Who’s Who at Volair Park

Vice Presidents: Phil Blundell, Bob Nicholson, Keith Brown Chair: Tony ZeveronaVice Chair / General Manager: Ken Derbyshire Club Secretary: Howard Nulty Treasurer: Norman Parr Match Secretary: vacant Legal Advisor: Peter Kneale Commercial Manager: Steve Garnett Social Events: Mike FlahertyExecutive: Joe Gibiliru, Steve Nolan, Geoff Conway, Jimmy Russell, Peter Roberts, Robbie Williams, Jamie Weston, Andy Paxton.Press Officer: Richard Quinn Bar Manager: Lynda Derbyshire Football Manager: Brian Richardson Assistant Manager Steve PillingCoaches: Gary Williams & Roy GrundyPhysio: Tony Carroll Kit Managers: Paul Watkinson & Norman Parr Hospitality: Harry Boydell & Sandra WilliamsGround Maintenance: Harry Molyneux, Dave Harding & Peter MeakinProgramme Team:Editor: Gareth CoatesContributions: David Fry, Howard Nulty, Steve Garnett, Mike Flaherty, Glyn Williams, Ronnie Williams. Content is also taken from various online sourcesPrinters: Willow Printing & Design Ltd, 75/79 Back Cross Lane, Newton-le-Willows,Merseyside WA12 9YE (Tel. 01925 222449)

Welcome to Volair ParkPrecot Cables v BurscoughTuesday 4th April 2017, 7.45pm

Good evening everyone and welcome to Volair Park for today’s match in the Evo-Stik League Division One North. The warmest of welcomes is extended to the players, officials and supporters of Burscough FC, as well as to the match officials.

Welcome, also, to our own players and supporters and any neutrals in the crowd for this afternoon’s fixture. Special thanks are due to tonight’s match sponsor, Peter Kneale and ball sponsor, Jamie Weston for their continued contribution to the club.

Following the postponement of this match a couple of weeks ago, we make no apology for reissuing the programme prepared for the last attempt at playing the game, complete with an insert to update the content. Printing programmes is a significant cost and to dispose of the copies prepared previously would be bad for the club financially and not brilliant from an environmental persepective. However, we are delighted to include some original content within this update, including the first sectiont of a three-part article about Prescot legend Jack Roscoe. The article is by Glyn Williams, who has diligently researched and prepared this piece as part of a larger project.

News broke last week that our near-neighbours, Skelmersdale United, have provisionally agreed to share Volair Park with Cables next season in the event that they cannot secure a new lease on their current home at Stormy Corner. I think that most supporters of both Cables and Burscough would wish United well as they seek to regroup following relegation and would prefer to see them playing in their home town. However, if that is not possible, then it is surely better for Skelmersdale to share our home than lose their place in the Northern Premier League. The revenue generated by having matches here each week will also be helpful to our club as we seem to build on the progress made this season.

In terms of progress, Saturday’s draw at Tadcaster Albion was another step towards avoiding relegation. With Goole having lost to Clitheroe, the Vikings are now two points behind Cables, with the Tigers having two games in hand on the Vikings, one of which is tonight’s local derby. While we can expect nothing less than a hard-fought contest, Brian Richardson and the players will know that if they can secure victory a significant step will have been taken towards securing their status.

Whichever side you’re supporting today and whether you’re a first time visitor or a regular, enjoy the game and have a safe journey home.

Next First Team match at Volair Park:

Cables v Glossop North EndEvo-Stik League Division One North

Saturday 8th April 2017,3.00pm

My original article about the high-scoring Cables centre-forward Jack Roscoe came out in March 2014 as a two-parter of just over 3,000 words. I was not short of material. In addition to Neville Walker’s book From Slacky Brow to Hope Street, Bert Taylor’s column in the Prescot Reporter and anecdotes from Harry Boydell, Phil Taylor and others, I had the benefit of free access to a scrapbook lent to me by South Liverpool FC President John Whittingham covering South Liverpool’s glory days in the 1930s, when Jack scored about 190 goals for the Garston team in three-and-a-half seasons. By the time he joined South Liverpool from Cables in January 1936 he’d already scored over 120 goals in two seasons at Lancaster Town and just under 160 in three-and-a-half seasons at Cables. My interest in Jack was renewed in December 2016 when I met his youngest daughter Pat Sumner. I visited Pat at her house in Rainford a few weeks later and, once again, the story of this prolific goal-scorer began to unfold thanks to a scrapbook – in this case Jack’s own.

