When Football Came To Kettering

Destined for numerous stockings come the 25th

As we all wait for news of when football will leave Kettering along comes Mel Hopkins and Bob Brown's well timed new book about the origins of football within the town. 

As most people associated with the Poppies know, Mel has been working on a history of the Poppies from about twenty years before the Club was formed!  We reported on Mel's efforts during the original PATGOD run a couple of decades ago.  Thankfully it would appear that Bob Brown has put a rocket up his arse* and the results of their joint labour is now available to buy at various locations around town and hopefully beyond.

Covering the first 28 years of the Club's existence, and about as many different playing fields, the guys recount the backdrop to the confused formation of the Kettering Football Club.  In those long-ago days there was almost as many different versions of football as there were teams, and the schism between rugby and football had yet to fully happen.  Everything was in such flux that teams and probably rules were likely to change at least twice during the half-time oranges!

The book is a phenomenal achievement, marrying mind-boggling levels of research, an easy reading style and lots of photographs of men with big moustaches.  And it's about OUR CLUB!  It is one of those books that you always see people writing about other clubs and you always wished someone would do it about the Poppies.  Well, now they have!  No self-respecting Poppies fan can afford to be without this book.  Rush out and get it NOW! 



* this is purely guesswork on our part.  If could just as likely be the case that Mel was just about to go to the printers when Bob turned up!  Yeah, right!