As interest in our website grows our
'Tsar' has been busy making requests for historical articles for insertion on the site. As
a member of over twenty years standing (I joined in October 1977) I foolishly said I would
try and dig out some relevant back magazine issues for Firmo to play with. I have thus
loaned him issue 50 (February 1984) and issue 100 (February 1994), which contain excellent
historical articles by Micky Bullen and Neil Calvert
respectively. I have also loaned him issue 92 as it includes an
article I wrote myself on the club's early years with particular reference to the
meetings and the AGMs. Hopefully all these articles will appear on the web in due course.
Whilst doing this little bit of research, and bearing
in mind that there has been talk of 25th birthday celebrations (as if we need an excuse!),
it occurred to me that we should try and get the date right. Unfortunately it's not that
simple.
The idea for the club arose from a series of casual
meetings on train journeys to and from matches. Eventually on Saturday 10th January 1976,
Neil Calvert and Danny West, returning from Norwich met a couple of APFSCIL people on the
train and resolved to do something about it. They spoke on the phone the following Monday,
12th January, and agreed to attend both an APFSCIL meeting and a darts match. Micky Bullen
in his article claims that 12/1/76 was accordingly the formation date and he has a point.
However can you form a club without either a meeting or
something in writing? Not in my book. Neil in his article says that he (and presumably
others) attended an APFSCIL meeting at the Savoy Tavern just off the Strand and that our
own first meeting occurred at the same time. Critically he can't pinpoint the date other
than towards the end of the 1975/76 season. However the result was a subscription of 50p,
presumably to raise the funds for our first written item titled 'a circular letter to
Southern based Burnley supporters' and dated June 1976. Newsletter No 1 in effect. So
perhaps that is when we were really formed.
The first formal, rather than ad hoc, meeting of the
club, gleaned from newsletter No. 4 (still just an A4 sheet), was not in fact held until
Thursday 20/1/77, also at the Savoy Tavern. Some 26 members attended and subscriptions
were raised to £1. From the minutes and dates of subsequent meetings it is clear that
this was subsequently deemed to be the first AGM. So it could be said that we weren't
formalised until January 1977 although that is perhaps an extreme view.
From the above it seems clear there is no certain
answer unless more light is shed on the events of early 1976. My view is that perhaps we
should celebrate in our traditional manner every month from January to June 2001 just to
make sure!
