File: BMD Doug Draper.mp3 Duration: 1:05:06 Date: 09/08/2016 Typist: 708 START AUDIO Doug Draper: My name is Doug Draper. I’m 81-years-old. I was born in the Old Town, so I’m probably one of the original… Well, not the original, but… Interviewer: Close to? Doug Draper: An official Stevenage resident. I’ve followed the football club ever since I was about seven, when I first went down to the Old London Road ground with my father. Then, later on, we were accompanied by my brother, who was a bit younger than me. Most of my memories go back to the Old Town football ground, which is no longer there and which is now under the Leisure Centre. I’ve had a look around on the internet and in various places, and I’ve found that the history of the Old Town Football Club has almost been obliterated, which frustrates me somewhat because I think that that’s where football really started. Okay, it’s nice to have a team like we’ve got now, but not a great deal of thought goes into what was here before the New Town. Interviewer: I don’t know that I can entirely do the maths here. The Old Town Football Club: that’s the original Stevenage Town - is that right? Doug Draper: The old Stevenage Town Football Club was originally founded before the Second World War, and they used to play on a ground off what is now Fairview Road, in the Fishers Green area. It was actually called the New Town Football Club. When Stevenage started to develop before the Second World War, a lot of building and development work went on in the area and a lot of properties along Fairview Road were built by the railway. The railway had expanded. The railway built a load of properties along Fairview Road. The first football club that I could find any record of was called Stevenage New Town Football Club. That, to me, is one of my tricky pub quiz questions. When I say to people, “Where was the first Stevenage New Town Club?” they always say, “The one we’ve got now.” This first football team went right back before the First World War. 2 How they actually moved from there to the ground on the Old London Road, I don’t know. I started to go to the London Road ground with my father when I was about seven or eight, so that would be about 1937 or 1938. Interviewer: They were playing, at that time, on the London Road ground? Doug Draper: They were playing on the London Road ground, yes. Interviewer: Tell me what that ground was like. What do you remember about it? Doug Draper: I can remember it very vividly. I sometimes think that I should try and draw it. I can see it exactly as it was. It was at the southern end of the London Road, near Six Hills. It had a wooden stand, similar to what they built in those days. They were all pretty well the same construction - probably about 12 rows of seats, a wooden top, and a totally wooden construction. On the left-hand side, they had a little tea hut in the corner, and at that time, on the opposite side of the pitch, which was quite open, backing onto the railway. 3 Subsequent to that, they put in a covered stand, which was made out of old Anderson shelters all along the railway side of the ground. It was fairly basic and fairly sparse, but had quite good crowds considering the size of the Old Town. Interviewer: Do you remember what league that was? What kinds of clubs would they be playing? You said you went to your first game. Do you remember who it was? Doug Draper: Good Lord, no. I was about seven or eight then. I suppose it would have been before the Second World War or even in the early part of the Second World War. We used to play local sides - basically, like Ware, St Albans and Hemel Hempstead. They were all in the county area. Interviewer: That’s very local, yes. Doug Draper: It was what I would describe as, really, Herts football. I don’t know what they’d call it in the County League now, but it was that sort of football. It was all ‘local rivalry’. There’s a guy in the Old Town… [Chandlers 0:05:56], who used to run coaches. It was a private, one-off company. 4 He used to run the coaches for the Football Club. We used to get on the coaches outside the CIU Club in the Old Town. None of the trips were more than, probably, about an hour at the most, but they were wonderful old days and it was all local rivalry. Interviewer: What’s the CIU Club? Sorry, what’s that? Doug Draper: The CIU Club was originally called the Working Men’s Club. It’s opposite the White Barn in the Old Town. That used to be the meeting point for all the supporters, because with the New Town not being there then, the CIU Club used to basically be the home of most of the supporters. I’ve got stuck now. Interviewer: Well, you were talking about that supporters would come together there, and you’d be going off to trips to the other clubs when you were playing away. Doug Draper: Yes. I’ve tried to look through my memorabilia and I cannot find anything. It’s so frustrating. I cannot find anything about the original Old Town Football Club. 5 I’ve looked on the web and it seems to have been totally lost, which is really annoying because I talk to guys at matches now and there are lots of guys still around at my age who were around in the Old London Road ground days. It’s a little bit frustrating that with the coming of the New Town, the Old Town Football Club seems to have been not erased but totally forgotten. That’s where a lot of my Football Club memories and my enthusiasm for the Football Club started. Interviewer: Do you remember any of the players for that original..? Doug Draper: Oh, I do, yes. Not in any particular order. We had a guy in goal called Hunt. I can’t remember his Christian name. We had [D Fulbig 0:08:27], Arthur Bloxham, Alan Jackson, who used to play at centre half… Alan Jackson was probably one of the finest centre halves that you could find in the Home Counties. Lummy Taylor, Taffy Rogers… I’ve mention Dave Bloxham, haven’t I? Interviewer: Yes. Doug Draper: He came from Hatfield. 6 A guy who played centre forward named Chapman. Not a very good centre forward. Lummy Taylor and Taffy Rogers were two superb wingers in that level of football. We had some wonderful nights there in the old Amateur Cup. We had Pegasus that we played. We played Corinthian Casuals. These were when they were really powerful. They went on to win the Amateur Cup, Pegasus and Corinthian Casuals, so to actually get them down at London Road was quite a draw. I can’t remember the scores exactly. I know they beat us, but not by much. We had some wonderful games down there also when we were in the Southern League. For instance, John Charles, the old Welsh international footballer… Interviewer: Oh, yes, a fabulous player. Doug Draper: I think he played for Merthyr. Yes, I think it was Merthyr who he was playing… When he came out of the Italian football, he went into Non- League, playing for Merthyr. I remember John Charles playing there. Even in that humble background, we’ve seen some pretty good players down there. 7 Interviewer: Yes, I’ll bet. Doug Draper: The old enemy was Hitchin, because Hitchin was the better side in North Herts. They were our arch-enemies. We never got to play them because they were in a league higher than us, but we always had this resentment against Hitchin. Football clubs do rival one another, so everybody hated Hitchin. We played them once or twice in cup games, but they inevitably beat us. There was a fair degree of rivalry between the two sides. The other sides we used to have ding-dong matches with were Ware… St Albans were always a little bit better than us. They had a better pitch. Hitchin had a better pitch. We were the poor relations way back in the pre-Second World War days. Interviewer: That was very much the old time. Were they playing in the red and white? Doug Draper: Yes, they were always known as the ‘Stripes’. I remember that, at every game, they used to play ‘If I Were a Blackbird’ by Ronnie Ronalde. 8 Now, the crowd used to start singing. I went online yesterday to try and see if I could get a copy of a CD. You can get it online, on an iPod, but I haven’t got an iPod. I played it, and what I did was that I copied off the words. I was trying to get a CD of it. It was the Club’s theme tune. They put it on at every match and everybody used to start whistling and singing it, because it was one of those songs where the guy started whistling like a blackbird and then he started singing.