Back to club football again then with a visit to a side that it seemed to me at the start of the season would be right up there either in or challenging for a top two place. Stockport have. been a club that deals in promotion challenges for a good few years now and, although being comfortably beaten last week by a Plymouth side which we beat comprehensively in our last match adds to a feeling that it’s been a slowish start for Stockport so far, I expect them to start climbing the table soon.
Stockport had a very good spell under Dave Jones’ management about thirty years ago and made it into the second tier eventually, but, by and large, they have been very much a lower league team and a struggling lower league team at that.
Indeed, after Stockport became City’s first ever Football League opponents in 1920,City followed up that 5-2 win a week later with a 3-0 triumph, it was more than sixty six years before the teams met again in any competition and it was significant that it took City to drop into Division 4 for the first time for the resumption in fixtures to happen.
However, it was Stockport rather than City who got well clear of the basement division first with that rise into the second tier and it wasn’t until the early years of the Twenty First century that what I’ll pompously call the natural order of things was restored as we made a return to the second tier some seventeen years after the resumption of Cardiff v Stockport fixtures.
City have still never played Stockport in a league fixture in the second tier, but I think there’s a chance it could happen for the first time next season. You won’t get a prediction from me as to what the outcome will be on Saturday as I genuinely haven’t a clue what is going to happen. However, it wouldn’t come as too much of a shock to me if in a year’s time, it’s Stockport who are in the Championship and not us.
On to the quiz, Stockport are another of those clubs that it may be difficult to come up with questions with a City flavour on for the past seven decades as they recently spent sometime out of the Football League, but I’m sure I can find something, somewhere to provide a full set of questions, the answers to which will be posted on here on Sunday.
60s. This Liverpudlian’s eighteen year Football League career was spent within easy reach of his birthplace, but, apart from the team with which he enjoyed the most success, they were all based outside of Lancashire. Stockport were his first team and their Welsh winger Len Allchurch was proved right when he said that they would find him very hard to replace when he moved onwards and upwards to a team that County would only lose one in six against when they had a short spell of league games against some thirty years or so later. Our man got lucky because an injury to the first choice in his position gave him the chance to make his debut two days after signing in a local derby. For some time, he did well enough to keep his place at his new club and there was a medal for him at the. end of his first full season there, However, his manager/coach never forgave him for what he considered to be a blunder which cost the club a great deal and he barely featured after that. Eventually, he moved on to play at what I thought was one of nicest grounds in the country – the ground no longer exists unfortunately and the passing of time had an effect on our man to the extent that when he eventually made an appearance at Ninian Park in a losing cause, he looked a lot different to how he did when he was at his peak. After almost a decade at his third club, his final transfer took him to a uniquely named club which these days plays at the Mornflake Stadium. Who am I describing?
70s. Good enough to win four caps for England through his long career, this defender was almost unique at the time for doing something that no else did with such frequency in the English game. Despite this “superpower”, his game was more about quiet efficiency really as he was a well disciplined member of one of the most successful teams in the country for around. decade. When he left, it was for the south coast to play for an old team mate, but things didn’t really work out at a club which had gone into a steep decline and he moved closer to home when he signed for Stockport for a season before moving on to for a club in North Wales that no longer exists – can you name him?
80s. How someone with multiple disabilities may defend themselves?
90s. Lances only used in the North East?(4,8)
00s. Stockport record breaker wins none out of one hundred and nine while at the club!
10s. Currently a Harrier, previously a Robin, which son of a more famous father (who used to play for City) had a loan spell at Stockport about halfway through this decade?
20s. Which player, with a recent Stockport connection and a Cardiff City connections from much longer ago, played against a Welsh club last weekend?
Answers:
60s. Just like Bob Wilson with Jimmy Scoular at Cardiff, Ken Mulhearn was a goalkeeper who paid a big price for what his manager, Malcolm Allison in this case, thought was a very expensive mistake which led to his club’s elimination from a European competition. Mulhearn had a First Division title winning medal soon after completing his move to Manchester City from Stockport, but he was never trusted again by Allsion after his club’s elimination by Fenerbache from the European Cup. Mulhearn, whose black hair quickly turned grey in the early 70s, moved on to Shrewsbury and then to Crewe as he dropped back down to the lower divisions after his time in the top flight at Maine Road.
70s. Chris Lawler scored 61 goals from right back in his 549 league games for Liverpool and one in four appearances for his country. When he left Merseyside, it was to sign for Ian St John’s Portsmouth. Lawler played the 77/78 season with Stockport and three goals from thirty six games proved that his goalscoring knack had not quite disappeared. Lawwer dropped into non League football to play for Bangor City before retiring at the age of thirty five.
80s.Tommy Sword.
90s. Sean Connelly.
00s. Wayne Hennessey set a club record of going 857 minutes without conceding a goal while on loan at Stockport County from Wolves in early 2007 (in fact, he did not concede a goal in his first nine and a half games in senior football), but none of his 109 Welsh caps were won while he was at Edgely Park.
10s. Andy Dibble’s son Christian currently plays for Kidderminster Harriers following a spell at Wrexham – his father played in goal for City as a teenager forty odd years ago.
20s. MacCauley Southam-Hales was released by Stockport in the summer and played for his new club, Bristol Rovers, in their 3-2 win at Newport last weekend. Southam-Hales was captain of City’s Youth and Development teams around a decade ago..
