The Magnificent Seven

Following on from the last piece which painfully highlighted our abject history of failure against the Scum, we thought we'd wallow in our ineptitude a little longer.

Our return of a whopping seven goals (or a handful if your are a reader from Irthlingborough) has thrown up seven goalscoring Poppies heroes - our Magnificent Seven.



"Poncho" Pearson, "Snake-eyes" Norman, "Blondie" Vowden,  "Mad" McNamara,
"Colonel" Codnor, "Six-shooter" Seddon, and "Grandpappy" Furlong


Chris Pearson had the dubious honour of scoring our solitary replay to The Scum's five on their first visit to Rockingham Road.  Can't remember the goal as such (but am prepared to guess Chris didn't score from a one-on-one position!)  The only thing I can remember hitting the back of the net with any force was their goalie at one point!

Poppies went goal crazy at Non Park at the end of the 1998-99 season when both Vowden and McNamara scored to give us our solitary victory and claim runners-up spot in the League.  Of course, this was back in the days when you might just as well have finished one place above the relegation zone as finish 2nd!

A Craig Norman penalty gave us our next goal later in 1999. Not surprising a defender got the goal really given the fact that we were relying on forwards of the quality of Sam Banya.


Robert Codner scored our next goal the following season during another semi-profitable trip to Legoland.  A bit of a mystery man was Codner.  He seemed to flit in and out of the side and indeed, our club for most of a season in between micro-stints elsewhere.  Journeyman or not, at least he stuck one in against the Inbreds.

There then followed a long gap where the Direones had to settle for bumping along, playing the likes of QPR, Bristol City and Blackpool, whilst we hosted such glamourous outfits as Braintree Town, Billericay, Heybridge Swifts and the famous Ford United.  I heard it reported on good authority that upon disembarking their minibus the Ford United players stood in the shadow of our main stand saying words to the effect of, "What the hell is a club this size doing in this league?"  They then found out by spanking us 3-0 on our patch and followed this up with a 2-0 on their park pitch a few months later.

After several barren years the newly resurgent Poppies and the "too shit for the Football League" Diamonds were thrown together again.  Almost instantly Gareth Seddon had the temerity to put us 1-0 up at Rocky road before they inevitably equalised.

And that was it goal wise until Paul Furlong's iron-girded neck muscles gave us all pointless hope in last weekend's Cup game.

Seven goals.  Averaged out at less that half a goal per game.  Probably a good point to stop beating ourselves up, at least until early January.