Five generations of the Walsh family have followed the fortunes of Workington Reds over the last 100 years or so.
But the original family member involved had his own origins in Accrington and was born only 100 yards from Stanley’s ground at Peel Park.
My granda John Walter Walsh moved to Cumberland with his mother Arabella after his dad had died of TB aged only 42.
He married a Maryport woman (Jayne Penrice Studholme) and settled in the town, from where he went to watch the Reds in the old North Eastern League playing at Lonsdale Park.
I still have this memory of granda, my dad and myself on the terraces at Borough Park watching Reds against Accrington towards the end of the 1955/56 season. He had moved to live with us at Ellenborough after grandma had died and although not a well man himself wanted to come with us because it was Accrington.
We had lost 5-1 at Accrington earlier in the season and with eight games left to play they had an outside chance of going up. We had been making gradual improvements under first Bill Shankly, and then Norman Low but a mid-table finish was our best hope after finishing eighth the previous year.
Looking back at the records (I had forgotten this) we were on a four-match unbeaten run, which included a 4-2 win at Carlisle so it was billed in the local paper as Match of the Day.
My hero back then was Jim Dailey – he scored 22 goals in 46 games that season – and he almost had another to add to that tally. We drew 0-0, which I can still recall being an exciting goal-less stalemate, but Jim hit the bar with a diving header through a ruck of players that only he would have attempted.
I can see my granda turning his back as the ball came back into play off the woodwork and then smiling broadly when he turned back to see it being despatched by a Reds player over the bar.
The crowd was 6,453, a figure which was surpassed a month later when the new League champions Grimsby Town visited and attracted 8,605.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Accrington Stanley, because of my granda’s connection, and I got to know them even better some 30-odd years later when I had my brief spell as Reds caretaker manager. But that’s a story for another day.
