COMMUNITY KEEPING THE CLUB AFLOAT

49 days on from Storm Desmond at Brunton Park, the club staff are working at 6.30am to prepare the ground and pitch for a game of football. Working all day the paid and volunteer staff have worked miracles in order to get Carlisle United a home game (on their own ground). Over the past weeks they have been loaned pitches for their league matches by Blackpool, Blackburn Rovers and Preston North end, at a price. The club provided their fans with free transport to these Lancashire stadia.

During the flood, players helped townsfolk with their recovery and in return, the fans helped out at Brunton Park. Imagine how muc mud and stuff had to be shifted, floors mended, walls painted.

Coming soon is Everton FC in the FA Cup and manager Keith Curle has just seen his team, playing their first game back at their proper home, throw away three points, after a 1-1 draw with lowly York City. The visitors are one place closer to relegation than Carlisle-that is bottom.

To reach the Third Round Proper, Carlisle have travelled to Plymouth Agyle (2-0 win)
http://baileyfootballblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/its-long-way-to-make-point.html
and Welling United (5-0 win), so they have earned a pay day.

Storm Desmond drowned the goalposts (8 foot high, you should know that and caused £3 million worth of damage to fixtures and fittings at Brunton Park.

I saw Carlisle play at their home ground at the beginning of the 1974-5 season, when they were in the First Division-the equivalent of the Premier League now. This made Carlisle the smallest populated settlement to have a top flight football team since 1906 (guessing either Woolwich Arsenal or Bury??). They only stayed up there for a year.

The game  I saw, was against West Ham United, played on one of the best playing surfaces in the country. The reason for the fertility was because the pitch was sited on a river floodplain, the soil rich in minerals from the silt. This was way before the invention of various gadgets that will make any pitch like a billiard table! Have a look at this photo of White Hart from the 1960s and look above at Brunton Park recently.

Founded in 1904 they are now close to the bottom of the Football League Division Two, so Everton should go into the draw for round 4.
Nevertheless, fans have queued long to buy Cup tie tickets on what will be a very special day for the Cumbrians which will generate much needed cash, reputedly £150,000 from TV rites. Fortunately, insurance will cover most of Carlisle's expences but memorabilia has been silted and lost, including Bill Shankly's original contract from 1949 (I have seen a copy in the Shankly hotel in Liverpool) whihc was saved and has been sent to the restorer.

While Martinez' men will shower in temporary facilities "outside" their changing room, the new pitch has been hauled in from Lincolnshire on 22 lorries and laid in time to be tested last week by York City, another town hit by Storm Desmond. It worked.

The badge represents the "regent" Cumbrian Wyvern (dragons) and Carlisle Castle. The motto is from Shakespeare's Henry VIII, Be Just and Fear Not. In 1973 the club wore kit sponsored by the kit manufacturer, Admiral (see yesterday's post) and were the first club to advertise a sportswear firm.