NEWHAVEN BOYS CLUB FOOTBALL TEAM 1951

My late dad John, left me some old photos of his footballing days, some of them have with hand written comments on. I am trying to contact someone who could make good use of them.

Why not bring them along to one of our scanning sessions so we can add them to this website.  -  Editor

Hi Paul. How lovely it is to see the your photograph of the Newhaven Boys School team....brings back so many lovely memories. This proved to be the nucleus of the very succesful Newhaven first eleven playing in Sussex County Division 1....all local boys too.! Brian was always captain, from school days, and became fascinated with the game when his brother George would take him to watch 'the Saints' at The Dell, before he moved to Newhaven when he was about 9yrs of age. He had his very special ideas of how 'the beatiful game' should be played, and after watching the great Brazilian sides of the early 50's, I remember him writing a thesis on the 4-2-4 system, which he introduced to the Newhaven side of which he became player-coach, after passing his coaching badge at Durham University, alongside Brian Clough. Your photograph proves my point about those lads being the nucleus of the Newhaven fotballteam of the 50's. Lovely Johnny Allery, Terry, Mike, Brian, Derek, Colin and Gerald. 7 local boys, and they played together for many years. They also made the basic successful Piddinghoe Sunday side, when Sunday football was devised by Don Winder, and Wilf Belton in our little flat in Rose Walk Close one Sunday also in the 1950's. Brian has been player coach first, at Newhaven, then Piddinghoe, also at Seaford Town during his footballing years. He played for the Whitehawk Cup winning side around 1985 also, so has given a large slice of his life to his 'passion'. Altho' he now has a memory problem brought on by a series of mini-strokes around 1999, whilst in Spain, (not Alzheimers) he nevertheless suffers bouts of depression and his memory is very limited....brought on, he tells his psychiatrist, by the 'bad crosses' he used to recieve from ones such as his great pal - Johnny Snow....who avidly disputes this! He watches every match there is on the television, but can't remember the teams, after only a few moments of the match finishing. Never-the-less, I am so grateful to the game for giving him so much pleasure all these years. Thanks again Paul.