My original article chronicled Jack’s birth in 1909, the tenth child of William and Elizabeth Roscoe of 3 Saggersons Court, Moss Street, Prescot. His father was described in the 1911 Census as ‘mechanic watch tool maker’. I had found nothing about Jack’s schooling but was aware of his early football career with Rainhill Recs and Prescot Vics and the fact that he’d apparently spent time at Everton. After a short spell at New Brighton in the late 1920s Jack signed for Prescot Cables in 1930, scoring 59 goals that season plus another 50 in both the 1931-32 and 1932-33 season. After three seasons as Lancashire Combination runners-up, Cables parted with Jack, the team bound for the Cheshire League and Jack for Lancaster Town. Jack’s two seasons at Lancaster witnessed bagsful of goals plus winners’ medals in the Lancashire Junior Cup (1933-34) and the Lancashire Combination (1934-35). By the time he returned to Prescot in August 1935 Jack had acquired a wife (Lucy née Welsby) and daughter (Joan). Jack spent August 1935 to January 1936 at Hope Street, a spell which included six goals in an FA Cup match against Harrowby at Hope Street in September 1935. He was sold to up-and-coming South Liverpool in January 1936, scoring 27 goals for the team in less than half a season. His phenomenal hunger for goals continued until football was abandoned soon after the outbreak of war in September 1939: 49 goals in 1936-37, an astonishing 75 in 1937-38 (his second Lancashire Combination record score) and a relatively modest 39 in 1938-39. With South Liverpool winning competitions on all sides, Jack also notched up quite a few winners’ medals.

I knew nothing about Jack’s wartime service. He would have been almost 36 by the time conflict ceased – long in the tooth to be rekindling a football career. So he returned to working at BICC in Prescot and restricted his appearances on the field to the Annual Boxing Day Charity Match between Old Prescotians and Prescot Police. He also carried out a little scouting work for South Liverpool, one of his recruits being Harry Boydell. He is pictured, looking remarkably lean and fit for a man in his mid-70s, in photographs taken at the Centenary Re-Union Dinner in 1984. He died a few days either side of his 87th birthday in October 1996.

His scrapbook reveals a lot of new material about his personal and public life. Among the many items lent to me by Pat Sumner is a postcard showing High Street, Prescot in 1909 – the year of Jack’s birth. Thanks to Stephen Nulty of www.prescot-rollofhonour.info, I now know that Saggersons Court was located on Moss Street’s east side, on the plot now occupied by Seddons Court. The scrapbook also reveals that Jack was educated at Prescot Council School and, judging from another of Pat’s photographs, served as a Boy Scout. He was

New Light on Jack RoscoePart One: Old Light; Youth Football, Cables and

Lancaster Town

New Light on Jack RoscoePart One: Old Light; Youth Football, Cables and

Lancaster Town

not the last of William and Elizabeth’s children, a daughter Margaret following in 1917. The Prescot Roll of Honour website also reveals that his elder brother Thomas served in the South Lancashire Regiment in World War One. By the time of Thomas’s military attestation in December 1915 the family had moved to Beesley Cottages, St Helens Road, a house they still occupied at the time of Jack’s wedding to Lucy in late 1934.

Jack’s main football experiences as a boy were with Prescot Rangers. A team photo dated 1924-25 shows him in what was to become his usual No.9 position (front row centre). It was a season in which Jack scored 84 goals, a club record broken only by Bill Watkinson just before World War Two. The picture is reproduced below.

