Walsall blog: Its been a long time

Walsall blogger Mark Jones has been following the Saddlers as long as most. He takes a look back at the good, the bad and the ugly in the first of a two-part series.

As a founder member of the Walsall Supporters Trust, I was both surprised and a little saddened to see the announcement last week.

Three long standing officials will be stepping down from their posts in the near future, thus placing the continuation of the Trust (or Society as it's now known) at risk.

This is certainly no criticism of those individuals involved. From my own personal experience I know how family and work commitments can change priorities.

I'm aware of the feeling that if you take on a role you want to do the job properly or not at all. I can fully empathise with the utter frustration that trying to get Jeff, Roy et al to (metaphorically) open their eyes and take their fingers out of their ears can bring.

No this is merely a journey through Walsall supporter 'politics' over the last three decades from a Saddler who has been there, done it and found that the t-shirt doesn't quite fit anymore.

I can remember the dark days of the 1980's, when the club's charmless owner Mr Wheldon was desperate to develop the supermarket industry in WS1, for a vast profit naturally.

He was quite happy to see Walsall leave home permanently for the wastes of Molineux (1982) and then St. Andrews (1986) to fulfil his dreams, not to mention his bank account. Little trivialities like the wishes of the fans, or indeed Football League Rules, didn't come into play.

Fortunately Walsall fans got themselves well organised on both occasions. SWAG (the Save Walsall Action Group) was founded first time round, the plans were scuppered and eventually Ken was sent packing.

Two of the main protagonists in SWAG were Mr Barry Blower (now Life President of the club or something) and a certain Mr Roy Whalley, although I very much doubt whether he puts that on his CV.

I bought the badge ('Red Green and White Supporters Unite') and wrote a stroppy letter to Graham Kelly, the charisma-deficient Football League Secretary at the time, but I was never really at the forefront of the movement.

My first active involvement came through writing for and selling Saddlesore, the original Walsall fanzine.

On the day the first issue came out in March 1990, purely by coincidence, there was a sit down protest against the board in the Street End (those were the days), followed by an after match protest on the car park.

During the following week a meeting was called (upstairs at the Delves pub- those were the days) to start a fans' group. This became the short lived Saddlers Action Supporters, SAS for short naturally.

The organisers collared me to speak at the meeting, even though I'd only gone to ask them if they minded if I could sell the fanzine there.

Saddlesore was generally well-received (although we did upset the cosy world of the Match Programme editors, dragging them kicking and screaming into the 1960's) and I got to know a lot of people through being associated with it.

It was good to know that you were not alone, especially when what was occurring on the pitch at the time was so utterly dismal.

One individual I got to meet for the first time in this era at a West Midlands F.S.A. (Football Supporters Association) Branch Meeting was Roy Whalley. He seemed to think at the time that writing about the football club you support is some kind of breach of copyright.

He also hilariously asked when the club was going to see some money from the fanzine!

Do the maths on this one, aside from the fact that as fans we contribute regularly anyway, a maximum of 400 copies at 50p each minus printing costs - just how desperate were the club for cash in those days?

Although it had nothing directly to do with SAS or fan protests, the fanzine kind of got linked in with the 'what the hell is going on?' exasperation that fans had at the time.

None of the writers pulled any punches. If it needed to be said - be it about the board, the ownership, the move to Bescot, the manager, the police, racism - it was said with passion and I'm immensely proud to have been involved at the time.

The last issue of Saddlesore came out in February 1992 and the baton was picked up by Pete Holland and his gang at Blazing Saddlers, eighteen months later.

Times had changed, the club was slowly emerging from the slumber of the early 1990's and Blazing Saddlers seemed to typify this with a more positive outlook (even the respective names reflected this), although they'd always be prepared to speak out when necessary.

They even got a few issues sold in the hallowed confines of the Club Shop, until someone at the club (hello again Roy) took issue with something that was written about ticket prices and they were back on the streets again like the rest of us.

This was except for the wonderful and much missed Margi Holland, who openly sold copies on the terraces and would have flattened anyone foolish enough to stop her!

The mood on those terraces changed dramatically in the Summer of 1996 though, thanks to the short-sighted decision to let Martin O'Connor leave.

Anti-Bonser chants and banners were a regular feature of the early home games of the 1996/97 season. The ugly post-match protest following a dismal defeat to Plymouth in October was the inevitable culmination of this.

Fans vented their anger that the genuine promise of the previous spring had been replaced by genuine mediocrity, but a few quid on one side of the balance sheet.

What added to the frustration was that no-one seemed to be representing the views of the fans.

The board clearly couldn't see what the problem was (in a kind of 'you've got a Sunday Market, what more do you want?' way); the local media weren't interested and the Saddlers Club were in dispute with the club at the time.

It was Blazing Saddler Pete who came up with the idea of an Independent Supporters Association, modelled on those springing up at other clubs.

He rounded up a disparate group of fellow non-conformists, myself and regular Blazing contributor Darren Fellows included.

After a lengthy lunchtime 'meeting' at the White Lion, the fledgling Independent Saddlers Supporters Association was about to be launched on a unsuspecting world.

This trawl down memory lane will continue to ramble on next week, unless it gets passed on to a Birmingham City blog without my permission!