It is very hard for me to believe, but I watched my first match at the Recreation Ground, Bridge Road, Grays in September 1958, over 56 years ago, just before my 11th birthday.
It was our debut in the Athenian League and we lost 5-4 to Hayes in front of over 5,000 fans, which was quite a normal attendance in the 1950’s. I don’t recall much about the game, except the wall around the pitch seemed very high and I couldn’t see what was happening in the game. I wasn’t very tall then and probably haven’t grown much since!
We had a player called Mick Roberts who scored a hatrick that day, but one of their fellas got five! I don’t know who our manager was then, but with nine goals in the match, I think he had a bit of the Grays style about him!
In the following year we hosted Chelmsford City in the 4th qualifying round of the F.A. Cup. A record crowd of 9,000 crammed into the Rec and we lost 3-1. I remember our left winger, Terry Terrell scoring our consolation goal which I had a great view of, from my position high up on the terracing.

We were regarded as one of the strongest Amateur sides in the south of England from around the end of the Second World War until the late 50’s, but as we moved into the ‘swinging 60’s’, the Club’s fortunes began to falter. Apart from a good run in the F. A. Amateur Cup in 1964 when we made the last sixteen only to lose 2-1 at home to one of the favourites, Kingstonian in front of nearly 3,000 fans, we generally struggled on the pitch. The opposition those days were the likes of Enfield, Hendon and Barnet – all top AMATEUR teams who seemed to be able to ‘afford’ much better players than us!

For me, our best player around this time was goalkeeper, Malcolm Shaw. He became an England Amateur International, but only after he left us to join the more fashionable Walthamstow Avenue. Unable to settle with them he returned to play a starring role for us in some rather poor sides at the time. I missed a notable game of his – a 12-0 away defeat at Enfield, who became Athenian League champions that season. I remember well the Thurrock Gazette report with those memorable opening words ‘Grays debt to Malcolm Shaw just grows and grows as he stars for the Blues in their 12 nil thrashing at the hands of the mighty Enfield’. I shudder to think what the score would have been had he not played!

But it was really off the pitch that the Club’s problems were becoming more pressing. The Rec was owned by a group of Trustees. Over the years they had grown apart from the Football Club – even to the point where the Club was not allowed to put advertising hoardings around the pitch to help pay the rent to the Trustees.

These problems continued through the rest of the 60’s and well into the 70’s with little success on the pitch. Gates plunged to below 200 and interest in the Club waned. We were relegated from what had become the Premier Division of the Athenian League in 1972 – the very first relegation experienced by the Club in its then eighty plus years’ existence.

Although I had moved away to Bedfordshire in 1971 for three years to further my career, I travelled back to Grays for most home games and the occasional away game when family commitments allowed.
By the late seventies, when I was again firmly entrenched again as ‘Essex Man’, twins Jeff and Fred Saxton joined as team managers and things began to look brighter on the pitch. With very little cash available in the new ‘semi-pro’ era of Non League football we found ourselves in, they brought in young players through their Essex schools contacts.
The most memorable player and my favourite of the 70’s was forward David Crown. He joined us from Barking when he was only sixteen, a sort of latter day Gary Hooper. In two and a half seasons he scored 72 goals. He moved to Walthamstow Avenue in 1979 for a fee of £200. The Club had inserted one of the early ‘sell-on’ clauses - a healthy 50% - and when he moved on to Brentford in 1980, the Club got another £6,800! A real lifeline for us at the time when money was very tight. He moved on to Portsmouth in 1981 and then Reading, Southend, Cambridge, Gillingham, Dagenham, Purfleet, Aylesbury, Sudbury, Billericay, Concord and back to Purfleet. 15 Clubs in about 20 years. He obviously couldn’t settle down! More recently, of course, ‘Crowny’ became one of the first inductees into the ‘Grays Athletic Hall of Fame’.

