Club Celebrations and Reunions
50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
Icklesham Recreation Ground
Saturday, 2nd May 1987
The working committee had spent nearly a year in planning the 50th Anniversary Celebration and it was universally agreed to be an outstanding success. Bill Black, Larry Cooke, John Dunk, David French and George Potter all played very important roles, but they and everyone would enthusiastically confirm that John Crisford, as chairman of the working party, must take the major credit for the combination of overall planning with an enormous amount of detailed work in establishing contact with long lost players. No one could have done more.
THE ORGANISING COMMITTEE
The guest list for the celebration at Icklesham Recreation on Saturday, 2nd May 1987 included John Davey, a Sussex County representative on the Football Association, Arthur Penny, a Life Member of the Sussex County Football Association, representatives of the Hastings Football Association, the Eastbourne and Hastings League, the Robertsbridge Charity Cup and many other local organisations in a total attendance of about three hundred people. This included four members out of seven who held the first meeting at Thompson’s Tea Rooms in Rye on 3rd April 1937 which formally founded the club – Les Beeney, Frank Crisford, Will Dunlop and Jim Munn. A number of old players travelled very considerable distances in order to attend.
The celebrations started with matches for the veterans, under 16s and current XIs before moving to the village hall and marquee in the evening where there was a bar and buffet with tickets costing £6 per person. Presentations and speeches also took place.
Copy of William Dunlop’s speech at the 50th Anniversary Celebration
Transcript of the speech
Icklesham Casuals Football Club has given a great deal of pleasure to a great many people over 50 years. Four of the seven founder members are here tonight – Les Beeney, Jim Munn, Frank Crisford, our President and myself and the number of old members here is an illustration of loyalty. We have obviously been very lucky in our members and officers, but I would think more particularly in our captains in all teams. Our players are human, but if the captain says in a load voice ‘Pack it up’, if they start to dissent, then they do not dissent. We do not select players as they grow up or come to us – they are a very ordinary cross-section, but it is a source of pleasure to me that we have not had anyone cautioned or sent off in the last two seasons and an example to the boys – even if professional players argue with refs, they never get the refs to alter their decisions and there are few things more ridiculous than a goalkeeper protesting about his own forwards being given offside eighty yards away. We have not had many dirty players, but the fierce but fair tackling of defenders like John Dunk and the determination to secure loose balls by forwards like Chris Ades prove that it is perfectly possible to play within the laws of the game without losing any advantage.
It would be false modesty for me to suggest that I have had nothing to do with the success of the club, but we could not have carried it on without a general willingness to help, whether it is marking out the pitch when rain has washed out the lines or providing transport now that bus services have also disappeared. The people here tonight have done all these things.