A brief press clipping shows that at the age of nineteen Jack had signed amateur forms with Everton, the official 1927-28 reserve team photograph showing him in the No.7 position (front row left). According to Michael Joyce’s Football League Players’ Records 1888 to 1939, however, Jack never played for the first team. But Joyce does record Jack’s time at New Brighton: five goals in sixteen games.Jack’s time playing at Hope Street while living a stone’s throw away on St Helens Road was covered with reasonable accuracy in my original article: 159 goals in two-and-a-half seasons, with the remaining half season spent in Football League Division 3 North at Rotherham

United, where thanks to Michael Joyce I now know he scored three goals in five games. By New Year 1932 he was back at Cables, notching up 50 goals in just four months.

The scrapbook contains a large number of press clippings and photographs from Jack’s two seasons at Lancaster (1933-35). He made his debut with a hat-trick against Dick Kerrs at Ashton, Preston on 26 August 1933. This may have been either a cup match or a friendly

New Light on Jack RoscoePart One: Old Light; Youth Football, Cables and

Lancaster Town

because a later clipping records that Jack scored not three but six goals on his Lancaster debut ‘followed … by a bag of four – then a couple of hat-tricks – and, in the last game, a two’: eighteen goals in just five matches! No wonder the same report dubbed him ‘Dixie Dean II’ and mentioned possible links with Fulham (Football League Division 2) ‘and several other clubs.’ Another clipping describes Jack as ‘one of the most consistent goal-scorers in the Lancashire Combination … [and] the subject of inquiries by Burnley’ (also Division 2). No further details have emerged about links with Football League clubs. Having failed to make a mark at New Brighton and Rotherham Jack may have decided to stay put in non-league football, enabling him to keep his job at British Insulated Cables – a sum no doubt matched by his earnings as a footballer. Having joined Lancaster after failing ‘to come to terms’ with Cables (the Prescot and Huyton Reporter’s Bert Taylor writing in 1963), he must have been on a good wage at Giant Axe.

By this stage he had attracted the attention of football writers at both ends of Lancashire. ‘“Watch Roscoe” is the hint commonly passed around to defending departments of teams that are opposing Lancaster Town’, a local newspaper reported.

Usefully built, … Roscoe never fails for want of keenness. He believes in positioning himself well up the field, and alertness off the mark enables him to make good use of the timely pushed-up pass. In head work he is particularly adept. … The game revealed Roscoe as a ready opportunist.

By the time this report was published (about November 1933) Roscoe had scored 29 goals in 23 games. Other words and phrases used to describe Jack’s style included ‘cool’, ‘deadly’, ‘dashing’ and ‘clever’; and images of him ‘foraging’ in his opponents’ half, ‘trapping, tapping and driving’ the ball, and forcing or bundling it into the net, are common. As I mentioned in my earlier article, it took a particularly aggressive type of attacker to score five disallowed goals in a match!

Meanwhile Cables were making precious little headway in the Cheshire League, as we can see from two issues of the Prescot and District Reporter from Autumn 1933.

The more one sees of the Cables this season the more persistently recurs the thought that the player whose absence they are feeling most is Roscoe, last season’s centre-forward, who is building up such a fine goal scoring record at Lancaster. He was credited with another hat trick on Saturday.

Prescot want a centre-forward badly; indeed, they have been without one all the season. … One hears some glowing accounts of Jack Roscoe these days, but he is away with Lancaster Town, enjoying himself by bagging a crop of goals each week. I am not advocating Roscoe’s return, though it would certainly be a tonic to Hope-street, both in regard to the team and spectators.

Glyn Williams

2016-17 SeasonFirst Team Statistics

2016-17 SeasonMatchday Sponsors

If you wish to sponsor a game, a ball or both please contact Mike Flaherty or any committee member and your name will be added to the

list above for the whole season.