The ground situation finally came to a head in 1979 when the Trustees of the ground sought and then gained permission from the Charity Commission to sell our beloved Recreation Ground to the highest bidder. These were dark days indeed and could well have signalled the end of the Club as we knew it. Thanks to the efforts of a certain Bryan Coker, who many supporters will know supported the Club for even longer than me, persuaded Mr Ron Billings, a local developer and entrepreneur, to put in a bid, which thankfully was the highest.

Mr Billings gave the Club a new lease on the ground in the summer of 1982 and also relaid the pitch to help improve playing conditions for the team. Unfortunately, in April 1983, some local arsonists got to work and set fire to the old wooden grandstand and much to Mr Billings’ chagrin it wasn’t even insured! Nevertheless, he set about redeveloping the south side of the ground with the demolition of the old wooden terracing, the building of the indoor ballcourt, changing rooms, boardroom and Club bar. This all took place in the space of about three months, so now we all know where Mr Woodward learnt his trade! Mr Billings also put 250 seats in the west stand to ensure that the ground would meet the requirements of the Isthmian League, which we had qualified to join by finishing runners up in the Athenian League in 1983. He also built the flats on the east side of the ground where some of our supporters lived, to help pay for some of the works.
A new company had been formed in 1982 at the insistence of Mr Billings to run the business of the Club. He clearly wanted to ensure that his investment was not wasted. I was invited to join the company as a Director and was privileged to serve on the Board for 20 years. I remember well our first Board meeting. We discussed our plans for clearing debts of about £30,000 and Jeff and Fred Saxton set about building a team to move us up the football pyramid.

A new Chairman also joined us - Jim Myers who owned “The Boys From Rathbone Street” greetings card shops. He had been introduced to the Club by one of our players who worked in one of his shops. Jim also had a plan. Promotion to the Premier Division of the Isthmian League in five years! Considering we had finished sixteenth out of nineteen in the Athenian League the previous season and the Isthmian Premier was three levels above that it all seemed pretty fanciful. Well his plan did fail – it took us six years to do it rather than five! Now the Club was really on the up again for the first time in over 20 years. This was a most enjoyable time for me personally.
I supported the Club because I enjoyed the football, but my role on the Board was to help look after the hard earned cash and generate some sponsorship, which with help from many others, we were able to do with some success.
On the field we went from strength to strength. Three promotions, including a first League Championship title since 1946; an Essex Senior Cup victory in 1988; our first in 31 years; a League Cup final win against one of our old adversaries, Enfield in 1992, just two days after they had finished runners up in the League to Hayes on goal difference; an appearance in the last sixteen of the F. A. Trophy and for only the second time at that point in our history we made it through to the first round proper of the F.A. Cup in 1988. Our early years in the Isthmian Premier, or Ryman League as it had become, were very successful. Fifth in 1989 and 1990 and sixth in 1991.

So during the period 1982 to 1991 we had risen to our highest level to date in the pyramid, cleared all our debts, paid every penny of rent due to Mr Billings under the lease and still had a pound or so in the bank!
During the 80’s, my favourite player and a real cult hero at the Club, was Micky Welch. He was a big man, with pace to burn, who frightened defences with his strong running and lethal finishing. He scored 148 goals in 216 appearances and was as responsible as anyone on the field for our renaissance. He was also instrumental in recommending players for the Saxton brothers to sign (in exchange for his usual fee, I believe!). Apart from his goals and lovely personality, many of us will remember Micky for sometimes arriving late to join the coach for an away game (that’s probably a slight understatement!). There we would be at the Brentwood Post House (now the Holiday Inn) – players and supporters – waiting patiently – and then a bit impatiently. He usually made it and it was always worth the wait as he would casually board the coach with some feeble excuse and then go on and score the winner later that afternoon!

