Accies Trust

First of all, the Trust would like to thank Les Gray, Brian Winter and Alex and Ross White of Chambers Catering for their support of this event

The evening kicked off with the business element, the AGM of the Accies Trust. The AGM was short, included a report be the Chair, a financial report and the election of the Board for the coming year. Minutes will be posted as soon as they are available. The Board for 2010 was elected as follows:

Donald Anderson, Alistair Brown, Graeme Brown, Paul Daly, Ken Fee, Alan Hutcheson, Darren Jameson, Tommy Jordan, Ian Kelly, Tom Marchbank, David Ogg, Craig Rankin, Euan Simpson.

Les Gray
Les was straight talking, honest and forthright. He covered a lot of ground in just over 1 hour. The following report is a mix of recollections from a number of those present. Thanks to those who allowed me to access their material!

Season ticket income pays for little more than the players wages over the summer. Factor in the wages for an expensive striker we may have had for the 2nd half of last season and you can imagine how little there is left. Gate income doesn’t go very far and the team is financed from other areas, such as the businesses using the stadium.

Les was aware of the problems with the stewarding, but was surprised to hear of problems at the car park a couple of weeks ago. The stewarding is much more removed from club control than when we were in the SFL.

The lack of any forwards coming in over January was discussed. Maguire apparently agreed to come then signed for Kilmarnock. There were a number of potential deals that fell through for one reason or another (not necessarily all in the January 2010 window). The Club is always trying to improve the squad and activity is certainly not confined to the transfer window. Some names, such as Kirk, were given by the audience as examples of players we could have signed. Les asked where people thought the money for these players was going to come from since we would have to pay for them and the club were not willing to pay out money they did not have. The answer was out of his, or Ronnie’s pocket because the Club cannot support such expense. As an example of the level at which we operate he talked about a match at Ibrox last season where we had three players on £100 per week and contrasted that to the wage bill for Pedro Mendes alone.

James McCarthy calls every Saturday to talk to Les and Frankie McAvoy and thank them. Both Les and Frankie thought that there would be more youngsters coming through. He highlighted the fact that we’ve used more players who have come through the ranks than any other team in the SPL. When asked why some come in for a couple of games then seemingly disappear he explained that Billy Reid likes to try them out and see how they react to the experience and also to see how they react when they drop back to the U19s.

He felt that while another 500 fans would be nice, it wouldn’t really make any great difference to the club finances.

Pressley’s press conference about Falkirk’s chances of staying up and hadn’t gone unnoticed by the manager and players.

The question of players being signed and subsequently released was raised and Les noted that this was never the plan! However, the situation is as a result of necessity in that we must unearth talent that others don’t or won’t. Supporters may not like the turnaround of players, the Club certainly don’t like it but what is the option? It wasn’t stated directly, but I suspect the Club management is canny enough to ensure that these players are not signed on lengthy contracts and when they go they are mostly actually released mutually (no ongoing cost) into another job.

Les does read the Accies World message board but has little sympathy for anonymous moaning. The players do hear some of the shouts from the stands and this can be very destructive. He encouraged supporters to support the team. Les acknowledged that the pre season programme had been far from ideal and promised that things would improve for summer 2010. He noted that many elements of the pre-season were already in place.

James McArthur will join Rangers over his dead body!

Club made an extra £21 or £22k selling their own away tickets to the OF.

Turnover in last season in the First was something like £550,000. It is now something over £2M. While that may seem a lot, contrast that with wage bills elsewhere in the SPL and we are still operating on a shoestring. Such a turnover does not allow us to have players (strikers?) at 2k per week!

Les is a naturally gifted speaker, and he didn’t disappoint. Thank you very much, Mr Vice Chairman!

Brian Winter
Brian Winter was very entertaining as well as educational. He came across as an ordinary guy and his love for the game shone through. His anecdotes about the Clyde fans, and sending off Barry Nicholson at Tynecastle were hilarious, and you could tell from what he was saying that he had a lot of time for guys at Accies such as big Marko and Alex Neil. Alex doesn’t moan at him to much!

A year or two ago he sent off a Dundee Utd player with 10 minutes left, upon which Kilmarnock promptly turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 win. Apparently the guy didn’t deserve to go, and Craig Levein went absolutely mental (again). Dearie me.

Brian brought some videos with him and we were able to give our opinions on a variety of difficult refereeing calls. There was wide-ranging opinion on all of them, from no action to red card!

