Vital Pompey Members Corner

He played for them too – it’s coming back!

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As the season looms all those on the peripheral of our beautiful game hope and pray their pre-season training and preparation will stand them in good stead for the forthcoming campaign.

Commentators get to grips with the pronunciation of the Premierships latest Russian name. Referees and their assistants ponder whether to apply ‘common sense’ or ‘the letter of the law’ to the latest rule changes. Match reporters buy a new notepad, sharpen their pencils and recharge their spare mobile batteries, and last, but by no means least, people like me ‘the games historians’, dust off their scrapbooks and look for new ways in which to engage the ‘average footie fan’ by telling tales of players past who could out-sprint a cheetah, pounce like a cat or leap higher than the proverbial salmon.

Throughout our long and (not so) hot summer I have considered many new ways to inform, enlighten, educate, or as some claim, bore you during the 2008/09 season with my knowledge and stories of the great and (not so) great players that have, at some stage in their career, walked the concrete corridors of Fratton Park.

A ‘Hall of Fame’, ‘Pompey’s best 50’, ‘The 200-up Club’. All good ideas, but for one reason or another they never quite made it any further than the electronic waste bin on my laptop. It seemed no matter what idea I dreamt up it never quite seemed as good as what we already had. So on the premise of ‘why change a winning formula? ‘ It gives me great pleasure to announce that due to at least one persons demand ‘He played for them too‘ is coming back!

Not only is the weekly article that takes an ‘every expense spared’ look at players who played for us and the opposition of the week making a return, it is promising to be ‘bigger’ and ‘better’ than ever before … and this time, there’s a twist.

Rather than me deliberate for weeks over who to research and write about, I thought I would give you (yes you ‘The reader’) the opportunity to nominate who you would like to see featured during the season. After all, you are the people that make Vital Pompey what it is, so if the reaction is poor at least nobody can blame me!

Each month or so I’ll ask you for your suggestions on the players you’d like featured. You simply supply the names and (if you have one), a reason why you’d like to see the player featured and I’ll do the really hard work of spending hours with my head in dusty annuals researching that player and writing an article so informative and tediously long, that it will either; prepare you for the preliminary rounds of Mastermind, send you to sleep standing up or (if printed) provide you with enough hamster bedding to last a month.

There are no limitations on who you can nominate, other than the obvious criteria that the player has to have ‘played’ or ‘been connected’ with, both Pompey and the club we are due to play. Other than that it is an open book. They could be a pre-war player, a current squad member or as in one case last year a player that played less than twenty minutes for Pompey. It really doesn’t matter.

I’ve already written the articles for our first two league games so I now need your nominations for the matches scheduled for the remainder of August and throughout September and into October namely; Everton, Spurs, Middlesborough, Manchester City, Stoke City & Aston Villa.

So ‘thinking caps’ on. Who has played for Pompey and one (or maybe more) of the teams listed above and who is ‘worthy a of story’. Post your thoughts and ideas below.

Finally, If you are new to the site and/or didn’t see this feature last season click any of the following links to view a few examples of previous articles, or go to the ‘club menu’ from the vital toolbar, and click on ‘Played for them too, you know!‘ You’ll see a whole range of articles about different ex-Pompey players and the other clubs they played for.

Aston Villa – Jimmy Allen
Manchester City – Paul Walsh
Tottenham – Darren Anderton
Everton – Mike Trebilcock Part 1
Everton – Mike Trebilcock Part 2

Finally, should any of you share my infliction with the past you can of course write you own piece under the same banner. A few site members attempted this last season and although there were some great pieces submitted nobody quite reached my standards of boredom on a nostalgic, statistical or analytical level. Perhaps you have what it takes? Either way it’ll be great to see some fresh ‘authors’ published and of course, should you need any help just shout, I and a number of other members will be only too willing to help. The only thing I ask is that you let Rug know who you are planning to focus on and he’ll prevent the likes of Eastneydave and me writing about the person you are featuring.

Written by Chix.

The views within this article are the views of the individual who wrote and submitted this piece, sometimes solely theirs. They are not necessarily shared by the Vital Pompey Site Journalists.

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