Players Lists for the Best Years 1950-67

Best Years Players A-B

Best Years Players C-E

Best Years Players F-H

Best Years Players J-R

Best Years Players S-Z

  The links above take you to the BTFC career details and other information on all known first team players from the 1950-67 period (even if their careers started before that period or ended after it), arranged in alphabetical order of surname. More details about how the lists have been complied appear below.

NOTES ON THE "BEST YEARS PLAYERS" LIST

The list aims to include every player who appeared for the first team in any competitive match, plus those who scored in friendlies,in the “Best Years”. There are also individual images of the more prominent players.

If you are interested in a particular player, I suggest you look him up in the Players' List and if he appears there, then type the surname into the "Search this site" box (top right of the screen) to go straight to all the mentions of that player on the site, whether in match line-ups, the photo files or the seasonal summaries.

Names, dates of birth and birthplaces-Where a player appeared at some point in his career for a Football League club’s first eleven, his name, initials, date of birth and birthplace have been taken from Barry J. Hugman’s Football League Players’ Records 1946-1992, the definitive guide to the subject, now supplemented by an online version which gives further information such as full forenames and dates of death where known. In other cases I have researched this information where possible from Football League registration records and published indeces of births and deaths (thus in some cases only the quarter of a player’s birth registration is given). For those who appeared in the Scottish League First Division similar use has been made of Richard Beal and Steve Emms’s Scottish League Players’ Records, 1946/7 to 1974/5. For those who never figured at Football League or Scottish League First Division level it is usually only possible to give the first name, plus any age that was quoted in press reports, with the date of the quotation, eg “ aged 21 in 8/61”. In a few cases more precise details of dates and places of birth were given in programme "pen-picture" features and these have been used here, though not independently verified.

The first name by which a player was usually known is underlined if he had more than one, or given in brackets if he was known by a shorter name or nickname.

In the team line-ups in the relevant seasonal pages I have used initials after a player's name (eg Fisher K, Fisher P) only where two players of the same name played in the same season, although I've broken this rule with the numerous Smiths, all of whom have an initial. The Notes entry indicates whether such players were related. In other cases of shared names it is possible to link a player in a team line-up with his details in the Player List by looking at the BTFC Seasons entry.

Before the distinction between professionals and amateurs was abolished in the 1970s, it was customary to place initials before a player's name (eg R Blacklock) in programmes or reports to indicate that he was an amateur. To avoid confusion I have not adopted this practice but instead shown amateur status in the Notes column.

Position-there is obviously scope for disagreement on a player’s usual position, especially for those whose positions changed over their careers, but I've tried to give the position occupied for the bulk of a player's BTFC career. G=goalkeeper, FB=full back, WH=wing half, CH= centre half, W= winger, IF=inside forward, CF=centre forward, MF= midfield, D= defender.

BTFC Seasons-The entry headed “BTFC Seasons” indicates the seasons spent at the club (not necessarily those in the first team). The two digits indicate the year in which the season started, eg Dennis Adams (52-54) played from the 1952/3 to the 1954/5 seasons, whereas Don Adams (56) played only in 1956/7.

The “To BTFC from ” and “From BTFC to” entries show the club each player played for immediately before he came to the club and immediately after he left, as far as I have been able to discover.

The “Other clubs before/after BTFC ” entry shows other clubs for which the player played, divided by a slash mark (/). To the left of the slash mark are the clubs he played for before the club shown in the “To BTFC from” entry; to the right, those he played for after the club in the “From BTFC to” entry.

Example-Thus, for example, Arthur Adey's entry here is " Bishop Auckland, Doncaster, Gillingham/Guildford, Chelmsford, Rugby, Kidderminster". In the "from" and "to" entries are shown Bradford PA and Worcester. This means that he joined Bedford from Bradford Park Avenue, having previously been with Bishop Auckland, Doncaster and Gillingham; he left the club to go to Worcester, and later played for Guildford, Chelmsford, Rugby and Kidderminster.

