16 years ago this in April, in the bright sunshine, a Brentford supporter was walking down Ealing Road, with several A3 folders of Brentford FC memorabilia under his arm. This was but one part of Graham’s extensive series of articles he had written for and about the club. He eagerly looked forward to the final Bees game of that season ( Div. II v Hereford Utd). Graham intended to meet another supporter, Rob Jex, to share the Bees memorabilia. Rob had spent many fond hours of discussion with Graham explaining the value of scanning Graham’s treasures and this would have been the first batch to scan in perpetuity.
This was typical of Graham’s unselfishness and enthusiasm. Graham was also a guest commentator in the Bees famous Blind Commentary Team.
Sadly, on that day in April, within just a few hundred yards of Griffin Park, Graham collapsed and did not recover.
Geoff Buckingham
I think of Brentford as one big family, and we have just lost a very valuable member. Graham’s commitment to write for the programme for well over thirty years should not be underestimated, if you tot this up, it’s around 800-900 articles and perhaps just short of a million words written on the Bees since the mid-1970s – truly incredible.
Mark Chapman
This was Graham’s fight to ensure we recorded the correct date for the foundation of Brentford FC
Graham’s formal involvement with the club dated back to 1974, when he wrote to club Secretary Denis Piggott on 30th December that year to explain that he had discovered that Brentford had been founded in 1889 and not, as was generally believed, 1888, which the club had included prominently on the badge it had adopted from the 1972/73 season onward.
He received a polite but firm rebuttal from Mr Piggott, dated 3rd January 1975 (below), which partly attributed 1888 to former Board member, and President of the club until his death, aged 94, on 24th January 1961, Bill Dodge, who had been at the actual meeting at which the club was founded.
Mr Piggott went on to say that he had referred the query to programme editor Eric “Historian” White, who, in his “Around The Hive” article in the 25th January 1975 programme reiterated that “the club is still not prepared to consider that he (Graham) has proved that 1889 was in fact the year it was formed.”
Undeterred, Graham supplied more evidence that categorically proved that Bill Dodge and the club had been wrong, so much so, that in “Around The Hive” less than a month later Eric said: “the Club…is now prepared to accept that the Club was in fact formed in 1889.”
Graham assumed Eric’s mantle of (chief) “Historian” thereafter!
I love how Bill Dodge was thought infallible as he had been at the founding meeting. Even in his brief obituary in the programme in January 1961 Eric White mentioned how “he loved to recount how only a single vote separated the advocates of soccer and rugby.”
He got that wrong too (it was three votes) and, what he doesn’t seem to have mentioned was that it was he (Dodge) who actually proposed that the Club should play rugby, and presumably was one of the 5 votes against football, as the extract (below) from the Richmond and Twickenham Times of 19th October 1889 shows:
“Mr Henry Edwardes proposed Association football be adopted, seconded by Mr Carey West, as there were fewer Rugby Clubs in the area to play matches against. Mr Henry Dodge, however, proposed the Rugby football be adopted, seconded by Mr Henry Gatterell. A vote, between the known playing members at the meeting, then took place. The result; Association Football – 8 votes. Rugby Football – 5 votes. The Chairman assumed that those who voted for Rugby, would bow to the majority and this was accepted.”
Rob Jex