Through the successful early 90’s we signed some quality players – striker Dwight Marshall, who with strike partner Richard Cherry scored 55 goals between them in 1990/91. Dwight left us to join Plymouth for a then record Club fee of £35,000. Tony Witter was a lightning quick centre half who spent a season with us before moving on to Crystal Palace and later Millwall. During this period our attendances improved. Although we never reached those heady heights of the 50’s when 5,000 was the norm, we were averaging around 500 to show that a winning team would encourage people to come along and support the local team.
We also had a new Chairman. Frank Harris had been persuaded (again by Bryan Coker) to provide some much needed financial help as well as a level-headed approach in the Boardroom. A few years earlier when we had been struggling to pay our way, one of his companies, Harris Coaches, had waited a whole season to be paid for team coaches, so he appreciated what sponsorship really meant!
Into the mid 90’s we were finding it more and more difficult to compete in financial, and therefore, football terms. In 1995 we finished 18th in the Ryman Premier, in 1996 17th and then alas, 21st and the second relegation in the Club’s history in 1997. Our patron, Ron Billings had sadly passed away, but he left us a tremendous legacy – the Recreation Ground! He gave us the opportunity to sell it for development, provided the proceeds were re-invested in a new stadium with community facilities included. Unfortunately that ‘bequest’ was never incorporated into a legal document, which with hindsight proved catastrophic for the Club.
Through the 90’s I and other colleagues on the Board tried in vain to secure a new site for the Club. Unfortunately, Thurrock Council showed no appetite for supporting our plans, even though we were not seeking any financial contribution from them, apart from the long lease of some land behind the then Torrels School.

With the impetus for relocation fading and relegation to Division One of the Ryman League, the Club was again beginning to struggle. Somewhat against the odds, we returned to the Ryman Premier for the 2000/01 season, thanks to the enthusiastic leadership of Manager Chris Snowsill. He had been assistant to former goalkeeper, Gary Calder, who had walked out on the Club when we were top of Division One the season only to move on to Enfield after just a few weeks in charge. We also enjoyed a great F. A. Cup run culminating in the first round tie at the wonderful Madjeski Stadium, home of Reading FC. We held our illustrious opponents to a one goal deficit at half time, but their superior fitness and guile was too much for us as we eventually lost 4-0. But the bank account was in much better shape and we had received outstanding hospitality from the Chairman, John Madjeski, who treated his guests from Essex like personal friends.
For the 90’s I have chosen two players who for me, epitomise what our Club, and grassroots football, is all about. First, Phil ‘Sam’ Sammons, who joined the Saxton revolution in 1982. He played 673 games for the Club, easily a Club record, and scored 35 goals from midfield. He helped us through the promotions of the 80’s and soldiered on through the first half of the 90’s until Old Father Time caught up with him in 1997. He didn’t score that many goals but I remember a crucial one at the back end of the 1994/95 season. It was our opening goal against Chesham United from as sweet a volley from the edge of the box as you could wish to see. Whoever lost the game was heading for relegation. We went on to win 5-0! Phil remains a good friend of the Club and is now Chief Executive of the Essex County Football Association. I wonder how often in the future we will see a player playing for one Club for 15 years in a successful side?
The other player, who was with us towards the end of the last Millennium, was defender, Steve Mosely. He joined Chris Snowsill’s side in the twilight of his career and played a major part in helping us regain promotion back to the Ryman Premier Division in 2000. A no-nonsense player, he was always there to encourage the less experienced members of the team. I also remember a great free-kick goal he scored in the last minute at Bedford late on in the 1999/2000 season which kept us well in the hunt for the promotion spot, which we achieved with an away win at Bromley with Chris Snowsill’s son, Danny, scoring the winning goal. Steve is now coach at Dartford F.C. and also assists with their Academy.

Unfortunately, by November 2000 we were second from bottom in the Ryman Premier Division and heading towards our third relegation in 110 years. But then it happened! A former reserve team manager, Bob Clarkson, had alerted the Club’s Directors to the fact that there was an Essex businessman who was interested in getting involved with a Club at a good Non-League level. We met him and welcomed him aboard.
So we moved to the Mike Woodward era.

Glyn Jarvis
Supporter 1958 to 2015 (at least, I hope!)
Vice-Chairman Grays Athletic F.C. Management Committee – 1979 to 1982
Director Grays Athletic F.C. (1982) Limited – 1982 to 2001
Life President Grays Athletic F.C. – 2001 to 2015 (at least, I hope!)