If you know your history

We know the Poppies have history. Not much of it good or even memorable, but history nonetheless. For one thing, we all know that the Club was formed in 1872, which was an otherwise slow year for news if a few minutes of trawling the Internet is anything to go by.

Sporting news is dominated (after the Poppies formation of course) by the first recognised international football match, between Scotland and England (for full match report see here - http://www.londonhearts.com/scores/images/1872/1872113001.htm There was also the first FA Cup Final between the Wanderers and the Royal Engineers.

In other news, Banbury was almost hit by a meteorite, the abandoned Marie Celeste was found drifting in the Atlantic, and Dracula was defeated by his arch-nemesis Professor Van Helsing (at least according to the pre-credits sequence of the Hammer Horror film about Dracula from 1972, helpfully titled "Dracula AD1972". The "Big-Man" is seen here with the fullsome Stephanie Beacham.

We all know other bits of our history. including the big stuff about Tommy Lawton, shirt sponsorship, Big Ron and of course Sam Banya. But other than the part of our history we live through and the few, well known high points, what do we actually know?

The answer is - not much. There is no definitive history of Kettering Town FC for us all to read. There is no reference source for all the data which makes up everything the Club has ever done. No-one has quite worked up the nerve to quit their job for a couple of years and settle down in front of the micro-fiche at the Library with back issues of the ET, a freshly sharpened pencil and a note-pad.

Bits and pieces of our past are being collected, archived and displayed by the Trust, but how much more is unknown and lost forever? It's not as though we are a famous club like Manchester United, where, I imagine, a few key strokes on the Internet will give you all the information you would ever need (all, no doubt diligently collated by their hardcore London and the South East supporter associations!)

All of which leaves us at the mercy of evil bastards like Paul Cooke. His simple question on Poppynet about our 20 all-time goal scorers should have proved no problem to the Poppies-hungry Internet hoards. But, a couple of weeks later we have still only 11 of the 20, and no sign of any more guesses from the stumped online community. Of the 11 thus far named, I have seen 5 of them in the flesh (so to speak), but doubt very much whether I would have witnessed Poppies-heroics from any of the missing ones, and consequently, can add no more names to the list.

Paul hasn't yet seen fit to fill in the blanks in the Top 20, and who can blame him with 23 league matchday programmes and several (!) FA Cup programmes on the horizon to fill with articles over the coming season. A profile on each of the twenty scorers could fill a page in almost every league programme in 2010-2011!