display cabinet with various bits of, well some of the bits are on this table here we've got.
08:26 And also we're going to have a board with programmes and pictures. Audrey's just given us, or is going to give us a picture of Les with Bobby Charlton.
08:37 So that'll be nice because we've got from the Rona's lending us Bobby Charlton's shirt from the Reds bar as well.
08:47 So Man United will figure quite strongly.
08:51 We're also a bit of fun, one board of facilities through time. We've got some pretty desperate, if anybody can see over here.
09:01 This is our medical facilities in the 1950s. That's Doug Baskerville being worked on by, might be Reg Swinthorn, I can't remember.
09:13 And hopefully we're going to have some comparing with things as they are now on the training grounds and the different training regimes.
09:21 And then lastly, one board which is struggling to title. It's provisionally, I've put club characters, heroes, legends, whatever.
09:33 It won't mess up your tin pot and proud thing, but it's people we want fans to come along and tell us, why haven't you put so and so in there?
09:46 So a lot of them are people I think picked up and thought, well yeah that character's through time. Vic's in it.
09:54 Ali's in it. Ali West's in it over there. So yeah, that's one way we would be nice to get some people to tell us what he deserves to be in there and why he isn't in there.
10:08 Anyway, it's been a long job, an enjoyable one, putting all that stuff together.
10:13 So hopefully it'll stir some memories and stir some arguments probably of its supporters.
10:20 But also thanks to people like The Observer and various other people who've lent us photos and press cuttings and all sorts of bits and bones, some of these things here.
10:32 And people like Audrey who's lent us photos. So thank you very much and enjoy it.
10:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]