SENIOR BLUES | February meeting this Friday; plus January recap!

February’s Senior Blues meeting takes place at the Deva Stadium this Friday!

NEXT MEETING

WHEN? Friday 3rd February at 10.30am

WHERE? Blues Bar, Deva Stadium, CH1 4LT

WHO? CFU Directors Ollie Hill and Nick Phillipson, and the Blacon History Society

Chester FC Senior Blues is a group for older supporters who meet monthly and organise regular social activities.

New members are very welcome with membership costing only £10 a year..

Meetings start at 10.30am and are well attended with generally between 50 and 70 members present. Tea, coffee and biscuits are served and there is a raffle and merchandise for sale

All monies raised is for the benefit of Chester FC, with the principal focus being the Academy, which has received approximately £20,000 to date.

New members are welcome and all money raised goes to the Senior Blues Youth Foundation.

Senior Blues Members Meeting recap for January 2023, thanks to Les Smith for providing the update!

In the enforced absence of Chairman Chris (due to illness) and his trusty gavel, Geoff Leith and Les Smith tried their best to lead the meeting.

The first guest, John Thomas, who scored 20 goals in 44 appearances for Chester in the 1982-83 season (according to his Wikipedia page), proved to have an encyclopedic knowledge of his career in far greater detail than the aforesaid on-line source. He started from his time as a pub footballer in Wednesbury to signing for Everton at the age of 16 where he spent 6 seasons without making a single first team appearance.

He later noted that it was far better to be on the same side as Roger Kenyon than playing against him (which he never did). He had a remarkable recall of all his contract negotiations and signing-on fees throughout his career, spent largely playing for north west clubs with two spells at Bolton and Preston as well as his season at Chester. He recalled time at Lincoln and at West Brom (a “dream” move to his local boyhood team) that both worked out less well for various reasons.

John spoke for well over an hour on his career, on setting up home in the north west and on his current business activities.  Some points from his talk worth reporting in these notes are … He was signed on a 2 yr contract at Chester after his first spell at Bolton, by Cliff Sear and though player of the year was sold to Lincoln for a reported £22,000 after a single season. Wikipedia chose to describe Chester as “cash strapped” and John admitted it was a mistake to leave. In his last game for Lincoln he experienced the horrors of the Bradford City fire from on the pitch.

At Preston, he played alongside Gary Brazil, who he rated as perhaps the best he had played with, where he again won a player of the year award. He also made particular mention of Brian Kidd’s role as assistant manager. He experienced the first plastic pitch at Deepdale in his second season when they won promotion to Div 3. In his second spell at Bolton he was again in a Div 4 promotion winning side and played at Wembley the following season winning the Football League Trophy.

John was clearly a very successful striker in Divisions 3 & 4 scoring 119 goals in 330 appearances over a 12 year period (my calculation) until the result of a broken leg in his second spell at Preston took its toll. John’s talk was much appreciated by the members and after the meeting he drove to Chairman Chris’ home to catch up on a long-standing friendship.

The draw for the attendees at the Senior Blues sponsored fixture with Peterborough Sports was then made before Mike Allcock, this time wearing his first team coach’s hat, arrived after training and addressed the audience.

Once again Mike was open, honest and clear about his dual role at the Club. He gave us some insights into training drills, performance monitoring and the truth behind some corner routines (successful or otherwise). He was able to provide updates on the injury situation in the long and short term.

After taking a number of questions from the members it was clear that we had run into added time and after thanking Mike the meeting was closed.