An Illustrated History of Old Sutton in St.Helens
Part 21 (of 58) - Sport in Sutton (St.Helens)

Sutton Cricket Club team photo about 1898 to 1900 when based at Normans (Hoghton) Road - contributed by Frank Parry

The Parry family were heavily involved with the club around the turn of the nineteenth century and feature in the above team photo c.1898. The umpire in the white coat is William Parry (1855 - 1930) and sat on the grass (from L-R) are his sons Tom and David, the latter being Sutton Cricket Club's scorer. Opening batsman George Parry also played for the team.
William Parry lived in Mill Brow and for a time in New Street and worked in the London and NW Railway stores department at St.Helens Junction for 40 years. He served as secretary for Sutton Cricket Club from around 1885 to 1902, only stepping down after overseeing the move to the club's present ground on a field in New Street. Upon his retirement, the club presented Parry with a marble clock and Captain Michael Hughes presented him with a copy of Shakespeare's plays.

In fact chief Sutton landowner Michael Hughes (III) was a great supporter and benefactor of sport in Sutton and was president or chairman of more than 30 sporting clubs in the district. He also owned as many as 60 racehorses during his lifetime, who were often seen being trained in Sherdley Park during the close season.
Incidentally, the sound of leather on willow ceased in Sutton during the First World War. The ground was instead used for growing produce, although the 22 yards of pitch was spared the spade!

A photograph of the building of a new pavilion at Sutton Cricket Club in New Street. William Hussey is in the cap on the back row. The man at the end of the back row in a sleeveless pullover is possibly Frank Fowles - contributed by Marjorie Hall

Sports other than cricket have been played at the club and in 1874 the first annual amateur athletics festival took place at the Normans Road ground. More recently, the late Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins frequently played snooker during the 1960s at Sutton CC in New Street. Sutton Manor also had their own cricket team who are pictured right in the mid-1930s.
Athletics events during the nineteenth century were mainly footraces where much money changed hands and with Bold Heath a popular venue. Two athletes called Heyes and Rigbye competed at Bold Heath on November 5th 1859 in front of hundreds of people, despite heavy rain. The Liverpool Mercury reported how on June 1st 1863, "young Lyon of Sutton" had taken on a celebrity runner from St.Helens called Daw Critchley "for £5 a side". Many of the local sporting celebrities were present to watch the one mile race on Bold Heath which was won by Lyon by ten yards.
Sutton Harriers were formed in 1899 and is the fourth oldest athletics club in Merseyside (although now known as St Helens-Sutton Athletic Club after a merger in 1990) and from the outset they were remarkably successful. Within seven years of their formation they'd won the National Cross Country Championship, winning 13 sets of medals in their first 14 competitive championships. Inevitably Colonel Michael Hughes was their patron and was said to be extremely proud of their achievements. (See Sutton Harriers page)

Sutton Harriers Athletics Club were founded in 1899 and photographed c.1910

During the twentieth century, organised boxing increased in popularity with Ernie Proudlove, George 'Bold' Thomas, Mick Gordon, Wilf Douglas, Jack Gutteridge and Ray Shiel all popular pugilists who were based in Sutton and Clock Face. Then there was Ike Beech and his son Billy, who were the wrestling stars from Sutton Manor. (See dedicated Sutton Boxers and Wrestlers page)
Sutton miners also played Knurr and Spell. The Knurr was a hard ball which was propelled vertically into the air by a Spell, a mechanical device that was tripped when a foot or club pressed a lever. Other sporting activities included playing 'piggy', attending Newton races, bowling, whippet racing, rabbit coursing and starling shooting. Pigeon-flying had its enthusiasts and there used to be a Sutton Oak Homing Society. Pitch-and-toss of penny coins was endemic and pounds were staked on every toss. The practice was illegal and the police were regularly on the look out for offenders. (See 'The Raid On The Sutton 'Tossers' article in Sutton Crime)

The Sutton Manor colliery 16-18s football team with the E.K.Lawrenson memorial rose bowl trophy

