Tranmere Rovers 1921-1997 - A Complete Record

A statistical history of the club. Paperback. 4to. 132pp. Illustrated card covers. A very good copy.

Author and Publisher's description
TRANMERE ROVERS 1921 - 1997

A COMPLETE RECORD

By GILBERT UPTON and STEVE WILSON

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHORS - 21 NOVEMBER 1997

The first complete record of Tranmere Rovers Football Club, from its admission as a founding member of the Third Division (Northern Section) of the Football League right up to the end of its most recent season in the First Division, has now been published. Full details of 3500 League and Cup games are set out in comprehensive and well presented tables, one per season, while over 750 wartime, miscellaneous, abandoned and secondary (friendly, testimonial, local cup etc) games are also listed separately. Steve Wilson designed his own integrated database to harness over twelve years careful research and all previous information about players published elsewhere has been substantially overhauled in the light of the authors’ rigorous approach. The book for Tranmere fans of every generation to remind them of games recent and ancient, good, bad and indifferent, vital and routine, and for historians and statisticians of the national game, the principal contents of this illustrated A4 softback of 140 packed pages are: ¨ full colour front and back cover of 40 images, a pictorial history in itself ¨ foreword by club chairman, Frank Corfe ¨ 5000 word history ¨ thirty illustrations of teams, action, personalities and programmes ¨ 69 seasonal tables of fixtures, teams, scorers and attendances ¨ Rovers’ record against other Football League clubs and summarised statistics ¨ expunged, abandoned and Division 3 North Cup games - full details ¨ wartime games 1939-1946 ¨ secondary (friendly, testimonial, local cup etc) games ¨ top 50 home and top 50 away attendances plus seasonal attendances data ¨ average home attendances graph ¨ Rovers’ 612 players and their appearances and goalscoring records in League and Cup games ¨ ever presents and top scorers each season, internationals, managers and chairmen ¨ own goals for and against ¨ key facts miscellany and bibliography

When asked how he came to create this original work, Steve Wilson (50), a native Birkonian now an Information Systems Project Manager living in Darlington, explained, I realised that there was no complete record of the club I have always followed and which had produced such great players as Dixie Dean, Pongo Waring, Ellis Rimmer, Roy McFarland and Steve Coppell. Yet there were many publications on virtually every other Football League club. Then I discovered there was at least one player who had turned out once for Tranmere Rovers and this was not recorded in any book on Football League players; in short, current records were wrong. What else was waiting to be uncovered? A serious gap needed to be filled and, having some experience in this field, I decided to fill it in the form of a single structured computer database which would allow me to record, game by game, Rovers’ matches and update players' appearances and goals totals automatically, the first time this has been done for any club history.

With his project complete, Steve is now planning to make his database available to anyone who would like to purchase a copy for their own personal computer, which has suitable software, for around £20.

Steve’s co-author, Gilbert Upton (59) now living in Southport, who six years ago published the club history from 1881 to 1921, explained that, although they lived 130 miles apart and mostly only saw each other at Prenton Park, he and Steve are both on the Internet so new research and files could be exchanged and cleared between them in a matter of hours. Gilbert said,

It took us longer than we planned because we had to check all our sources at least twice but it has been well worth the extra effort to get it as right as we possibly can. Had it not been for modern computing power and the Internet, it would have taken us another year at least.

The book has the stamp of approval from Rovers’ chairman (at the time of publication), Frank Corfe, who writes in his Foreword to the book,

It is quite fundamental to anybody interested in Tranmere Rovers Football Club that its past and present are chronicled in this manner and I salute Gilbert Upton, Steve Wilson and those who have so ably supported them in the careful documentation of the club’s past. We must now continue to strive for further success and progress to add to Tranmere Rovers’ heritage. This book provides a perfect platform for recording the years ahead and I hope all who read it will enjoy it as much as I have.

Tranmere Rovers 1921-1997 - A Complete Record ( ISBN 0 9518648 2 3 )