One other point to note, Brian thought we were certainties to avoid relegation – he knows how to work an audience!

This was a great night. The Trust hope to build up numbers on the back of such events so thanks to everyone who came along.

The Accies Trust would like to thank Richard McBrearty, of the the Scottish Football Museum, for his excellent talk at the Trust event on the 19th of November.

Richard spoke for over an hour, showed some fascinating slides of Scottish football and Accies memorabilia and told some great stories of the Scottish part in the globalisation of football. We also had a great display of supporters memorabilia – programmes, photos, magazines etc, and some were of considerable antiquity. There was lots of interest in the display.

Peter McLeish made a welcome appearance with some great old photos and a host of memories.

We would also like to thank everyone who turned out on what was a very stormy night.

The Trust remains very grateful to Alex and Ross White at Chambers Catering for their outstanding support of the event.

Richard has kindly written a piece on the Hamilton Academical collection the Scottish Football Museum holds; which we have produced below.

“As one of Scotland’s oldest senior football clubs Hamilton Accies have an important place within the Scottish Football Museum. The museum has built up a significant collection of items relating to Accies but it is an ongoing policy to collect objects which will help us to chart the history of the club since it’s inception in 1874. The records held by the museum are very impressive and date back to the mid 1870s.

A significant resource for anyone wishing to trace the early history of many of Scotland’s senior football clubs are the Scottish FA Annuals.

The museum has a complete set of them stretching from 1875/76 to 1899/1900. These annuals provide fascinating information on clubs affiliated to the Scottish FA as the annuals provided contact details and club information for match secretaries and enabled club officials to contact each other in order to organise friendly matches (particularly for the years prior to the introduction of league football in Scotland when most games would have been friendlies). The club’s entry in the annual of 1876/77 can be seen below.

Image courtesy of the Scottish Football Museum

For supporters who are thinking of researching the club’s history, the museum’s archive is a very useful tool. Our newspaper archive starts from around 1875 and runs until 1990. Articles relating to the Scottish Cup finals of 1911 and 1935 can be found within this collection.

The SFA Player and Club registers are also held by the museum and these date from the advent of professionalism within the Scottish game (1893). Players who have signed for the club can therefore be traced by consulting this important resource.

Items belonging to individual players and managers add a distinctive quality to the Accies collection. An early 20th Century football medal awarded to Stanley George Baxter, who was the club’s match secretary, features within the collection. Baxter, in his role as match secretary, can also be seen in an early Accies team line up which is held by the museum. Colour has been added to the black and white picture giving the familar hooped strip the rather unusual tint of cerise and french grey.

Image courtesy of the Scottish Football Museum

There are many collectable cards which feature Accies players from the early to mid 20th century. The image on the right is a notable example of a ‘cigarette card’, and features an Accies legend of the period, Jock Davie.

A Lanarkshire Cup medal and players contract relating to John M Paterson and dating from 1924 forms part of the collection while football shirts relating to Accies players from yesteryear also feature. Our earliest Accies shirt, currently on display, dates from the 1960s and was acquired at auction while a Kevin McKee shirt dating from the late 1980s and signed by the full squad is also held by the museum.

Thanks to the recent addition of the Scottish Football League Collection under a long term loan agreement many Accies programmes are now cared for by the museum. The vast majority date from 1980 until 2000 as every home programme for each season was collected by the SFL over this period. The museum has built up a small collection of Accies programmes from the 1970s but this is an active collecting area as there is an acknowledged weakness in the Accies programme collection prior to 1980.

Image courtesy of the Scottish Football Museum

Photographs on the club also feature within the museum’s collection. Perhaps the best photographic record of the club is the Charlie McBain collection. From the late 1950s to the early 1990s Charlie, a press photographer, captured matches at Douglas Park. The image on the left is taken from an Accies v Third Lanark match from the early 1960s. As a football image it is of course fascinating for supporters but there is also wider civic and social history significance to the photograph. The County Buildings were being constructed at the time of the match and cranes can be seen in the distance.”

Richard told some horror stories of individuals and clubs throwing away memorabilia. If you have any memorabilia relating to Accies or Scottish football then please contact Richard via this link.

Please click here to view these images enlarged on the Accies Trust’s Flickr page.

Links
Scottish Football Museum
Accies Trust on Flickr