A St.Helens District League report from the St.Helens Reporter of February 29th, 1924 also referred to Sutton Alexandra, Peasley Cross Albion, Sutton Commercial and Sutton Oak Juniors as exponents of the round ball. Football also became widespread in the pits with each colliery having a number of teams that played competitively.
Sutton FC played rugby, as opposed to association football, and for four years from 1888 had a rising star in Jimmy Rennie (c.1871 - 1892). He lived at 25 Chester Lane and like his father Joseph, was a miner at Lea Green colliery. Earlier in the 1891/2 season, 21-year-old James had been transferred to St.Helens Football Club, which would become the successful Saints Rugby League side. He scored five tries in the short time that he spent with the club before his back was broken in a mining accident.
A large stone detached itself from the roof inside Lea Green's Potato Delph mine on April 7th, 1892 and crushed Rennie. The club paid for an expert surgeon to travel to the Cottage Hospital in Peasley Cross to perform an operation, but he was too severely injured and died a few days later. The St.Helens Newspaper (18/4/1892) said he was "one of the most promising players in the forward rank" and The Liverpool Mercury (20/4/1892) reported that his funeral at St.Nicholas Church, Sutton had "a very large attendance of sympathising friends. The Ravenhead Brass Band headed the cortege, and in the procession were members of all the St.Helens football clubs".

Back row team standing: David Baines, Albert Anslow, Evan Jones, Jack Woods, Frank Gilgrest
Front row: Bill Connolly, Ernie Lawrence, Charlie Lightfoot, J. Lee, Ernie Kitts, Frank Bamber, George Newton, Peter Heyes

Mick worked at Clock Face Colliery as a trainee mining surveyor before qualifying as a consultant engineer. These were the days when players had other jobs and Mick decided to leave Warrington's rugby league side in 1952 to concentrate on his non-sporting career. He probably didn't regret his decision as his work on the tunnel at Liverpool Central Station led to him being presented to the Queen. Mick moved to Thailand in 1963 and died in South Wales in 2010 aged eighty-one.
Also born in Sutton Manor was Frank Kitchen, who played rugby league for Leigh during the 1950s and also made a name for himself in crown green bowing.
The St.Helens Combination associated football league was originally formed in Sutton on August 4th, 1917, when Ernest Worrall called a meeting in the old LMS Club in Penlake Lane (later the British Rail Club). Sutton Rovers were a highly successful exponent of the 11-a-side game during much of the 20th century and in the photograph below, taken at the end of the 1925-26 season, are pictured in Ellen Street. The East Sutton Labour Club, then a wooden building, is in the background. Jed Rattigan of Berrys Lane is seated third from the right on the front row.

Sutton Rovers show off their silverware in Ellen Street c.1926 - Contributed by Sutton Historic Society

Jack Friar was club secretary and George Fryer was the ambitious manager of the team. A timber structure from RAF Haydock was converted into a supporters' social club and a stand was built at the ground to seat 200 spectators, as part of a total ground capacity of 10,000.

St.Helens Town in February 1949 - Bert Trautmann is on the front row, extreme right
St.Helens Town's most famous players were German goalkeeper Bernd 'Bert' Carl Trautmann (1923 - ) , winger John Connelly (1938 - ) and Bill Foulkes (1932 - ) . Troutmann played 43 games for the club, which he joined in 1948 while working as a farm labourer in Milnthorpe, near Kendal. Every Saturday morning, Bert, who'd been a prisoner of war in Ashton-in-Makerfield, took the train to St.Helens Junction from what was then Westmorland in order to play for the club. As an amateur and alien he couldn't be paid but received £1 in expenses. However, the return train fare to St.Helens was £1 eight shillings! Alan Rowlands' 'Trautmann The Biography' quotes Bert's first impressions of the Hoghton Road ground:

