House, Nick
With a keen enthusiasm for football history, Nick House attended a talk organised by the ECFC Museum Group and Senior Reds in February 2023, liked what he heard and stayed behind afterwards to offer his services as a volunteer. Being offered the chance of maintaining the online Grecian Archive details of all the players who have represented the club since 1901 proved too big a temptation for someone who had not only long been interested in player career histories but who had also worked as a careers adviser for many years.
Having quickly realised he was the most inept footballer at his primary school in Torquay, and already something of a budding geographer and historian, Nick took solace in football books and programmes as well as street maps so that he could check out the location of football grounds. First taken to Plainmoor during the 1963/64 season, his interest in watching football really took off after family holiday trips to various London grounds during the mid 1960s and - with a father who grew up in London SW6 - Nick's first visit to St James' Park was for the FA Cup game against Fulham in 1969. Later following the path of studying in Yorkshire, he started to watch his home town's away matches alongside picking and choosing his football across the adjacent counties. Nor did he ever really give up on this as his work took him to Sussex, South Wales, Lancashire, Somerset and back to Yorkshire. Over the years, what had initially been both an opportunity to see top-flight football and follow a slightly-lesser team up-and-down the country, became an odyssey around many a non-league, Irish, Scottish and Welsh ground that was always topped up with keeping an eye on whichever were his local clubs at the time.
Reaching his sixtieth birthday and by now living in Exeter, Nick decided that he now clearly preferred the wanderings of a 'football traveller' rather than supporting any team in particular. Surprisingly easily he also concluded that many of his football 'artefacts' could be placed in either a string of charity shops or the nearest skip. With such a less-cluttered football existence, he was able to happily start working on the Grecian Archive keeping track of new, current and departing players on top of checking and maintaining the marvellous work of those who had gone before him. Although it proved a bigger job than he ever imagined - with the 'slippery slope' starting the moment he was given 'administrator access' - he quickly regarded it as a privilege to keep tabs on all the players who have appeared for a proper, long-serving member of 'the 92'.
Having quickly realised he was the most inept footballer at his primary school in Torquay, and already something of a budding geographer and historian, Nick took solace in football books and programmes as well as street maps so that he could check out the location of football grounds. First taken to Plainmoor during the 1963/64 season, his interest in watching football really took off after family holiday trips to various London grounds during the mid 1960s and - with a father who grew up in London SW6 - Nick's first visit to St James' Park was for the FA Cup game against Fulham in 1969. Later following the path of studying in Yorkshire, he started to watch his home town's away matches alongside picking and choosing his football across the adjacent counties. Nor did he ever really give up on this as his work took him to Sussex, South Wales, Lancashire, Somerset and back to Yorkshire. Over the years, what had initially been both an opportunity to see top-flight football and follow a slightly-lesser team up-and-down the country, became an odyssey around many a non-league, Irish, Scottish and Welsh ground that was always topped up with keeping an eye on whichever were his local clubs at the time.
Reaching his sixtieth birthday and by now living in Exeter, Nick decided that he now clearly preferred the wanderings of a 'football traveller' rather than supporting any team in particular. Surprisingly easily he also concluded that many of his football 'artefacts' could be placed in either a string of charity shops or the nearest skip. With such a less-cluttered football existence, he was able to happily start working on the Grecian Archive keeping track of new, current and departing players on top of checking and maintaining the marvellous work of those who had gone before him. Although it proved a bigger job than he ever imagined - with the 'slippery slope' starting the moment he was given 'administrator access' - he quickly regarded it as a privilege to keep tabs on all the players who have appeared for a proper, long-serving member of 'the 92'.
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Paul F
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