Date Opponents Match Sponsor Ball Sponsor13/08/16 Ossett Town Prescot Cables Supporters’ Club

20/08/16 Trafford (FA Cup Prekiminary Round)

Class of 57 Butterworth Barlow Chartered Accountants

27/08/16 Radcliffe Borough Prescot Reform Club Harry Molyneux

13/09/16 Kendal Town (Integro Doodson Sport Cup)

17/09/16 Mossley Mayfair Airport Transfers Merseyside Printing Company

20/09/16 Colwyn Bay Prime Contracts Ltd. Cliff Mason

27/09/16 Hyde United Rotary Club of Prescot

08/10/16 Osset Albion (FA Trophy Preliminary)

Britannia Fleet Removals & Storage

15/10/16 Brighouse Town Mick & Barbara Flaherty

22/10/16 Farsley Celtic St Helens Law John M James

12/11/16 Clitheroe Friends of Prescot Cables

19/11/16 Tadcaster Albion Hi-Tech Coatings (Rainford) Ltd

John Lol Taylor

03/12/16 Scarborough Athletic Enid Harding David Hill

17/12/16 Ramsbottom United Bob Nicholson

14/01/17 Ossett Albion Prescot Reform Club Sean, Reece and Adam Lester

17/01/17 AFC Liverpool (LSC)

11/02/17 Colne In Memory of Gwyneth Parr & Majorie Hough In Memory of David Parry

21/02/17 Trafford PMB Tools

04/03/17 Kendal Town In memory of David Rose David Quinn

11/03/17 Droyslden Francesca Stedman

25/03/17 Goole The Dugout Irregulars (Gold Sponsors)

04/04/17 Burscough Peter Kneale, Solicitor Jamie Weston

08/04/17 Glossop North End In Memory of Jean Jones

11/04/17 Lancaster City

17/04/17 Bamber Bridge The Royal Oak Hotel

How We StandEvo-Stik League First Division North

Up to and including Tuesday 14th March 2017

This evening’s fixtures:

Monday 3rd AprilBrighouse Town vs Ossett Town

Tuesday 4th AprilColne vs Bamber Bridge Kendal Town vs Tadcaster AlbionPRESCOT CABLES VS BURSCOUGH

Saturday’s Results:

Colwyn Bay 6-0 Burscough [173]Farsley 1-1 Droylsden [188]Glossop North End 1-1 Bamber Bridge [338]Goole AFC 0-1 Clitheroe [148]Hyde United 5-0 Ramsbottom United [430]Kendal Town 1-2 Brighouse Town [120]

Lancaster City 1-2 Colne [251]Mossley 0-2 Scarborough Athletic [230]Radcliffe Borough 0-4 Ossett Town [133]Tadcaster Albion 2-2 Prescot Cables [293]Trafford 0-1 Ossett Albion [122]

Reserve TeamFixtures & Results

Date Opponents H/A Comp. Res. Scorers13/08/16 KIRKBY TOWN RAILWAY H WCL2 2-1 EDWARDS, GRANGER

15/08/16 Mossley Hill Athletic Res. A WCL2 5-2 Avraam, Davies, Ilford, Lonorgan, Sambor

20/08/16 VAUXHALL MOTORS RES. H WCL2 6-0 DAVIES 2, DONNELLY, GRANGER, SAMBOR 2

22/08/16 Marshalls A WCL2 1-1 Sambor

30/08/16 HALE H WCL2 4-1 AVRAAM, GRANGER, SAMBOR 2

03/09/16 BOOTLE RES. H WCL2 4-0 DAVIES 2, DONNELLY, LONORGAN

10/09/16 MAGHULL RES. H WCL2 2-2 DONNELLY, GRANGER

01/10/16 Neston Nomads A HGB1 3-3 aet * Avraam 2, Granger

08/10/16 Rylands A LFAC 4-2 Avraam 2, Donnelly, Sambor

15/10/16 Vauxhall Motors Res. A WCL2 3-1 Avraam, Edwards, Sambor

22/10/16 SOUTHPORT TRINITY H WCL2 9-2 BOWEN, EDWARDS, HARPER, MARIE 3, SAMBOR 3

29/10/16 Ashville A WCL2 2-3 Bowen, Donnelly

05/11/16 Byrom A LFAC 2-3 Avraam, Sambor

12/11/16 West Kirby Res. A WCL2 2-2 Sambor, Donnelly

19/11/16 WEST KIRBY RES. H WCL2 5-3 AVRAAM, DAVIES, GRANGER 2, SAMBOR

26/11/16 ASHVILLE H HGBQF 3-0 Sambor 3

17/12/16 MARSHALLS H WCL2 1-5 Banks

14/01/17 NESTON NOMADS H WCL2 0-2 -

21/01/17 SOUTH LIVERPOOL RES. H WCL2 1-1 GIBILIRU

28/01/17 Bootle Res. A WCL2 3-2 ?

