Latest News from bantamspast

How to reflect such an unforgettable season? That will be the task in hand for the small bantamspast team this summer. We are delighted to have been invited to work closely with Mark Lawn to produce a new 2013 Suite at Valley Parade. Although we are at a very early stage of developing ideas, the overall vision is an exciting one and we hope we will produce something that will capture the magic of this remarkable season and its historical context. As the project progresses we will post further details, but with a major Cup Final and a Play-Off Final victory to reflect on, we are not short of content and artefacts – including a large shiny trophy.

On Thursday 30 May the annual bantamspast trip to the battlefields of the Great War gets underway. This year the focus is Belgium and in particular the infamous Ypres Salient. Several City players met their deaths near the Belgian town. The FA Cup captain and goal scorer Jimmy Speirs was killed during the terrible Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. We are planning to visit the location where he was killed and of course his final resting place. The man of the match in the FA Cup Final replay Robert Torrance was blasted into oblivion in 1918 and his body was never found. We will remember him at the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing where his name is inscribed. At nearby Poperinghe is the grave of City’s amateur centre half Gerald Kirk. He was killed in the wake of the first use of poison gas in warfare in 1915. Leading his company in a counter attack trying desperately, and successfully, to defend a gap in the Allied lines. The Dalesman paid with his life. The centre half who replaced Gerald in the Bantams’ team was James Comrie. Another man with no known grave his name is inscribed among the 56,000 of the Menin Gate at Ypres. Of course, this terrible litany is only a tiny fraction of the huge losses suffered at Ypres. Many of the people on the trip will be bringing stories of their own family’s loss with them, as well as that of the wider City of Bradford. If it proves practicable David Pendleton will provide a daily blog of the trip which takes place between Thursday 30 May and Sunday 2 June.

We are also collaborating with the Bradford based theatre company Northern Lines in the writing of their production ‘City Stories: It’s Only the Cup. War, Love and Football’, which will be staged at the New Bradford Playhouse, Little Germany, 27/28 June.

Finally, we will be adding around a dozen new framed images to the displays in our museum in exile at Bantams Bar on the Kop. At the moment admission is only available to holders of Bantams Bar season tickets and individual match day tickets. However, we have also added a couple of new images to our museum in exile display at the Corn Dolly public house on Bolton Road in the city centre. Admission is open to all – for the price of a pint!

Wembley Competition Closed

  

The deadline for submitting photographs from the League Cup Final at Wembley has now passed. We would like to thank each and every one of you who have sent images from that unforgettable day. In due course we will announce the winner and put many of the images you have sent onto our website. We are delighted to have received snapshots of the day from a fan's perspective. Please note: the image above is one of ours. We weren't allowed to enter the competition!

Defeated But Not Downhearted

Don't forget, send us your photos (see below).

Bantams in Photo Finish?

Supporters’ chance to win cash prize in Cup Final photo competition

The Bradford City Football Club museum, bantamspast, is running a competition for supporters to send in their best images of the Bantams’ fairytale League Cup Final experience, both for supporters going to Wembley, those celebrating the occasion in Bradford.

The competition will allow the bantamspast museum to build up an archive of how supporters celebrated Bradford City’s first cup final appearance for 102 years. It will be an invaluable resource that will illustrate to future supporters how we, in 2013, followed the Bantams either at Wembley or back in Bradford.

The museum's competition for the best images is being run in association with British Future, a think-tank which promotes debate about identity and integration. 

The winning images will be displayed in the museum and there is a £250 prize for the best entry in each of the two categories.

Wembley Way: images from those making the trip to London

Bringing Bradford together: images of celebrations of the occasion in Bradford.

The entries can be either still photographs or video clips. The closing date is 3 March 2013. Please submit entries to info@bantamspast.co.uk

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

By entering our competitions you are deemed to have read and agree with these terms and conditions

1. The photographer must be the author and owner of the copyright of photos entered in to the competition. Entrants will retain full copyright in their entries, and will be credited if their images are published. The contest is open to all, but excludes images which have been published, for payment, in professional news or media outlets prior to the closing date. (Images published personally, through social media, or elsewhere but not for payment are allowed). 

2. The winning image will be placed in the bantamspast museum and a selection of other entries will appear at www.bantamspast.co.uk and on the British
3.  Please send images to HERE by the closing date of 3 March 2013.   Submitted images should be no larger than 600kb files size.
4. By entering this contest, you agree to grant bantamspast and British Future a non-exclusive, irrevocable licence to publish the image submitted. A selection of entries will be published online. Copyright will remain with the entrants.  Winning photos and other selected images may be used to report the result of the competition, to promote the contest and to provide a record of the competition and the Wembley final on the bantamspast website. This will not be time-limited; after the contest, the winning images and a selection of other images will be used as part of the bantamspast archive, with the photographers credited.
5. The judges' decision is final.

Up for the Cup Edwardian Style

As travel plans are made for the League Cup Final, it is remarkable how similar the experience will be to our last appearance in a major cup final – the FA Cup Final of 1911. Although a large proportion of the 31,000 supporters heading south will be travelling by road, a significant number will use the railways. Thankfully, an overnight journey in toiletless carriages has been left behind us. For the team, they will, like their 1911 counterparts, travel to London prior to the day of the match. However, it is unlikely that they will be staying at the Midland Hotel at St Pancras. City fans with an eye to history could stay at the hotel, which has recently been spectacularly refurbished, but as well as an interest in history, they would have to have deep pockets, as the cheapest room is over £220 per night!

We take the following text from David Pendleton’s Glorious 1911 book, which is still available from Waterstones in the city centre and will be restocked in the club shop shortly.

To the Palace for the Cup

A staggering two hundred trains poured fans into London from all over the country. The Great Northern Railway, which served both Bradford and Newcastle, ran 43 trains into Kings Cross. Twenty trains, including one conveying the City team, ran into St Pancras on the Midland Railway. City had something of a special relationship with the Midland, not least because the company leased Valley Parade to the club. The Midland Railway Company’s carriage works in Manningham made a silver horseshoe, which they presented to the team. A large crowd gathered to witness the departure of the official party, including the fifteen players from whom the team would be selected, as they left Forster Square at half past three on the afternoon of Friday 21 April 1911. Driver Luck, who had driven the team’s train to the semi-final, was once again at the controls as the train pulled away from Forster Square, past Valley Parade and towards the distant capital. The great invasion of London had commenced a few hours earlier with the departure of the reserve team from Forster Square.

Eleven trains conveying some six thousand City fans followed in their wake. The streets of Bradford were busy all through the night. Streams of supporters made their way to Forster Square and Exchange stations. Along the route vendors sold claret and amber ‘favours’ that trippers placed in their lapels or attached to hats. As each train started, cheers went up and the fans began singing the popular City song ‘Hello Hello’ which echoed down the platforms as the trains departed into the night. The first train disgorged its bleary-eyed travellers onto the capital’s streets at half past four in the morning! The first team party arrived at St Pancras at quarter past eight in the evening. Waiting at the hotel for the team was a good luck horseshoe, sent by the men of Bradford’s Tramways. The team visited the Euston Empire Theatre, a short walk from their base at the Midland Railway’s fabulous St Pancras Hotel. Given the huge number of fans of both clubs arriving at St Pancras and the adjacent Kings Cross in the early hours, it may not have just been pre-match nerves that kept the City players awake in their hotel rooms above the great station.