I can’t pretend that these details represent the complete careers of every player; in some cases there is a ? in the “To BTFC from” and/or “From BTFC to” entries, and it’s unlikely that I’ve tracked down every other club for which a player played, especially after he left the club. A ? in the "other clubs" entry means that I cannot discover anything about a player's earlier or later career beyond the immediate "from" and "to" clubs. Local press coverage of the very early 50s was sometimes quite limited and so biographical details of a few players from that period, especially locally born ones, are sparse. Another problem in compiling this list is that the local press often failed to report players’ subsequent clubs if they were released at the end of a season, even if they had been regulars for some seasons-Terry Pope is a prime example where all attempts to track down his later career have failed. Of course, it is likely that some players simply retired after they had played for the club(s) shown here, especially older ones, or only continued playing at the most basic “park” or “village green” level, but I have only entered "retired" where there is firm evidence of this.

Please email me (dewoldpo@gmail.com) if you can add to or correct these details.

In these entries, “BC” means Boys Club, except in “Wootton BC” ie Wootton Blue Cross.

The BTFC Appearances and Goals statistics cover the player's entire BTFC career, even if it started before the 1950/1 season or ended after 1966/7.  However, please note the following:

• I have rechecked these figures from the line-up details and in some cases this has shown up errors in the annual end-of-season articles in the local press.

• There are some gaps in the records of appearances in 1945/6, 1946/7 and 1948/9, and one unattributed goal (v Millwall in 1946/7) (see Into the Southern League (1945-50)). For 1966/7, because the line-up for one match (Barnet away in the EPFC) is missing, they are incomplete and can’t be reconciled with the press figures; it’s also possible that some appearances as a substitute haven’t been recorded for that season.

• Known appearances as a used substitute have been counted towards the appearance stats, but not unused substitutes.

• There are more substantial gaps and problems with the seasons after 1966/7, described in more detail under The Later Years (1967-82).

For details of players who played only in the 1945/6 to 1949/50 period, see Players' Lists, 1945-50

For details of players who played only in the 1967-82 period, see Player List, 1967-82

The Notes space contains any other useful information about a player, such as when he turned professional, loan periods, representative honours, managerial posts or other information about his later career, date of death where known, etc. Sadly but inevitably there are more death entries being added here as time goes by, as I become aware of the facts. “PM” in this entry means player-manager and "PC" means player-coach.

In the 2021 update I have tried to add, in the Notes space,  a little more detail to the bare listing of other clubs that a player played for by adding dates of joining or leaving those clubs where this is known.  For players who appeared for the first team in the Football League or Scottish League, these dates can be followed in Barry Hugman's site for the Football League (http://barryhugmansfootballers.com/), or Neil Brown's (http://www.neilbrown.newcastlefans.com/) for the Scottish League. As regards non-league clubs, in most cases this information comes from reports in the British Newspaper Archive's online library (BNA). Sometimes it's not possible to say exactly when a player moved clubs but only to find evidence of his appearing for a club at a particular time. In these cases the note will say, eg, "by 12/51", meaning that the first report I can find of his playing for a club is dated December 1951, but he may actually have joined them earlier. Similarly the note may say "still there 12/51" meaning that this is the latest report I can find that names that player at that club, but he may have stayed longer. Inevitably this is a hit-and-miss process because not all moves were reported, and there are still many areas of the country, and periods of time,  where local papers are not yet on the BNA website. This can mean that there are long apparent gaps in a player's career where it's unclear where they were playing. Often it's not really possible to say when or where a player's career ended, unless there is a report specifically stating that they have retired. 

This can also mean that players who changed clubs frequently, and thus only played a few matches for the Eagles, have left much more evidence of their careers than those who may have stayed much longer-a spectacular example being Joe Hooley, who is known to have played for at least 13 clubs as well as his single appearance for the Eagles (and that only takes him to age 27), in contrast to the man before him on the list, Johnny Holland, who made 186 appearances, yet very little is known of the rest of his career.