04/02/17 Hale A WCL2 2-6 Edwards 2

11/02/17 Southport Trinity A WCL2 2-6 Edwards, Gibiliru

18/02/17 Neston Nomads A WCL2 0-2 -

25/02/17 Maghull Res. A HGBSF 1-0 ?

11/03/17 MOSSLEY HILL ATHLETIC RES H WCL2 0-3 -

25/03/17 WILLASTON H WCL2 4-0 GIBILRU 2, PICKLES, WILSON

27/03/17 Kirkby Town Railway A WCL2 1-1 Pickles

03/04/17 Maghull Res A WCL2 - -

08/04/17 HESWALL RES H WCL2 - -

12/04/17 Heswall Res A WCL2 - -

22/04/17 Willaston A WCL2 - -

29/04/17 South Liverpool Res A WCL2 - -

TBA Heswall Res N HGBF - -

* = Prescot Cables won 3-1 on penalties

Under-18 TeamFixtures & Results

Date Opponents H/A Comp. Res.04/09/16 ALTRINCHAM H NWYA 3-311/09/16 AFC BLACKPOOL H NWOC 4-2 aet25/09/16 ST. HELEN’S TOWN H Fr. 1-202/10/16 CHORLEY H NTC 1-209/10/16 Warrington Town A NWYA 5-3

16/10/16 HYDE UNITED H NWYA 1-023/10/16 NEWTON H NWOC 2-130/10/16 CHORLEY H NWYA 2-106/11/16 Curzon Ashton A NWYA 0-4

13/11/16 MORECAMBE H NWYA 4-127/11/16 Morecambe A NWYA 2-2

04/12/16 SKELMERSDALE UNITED H NWYA 1-211/12/16 Ashton Athletic A NWOC 2-4 aet

08/01/17 Hyde United A NWYA 2-2

22/01/17 CHESTER H NWYA 0-129/01/17 WARRINGTON TOWN H NWYA 2-105/02/17 AFC FYLDE H NWYA 3-719/02/17 Skelmersdale United A NWYA 1-3

19/03/17 ASHTON ATHLETIC. H NWYA 1-509/04/17 CURZON ASHTON H NWYA -16/04/17 Chorley A NWYA -

18/04/17 Ashton Athletic A NWYA -

23/04/17 Altrincham A NWYA -

03/05/17 Chester A NWYA -

14/05/17 AFC Fylde A NWYA -

Today’s TeamsPrecot Cables v BurscoughTuesday 4th April 2017,

7.45pm

Prescot Cables BurscoughAmber Shirts, Black Shorts, Black Socks Green Shirts, White Shorts & Socks

Marcus Burgess 1 Ben MorrowValter Fernandes 2 Martyn JacksonJames Edgar 3 Danny AshburnerJames McCulloch 4 Sean RichardsJoe Herbert 5 John HolmesAndy Scarisbrick 6 Jonah O’ReillyJoe Faux 7 Philip BannisterDale Wright 8 Anthony DonaldsonDominic Marie 9 Rob Doran Josh Dolling 10 Adam GilchristChris Almond 11 Josh Nicholson

Dominic Reid 12 Mamoke AkaunuLloyd Dean 14 Deklan HillDoyle 15 Lee HughesFlood 16 Alex ParkesJordan Wynne 17 Stephen Milne

Brian Richardson Mgr. Keith McCann

Next First Team match at Volair Park:

Cables v Glossop North EndEvo-Stik League Division One North

Saturday 8th April 2017,3.00pm

REFEREE: TBAASSISTANT REFEREES: TBA