Research Update – December 2020

As a season ticket holder fortunate enough to live only a short walk from the ground, it has been nice to be able to return to watch Live football this month. The lengths that the club have gone to ensuring the safety of those attending are extraordinary, and those involved, James in particular, should be highly commended for it. It is far from a “normal” match-day experience – but all things considered – that’s a good thing!
It does mean however, that with capacity reduced and limited, I’ve agreed with the club that whilst things are the way they are, it would be unreasonable to expect them to be able to extend their previous offer of complimentary match tickets for FPA members for League games. As things change over the course of 2021 we will continue to review this but I’m sure we all agree that the club needs to be able to maximise its matchday revenue as much as possible at the moment and “giving away” tickets that could and probably would otherwise be sold would not be wise. With limited hospitality a possibility in future, perhaps we can revist the “Legend in the Lounge” series a little sooner.

On the research front there hasn’t been a great deal further progress this month, beyond the unfortunate confirmation of 3 former players who have passed away, 2 recently and 1 that we have learned of from a few years ago. As always, Mike has penned obituaries/tributes for each of those players which have all been posted on the website.

I have however managed to add the details (dates and values) of a significant number of transfers over the course of our history.

Behind the scenes, I have spent quite a lot of time in preparation for the addition of reserve team results by making code changes to the site. You may notice on a number of the pages that you can now choose which “class” of games you wish to view results or statistics from. By default you will see all games considered Non-Reserve, but you can now filter to show only First, Reserve, War, Charity or None (a category which will include all friendlies).
At the moment, filtering to show Reserve games will not show you anything for most seasons, but over the course of the next few weeks and months that will change. To start with, I have added full line-ups and goalscorers from the 2000-01 and 2001-02 Seasons if you wish to see how it works.
We have records of results and goalscorers of all reserve team football that took place whilst we were a Football League club (1921-78) and also records for a number of later seasons 2002-2006 where FPA Committee member John Wood was our reserve team secretary.

If you’ve missed the announcement, long-time Southport fan Sean McPartlin, who has written article for this website in the past, has released a book chronicling his time following the Sandgrounders through the “golden years” in the 1960s. Titled “Golden Days – Falling for Southport FC in the Sixties”, it is well worth £7.99 of anyone’s money!