Exeter City FC 1963-64 history in the making – memories of a teenager.

By Fred Pound

INTRODUCTION:

This account of the historic 1963-64 season is told through the eyes of the teenage schoolboy I was at the time. It is based on notes and details I recorded contemporaneously in my “autograph book” and the memories they evoke.

I must thank my schoolfriend of those days, Malcolm Tipper, with whom I reacquainted in 2013 after being out of touch for more than 40 years. He had left Exeter as a young man and had worked all around England and Wales in the intervening years before “retiring” to Devon. It was he who reminded me of the existence of this book that had been forgotten and stored in a box which had been sitting in the lofts of the various houses I’d lived in since those days and was now in a fragile state, “cellotaped” pictures had become detached with age and needed rearranging.

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From the age of coming up 12 I would be seen hovering at the gate leading to St James Park Halt, opposite the main Well Street entrance to St James Park, on a matchday. I was one of a small group of mainly teenage boys …. we were the autograph hunters. We were armed with a variety of books, some large, others what you might expect a traditional autograph book to look like, and biros.

The doyen of the group was the oldest of us, Chris Evans, whose duffel bag contained several foolscap-size books covering divisions 1 to 4, each an inch or so thick and stuffed with photographs ready for players to sign them! Malcolm, my neighbour and pal Derek Singleton and I were not in the same “league” each of us having just the one book.

My book was laid out in alphabetical order of Division 4 teams with spaces 1-11 for the players to sign according to their position that day. Additional space was available for reserves, manager etc. Any photograph associated with the team and individual players was cut out from publications of the time (Soccer Star, Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly, Football Annuals and newspapers, especially the Express and Echo for City players).  

Home players tended to arrive by foot up to 90 minutes before kick-off. Since they came individually there was always time to get their signatures. They were always very obliging, nothing seemed too much trouble. Occasionally we “needed” additional signatures for instance if we’d got recent photographs or if there were new players to add to the collection. There was something special about a new signing.

Visiting teams sometimes came by coach, though they too often came by foot, especially when they had arrived in Exeter by train. This form of transport seemed much the norm at the time. A mad scramble would then take place to get as many autographs as possible and, of course, we wanted photos signed too. It was always good to get in before Chris, who might commandeer a player for a while as he reached from one book to another!

Once the players were through the gate and into the ground, we’d rush to the smaller Well Street turnstile and into the area adjacent to the tunnel at the front of the grandstand, where we would be seated. We would follow the players as they sauntered from the changing room and onto the pitch whilst they familiarised themselves with the conditions they’d face. This involved them prodding the turf with the toes and heels of their shoes!! Most of them were more than happy to continue signing our books. Many would chat to old friends and former team-mates amongst the City players.

After the match we would again congregate outside the main Well Street gate if we had not been lucky enough to get all the signatures we needed by then. Occasionally we would go to the railway station or hotel, if the gateman had tipped us off, and catch them there.

We were a friendly, determined bunch but quite competitive too!

During the previous (1962-63) season I was proud of myself for getting the signature of every visiting player (although I had to beg my step-father to drive me to Torquay one evening after school, towards the end of the season, to get Peter Jackson, the Tranmere centre half, who had been taken to the RD and E following a nasty head injury when we’d played them at home in December). I was not going to let that spoil my record!

By the time we got to the 1963-64 season I was a fourteen- year-old and had become much more “adventurous”, I began to include much more detail. A humble autograph book was to turn into a diary, a statistical maze and a series of teenage ramblings!