The last uprising to rock the Saddlers

Walsall's Sporting Star columnist Darren Fellows was part of the last fan uprising that took on the club - and guess who gave him a helping hand back then.

"Barrie Blower set up his 'Save Walsall' action group and, although the Wolves idea fell through, we knew the issue would rear its ugly head again.

"It did in 1986. Ken had bought Birmingham, who were deep in debt, and left his mate Jack Harris as chairman of Walsall.

"They concocted this idea that Walsall would buy St Andrew's. That would get Birmingham out of debt and we would go and play over there with City as Walsall's tenants.

"Again there was a huge outcry and I worked closely with Barrie and Tom Hargreaves to keep football in Walsall. There was a major campaign and, thankfully, the League turned down the request for groundsharing."

Anyone who followed Walsall through the early and middle 1980's will remember much of the above.

They will recall public meetings where, amid a packed Walsall Town Hall, Barrie Blower and his SWAG cohorts conducted a wonderful campaign to wrestle ownership of Walsall Football Club away from then owner Ken Wheldon.

The buzz of defiance at those meetings, one that truly defined what is so special about supporting our club, reverberated around the grand old building at this time.

Blower led the way convincing the assembled audience that, however unlikely, we would succeed. He told us tales such as how he had cornered Wheldon in the corner of the Broadway car park and Ken had questioned his parentage.

The assembled crowd roared with approval and support. Make no mistake, by hook or by crook, we were going to save our football club.

Part of the plans involved protesting outside the Football Association headquarters in Lancaster Gate. There was a key committee meeting to discuss Wheldon's plans and SWAG wanted as many Saddlers fans as possible to go down and protest outside.

So the following morning myself and a friend, knocked on the head of sixth form's office door and asked for the day off school.

Any discussion or explanation as to why we wanted that particular day off wasn't either asked for or all that necessary, as the sixth form head had not only been inside Walsall Town Hall the previous evening but was also one of Blower's most trusted allies and a prime mover within SWAG.

In granting permission the teacher reminded us of our responsibility to ensure that we protested in a peaceful manner, that we didn't let ourselves or the organisation down and that any deviation from this would inevitably undermine the legitimacy of the protest.

Quite how a couple of bright eyed teenagers and a lot of pensioners were ever likely to join forces and smash Lancaster Gate up is a mute point, but we nodded politely and he wished us luck.

To be fair, with or without school permission we were going anyway. Our coach tickets had already been booked and the fight to save our club was far more important than A-Level mathematics ever would be.

The afternoon protest at Lancaster Gate was a lot more subdued that those evenings in the Town Hall.

With loads of newspaper produced and sponsored posters and placards raised but very little noise generated, the members of the FA committee who arrived at the front door of their Lancaster Gate HQ to discuss our future were left in no doubt of our refusal to support the plans of our majority shareholder or how quite polite and well mannered we were.

On returning to school our sixth form head wanted to know all about the day and what we had seen. He also thanked us for the support we had given and reminded us to keep both the fight and our belief going. Developments were on the way and the fight to save the club was looking promising.

A couple of weeks later, on a free period, I was asked to sit in the sixth form head's office and listen to local radio whilst he was teaching on the other side of the school. The FA were about to announce their decision on ground sharing and we all desperate to know the result. I promised to let him know as soon as I did.

History tells us that we were the lucky ones on that afternoon as the FA sided with the town rather than Wheldon and, a few weeks later during the school summer holidays, I stood on the railway bridge that overlooked Fellows Park as a helicopter flew a new owner into town.

When Terry Ramsden announced that "We own the Footbawl Clab" a strange mix of euphoria and relief passed through the attending masses.

Blower, his resiliant cohorts and their terrace soldiers had indeed saved both our football club and the future of football in Walsall. A quite magnificently defiant campaign would end in victory for the town and it's people.

Legally the club may have had an owner but the people of the town had conclusively proved to whom it truly belonged.

That following September I returned to school for my final academic year. But there was a new head of sixth form in place, as the old one had accepted an offer he couldn't refuse from a cockney businessman with big plans.

That former head of sixth form, the teacher who not only supported and assisted our plans to protest but helped formulate those protests and the whole fight against the club's owner was now employed at a local football club, and was to become an integral part of it's long term development.

No prizes for guessing which club or whom, but if you still struggling the quote at the top is from the same fellow in a newspaper article from 2008.

If you have recently been banned from attending home games for peacefully protesting, then I accept that this story might grate a little. And so it should.

Those who banned you might wish to feel suitably ashamed of their decision.