Ten things...
Blackpool
1 It's just a small town in a giant holiday camp with a green kick-about patch near the beach.
2 There was a Lancashire league club called South Shore who played at Cow Cap Lane in the late 1890s. We assumed they were the original Seasiders but mind those pats!
3 Blackpool had been playing in Victoria pleasure park, then merged with South Shore at Bloomfield Road. They joined an elevated Football League by 1900 and allegedly tried to use the Tower as an overlooking hospitality box.
4 In 1923 Blackpool were still a second division side so decided to change their shirts to tangerine. They needed better players but were only attracting upward glances at first.
5 First division football came to Bloomfield Road in the thirties, thanks to prolific goalscorer Jimmy Hampson. He drowned at sea and the club struggled to live up to winning achievements after his loss.
6 During WW2 the RAF came to town and had a representative side. They were a high flying outfit, throughout hostilities below the old Kop but really took-off into a peace-time head-wind.
7 Blackpool were almost at equivalent heights of their Tower in division 1 of the fifties. Though the lift doesn't actually take you right to the very top.
8 1966 and all that as England hero Alan Ball set another record, in a transfer down the Irish Sea coast into Liverpool Bay.
9 By falling into the fourth division by the nineties, it showed what slowly goes up can come back to earth and with a bloody big bump.
10 A new century and yes, redevelopment at Bloomfield Road but it's still very much work in progress - like the position of the team!
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