Bert Trautmann pictured in 1954 when playing for Manchester City under Don Revie
Bert Trautmann quickly became a hugely popular figure and attendances at Hoghton Road increased from 300 to several thousand within a passionately loyal rugby league town. In January 1949, Bert, who with other ex-POWs was employed by the War Agricultural Executive, was transferred from Milnthorpe to a bomb disposal unit in Huyton. Here he worked as a labourer, digging shafts around unexploded bombs.
During that month he was also granted leave from the government to return home to Bremen, so he could see his family for the first time in seven years. The German goal-stopper took with him a large, heavy trunk weighing almost five stones which was packed with foodstuffs that the St.Helens Town's supporters club had presented to him in a Sutton cafe. They'd sacrificed their own ration coupons to help Bert's family in Bremen. The fans had also given a tearful Trautmann an envelope containing 150 one-pound notes. A small fortune in those days and it was a gesture that he's never forgotten.
Speaking in 2009, 86-year-old Trautmann, who used to drink in the Junction Inn, commented to the St.Helens Star on the time that he spent in Sutton:

Although the pressured signing was considered controversial in St.Helens, it was hugely so in Manchester, especially amongst members of the large Jewish community. The invective was so strong that at one point Trautmann was quoted as saying that he wished he'd stayed in St.Helens. The Luftwaffe sergeant, who'd been awarded the Iron Cross, had been used to tolerance, kindness and even hero-worship in Sutton - not hatred. In Catrine Clay's 2010 biography, 'Trautmann's Journey – From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend', the author paints him as having been a loyal Third Reich supporter, who was far from being a good, innocent German who'd been accidentally caught up in the war.

On May 3rd, 1956, the ex-German paratrooper became the first goalkeeper to be awarded the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year. Two days later in the FA Cup final against Birmingham City, Trautmann broke his neck but continued in goal despite terrible pain. This was in an era when substitutes were not allowed and Bert's bravery for the final seventeen minutes of the game, allowed Manchester City to win the cup.
However, within three weeks, triumph turned to tragedy for Trautmann as his five-year-old son John was killed in a road accident in Bramhall, near Stockport. The young boy had dashed out from behind a mobile sweets van and was knocked down by a car. John's funeral took place at St.George's church in Stockport, with his burial in Sutton at St.Nicholas church.
A large crowd gathered in New Street to pay their own respects and as the burial took place at lunchtime, many Sutton schoolchildren took the opportunity to watch the proceedings.
Trautmann ended up playing 545 games for the Sky Blues and after retiring from playing in 1964, began a managerial career at Stockport County. The Bremen-born goal-stopper now lives in Valencia in Spain.
Pictured above right is Richard 'Dick' Kitts in the back entry of his Edgeworth Street home in 1947. Dick was a keen sportsman who played for a number of clubs in the Sutton district and then became a member of St.Helens Town's support staff, along with trainer George 'Bold' Thomas. Son-in-law George Houghton writes that Dick Kitts was:
On Sunday November 15th, 2009, St.Helens Town played a Manchester City Former Players XI for the Bert Trautmann Trophy which they won 6-5. The match commemorated the 60th anniversary of Bert's transfer, although Town's Honorary President, now resident in Spain, was unable to attend through ill health. The club had left Hoghton Road in Sutton seven years earlier and will relocate from Knowsley Road to the new Saints stadium in Peasley Cross in 2012.

St.Anne's FC - thought to be during the 1947-8 season. Alan Kendrick is second right on the front row. Can you name any others or provide any details of the team? Please contact me if you can. - Contributed by Marjorie Kendrick
Left: St.Anne's under-11's football team from 1950 with the junior schools trophy. Walter Noonan holds the trophy and headmaster John Duffy stands at the back next to priest Fr. Jeremias with teacher William Bold on the right - contributed by Sutton Historic Society; Right John Connelly who was born in Clock Face.
John Connelly was born on July 18th, 1938 in Clock Face and attended St.Theresa's school in Sutton Manor. Connelly played for St.Helens Town and was spotted by scouts from Burnley when they attended a match in November 1956. They went to the game to observe another player but Connelly so impressed them that he was offered a trial at Turf Moor and the rest is history!
In 265 appearances for Burnley as a winger, he scored a remarkable 105 goals and in 1964 he transferred to Manchester United who paid £56,000 for him. Connelly received 20 international caps and was in England's 1966 World Cup-winning squad but only played in the opening game against Uruguay. He was an unused reserve in the celebrated 4-2 final win over West Germany.

