Who Play At Annfield? And Other Questions

Which Scottish League club play at Annfield? Who won the Wearside League last season? Who is Wolves' most capped player? At one time I could have answered those questions in a flash; at one time it was pretty much compulsory for me to be able to. As a member of the Romford Supporters Club Quiz Team in the 1970's and 1980's those were the sort of questions you could expect to face in the Home Counties Supporters Clubs Quiz League, in which Romford's team played sides from Barking, Wimbledon, Barnet, Southend, and Gravesend & Northfleet, among others. And all of the questions were composed from information contained in the Rothmans Football Yearbook, which was first published in 1970, and knocked existing publications like the Playfair Football Annual, or the News of The World Football Annual into a cocked hat. 

When Romford first entered the league, home matches were played in the Social Club at the football club's Brooklands ground and the team included well-known supporters like Jim Hughes, Dale Sharp, Barry Dove and Jon Walsh. Occasionally, football club secretary John Haley would be on the team. In those early years there was little danger of Romford actually winning anything, in fact the team were once described by the Quiz League Secretary as "the chopping blocks of the league." This changed in 1976 when Romford rather startled their opponents by winning five out of their six league games and becoming the first team ever to win at Gravesend, by a score of 60-51. Gravesend won the league - just, on points difference - finishing narrowly ahead of Romford and Barking (the only team to beat Romford) as all three sides finished with records of won five, lost one. By this time the team had changed a bit, with Martin Bailey, Rob Godfrey and myself joining and reducing the average age of the team a little (it was a long time ago). The team's finest hour came in 1980 when the league was won for the only time. The football club had folded in 1978, but the quiz team kept going and that year beat Wimbledon (by common consent, the best team in the league at that time) in the first game of the season. Thanks in part to the addition to the team of Andy Prescott, for whom the quizzes were as much an academic exercise as anything else, Romford won the league, winning every league game. We actually took it seriously that season, going so far as to have revision sessions.

It may not seem like much, but it's one of the few things I have ever won!

And here are some pictures of the people who won it with me.

With Brooklands long gone, home games were played at local venues like Collier Row FC (now also gone), or pubs like The Durham Arms in Romford, but as some of the team drifted away and new faces like my friend and work colleague Keith Markham were drafted in.  None of these new recruits had seen the football team play, and some of them would have been hard-pressed to point to Romford on a map.  Home games migrated into Central London and to pubs like The Bloomsbury Tavern in Shaftesbury Avenue. By this time the quizzes were little more than an excuse to meet up, socialise and have a few beers. At some point in the mid-1980's the team disbanded.

The Durham Arms in Romford

The Bloomsbury Tavern

The first Rothmans Football Yearbook (or as everyone knew it, 'the Rothmans', or sometimes just 'the book') cost eighteen shillings (90pence) and ran - as did subsequent editions - to about 1,000 pages, covering everything from the World Cup to what we would now refer to as Step 6 football. If it wasn't in the Rothmans, it probably wasn't worth knowing. The first edition of the Rothmans that I owned was the 1971-72 issue; it cost £1 and my parents bought it for me while we were on holiday (Eastbourne, I think) and I bought every subsequent book until sometime in the mid-1980's, when the quiz team packed up and the need to own new issues diminished.

The book was sponsored by Rothmans until 2003 when they withdrew due to legislation restricting tobacco sponsorship in sport. Sky Sports took over as the new sponsors from the 2003–04 edition onwards (somehow I imagine that most diehards still call it 'the Rothmans'), but in March this year Sky withdrew their support and the book's future is in doubt. The internet is probably partly to blame; who needs a book that is as thick as a brick and just as weighty, when all the information you could ever need is just a couple of taps away on your smartphone? The Home Counties Supporters Clubs Quiz League is still going, albeit the format has changed from head-to-head matches to contests featuring all six remaining member teams on a monthly basis at a pub in Clerkenwell. Assuming that all the question are still derived from 'the Rothmans' and that Sky do drop their sponsorship and the book is no longer published, this is going to force the league into drastic action to find a source as impeccable to replace it.

The Rothmans was football's answer to Wisden - that great cricket almanac that has been published continuously since 1864 and thankfully shows no signs of imminent demise - perhaps never treated with the same sort of reverence, but mightily respected by all who encountered it. If 'the book' does cease publication, then the casual statistic loving football fan will be left with few choices. There is the Nationwide Football Annual, but with the most recent edition containing a mere 244 pages, it is hardly in the Rothmans' league, though it does have longevity on its side. The Nationwide Football Annual began life in 1887 as the Athletic News Football Annual; it lasted 59 years under that name until it became the Empire News and Sunday Chronicle Annual. The newspaper for which it was named merged with the News of the World in 1960 and the annual changed its title again. With the failure of the NotW, the Nationwide Building Society - once sponsors of the Football League - put their name to it.

In the days when the Rothmans was a compulsory purchase at the start of every season, each new edition would take its place on my bookshelf alongside its predecessors until eventually a combination of a lack of space and the Romford Supporters Quiz Team finally folding resulted in me throwing them out. If I had kept them they might have been worth a few bob now, although the highest price I've seen for one goes to the first year's edition (which I did not own) and is available on Amazon at £59 in paperback and a staggering £340.75 for the hardback. Nowadays I suppose that the diehards, the technophobes and the quiz enthusiasts are the book's primary market and one which is in all likelihood dwindling. Nonetheless, it would be a shame if Sky pulled the plug on football's most respected publication, and all apparently for the sake of the £30,000 annual sponsorship money that the broadcaster puts into it. Think about that; Sky are happy to pay £3.579bn for the rights to broadcast the next three years of Premier League football, but reluctant to stump up some small change to keep a book going after nearly half a century of publication.

Finally, to return to the questions at the top of the page. The Scottish League club that played at Annfield were Stirling Albion (they now play at the Forthbank Stadium); the Wearside League was won by Jarrow last season, and Billy Wright (105 England appearances between 1939 and 1959) remains Wolves' most capped player.