A Bangor City programme from over sixty years ago has brought the memories flooding back for stalwart supporter Mr Eric Thomas (left), now of Rhos on Sea and formerly of Bangor. Mr Thomas brought in the matchday programme for City’s Lancashire Combination home match played on Saturday, December 21, 1946. The opposition were Leyland Motors, and the match heralded a frantic Christmas and New Year period of activity for footballers at all levels.
On Christmas Day, City were scheduled to visit Morecambe, with the Lancashire club travelling to Bangor for the Boxing Day return match. On 28 December, Bangor were again in the North West, this time against Nelson, with Marine the visitors to Farrar Road on New Year’s Day. The appetite for football was insatiable at this time, just after the war, and although we didn’t know the attendance figure for this particular game, City’s 1954 Christmas day match against Ellesmere Port Town, played at Farrar Road attracted 2,000 fans. According to Eric, attending a Christmas Day match would make a mess of dinner arrangements—and what about those journeys in the days before the A55 and motorways to the North!
Eric clearly remembers the season as the first where he would have attended matches unsupervised by his father, and recalls that the entrance charge was 9d (9 pre-decimal pennies—about £0.04) for juniors or 1/6 (about £0.07) for adults—with 2d for the programme There was no terracing at Farrar Road in those days—just sloping rough ground around the touchline, although those who fancied a more luxurious vantage point could sit in the main stands, for which an additional charge would be made. There was also more standing available in the area now occupied by the Wendy House Nursery—previously the Green Turf Club which of course was not built until much more recently.
As this was a time before floodlights arrived at Farrar Road (they were not to be installed until the late 1960s), wintertime games would kick off at about 2.00 pm and with the size of these post-war crowds, it made sense to get to the ground early, even though there were turnstiles open at the High Street side of the ground, as well as gates just off Farrar Road, these entrances being much closer to the road itself, and the rear of Foulkes’ Garage, than is the case today.
The game itself, and the result? A 1—3 defeat, I’m afraid—but one has to suffer the troughs in order to enjoy the peaks—and there have certainly been enough of those at Farrar Road over the golden years.
BANGOR CITY V LEYLAND MOTORS, SATURDAY DECEMBER 21 1946.
Bangor City (Royal Blue shirts with scarlet collars and cuffs, white shorts): Gill, Tuthill, Bell, WH Jones, Regan, Lloyd, W Jones, Haddon, J Jones, Humphreys, Barton.
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