John Connelly after receiving his belated World Cup medal from Prime Minister Gordon Brown
On June 10th, 2009, John Connelly was finally awarded his World Cup winner's medal, forty-three years after the event! Prior to 1974, world football governing body FIFA only permitted players who'd actually started a cup final to receive a medal. As a result of a campaign, FIFA decided to retrospectively award match honours. So John Connelly was invited to 10 Downing Street to belatedly receive his award from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, accompanied by FIFA President Sepp Blatter.

Mention must be made up of respected referee Jim Finney (1924 - 2008) who came from Sutton Road. Three years after being appointed to the Football League referee's list, Finney took charge of the 1962 FA Cup Final between Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur and at the end of the game was presented with the match ball by Danny Blanchflower. He also officiated at the 1966 World Cup Finals, however, injuries sustained in a road accident five years later, prematurely brought his career to an end.

St.Cuthbert’s R.C. School under 15s with the St.Helens Schools Championship Shield - Contributed by Mel Moran
Back row (L to R): John McCormick, John Briers, Bernie Owen, Graham Conway, Mel Moran, Ken Halsall
Front row (L to R): Jim Crehan, Graham Heyes, George Sheen (Capt.), Ian McCue, Bernie Smith, Bill McKeenan

Sutton Manor miners pose with their Coal Industry NW 5-A-Side trophy - Contributed by Mel Moran
At the end of the war, with most women giving up their jobs in the munitions and other factories to the returning men, most female teams disappeared. There were a number of exceptions and the women's soccer team known as Sutton Glass Works reformed as St.Helens Ladies AFC. However the Lancots Lane glassworks, owned by the London and Manchester Plate Glass Company, had closed eleven years before the outbreak of hostilities. If you can explain this contradiction, do get in touch.
One female football player from Sutton was Emma Grice who played in goal for the Dick Kerr Ladies Football Club along with fellow St.Helens players Lily Parr and Alice Woods. Dick Kerr's was a munitions factory in Preston that also manufactured locomotives and pontoon bridges. Their female football team was formed as a result of the workers enjoying kickabouts during their lunch break.
The above photograph of Dick Kerr's team, with goalkeeper Emma on the far left, bears the caption: "Wearing English Colours - White Jerseys and Blue Shorts. Undefeated British Champions 1920-1921. Played 50 - Won 50. Scored 393 Goals to 10 Against. Holders of Seven Silver Cups and Two sets of Gold Medals. Club Colours - Black and White Jerseys and Blue Shorts".

Ticket for St.Helens Ladies vs. Dick Kerr Ladies which featured Emma Grice from Sutton - Contributed by John Grice
Emma had been born at 71 Hillmoss Road in Sutton and her older brother Bob Grice (1907 - 2004) probably introduced her to the sport. He played as a professional for Southport and Oldham Athletic, among other teams. If you can provide more details of Emma's career or that of other female footballers from Sutton, please do contact me. (Click here for further information on the history of Dick Kerr's)

Clock Face Recs 1974 - 1975 (can you name these players?) - Contributed by Mel Moran

Sutton Beauty & Heritage strives for factual accuracy at all times. Please do also get in touch if you believe that there are any errors, with details of any corrections contained within the site's update history page, which also details the regular updates. Many individuals from all over the world have kindly contributed Sutton information and photographs. If you would like to participate in this project, I would be delighted to hear from you and this website always credits any assistance given. Do also consider contributing any recollections of old Sutton that you might have for the Sutton Memories pages, which are proving very popular. I respond quickly to emails and if you haven't received a response within 12 hours, do check your junk mail folder or send your message again. Thank you! SRW




