This is the web site of Box Hill FC,
the bright tangerine star that blazed brightly but briefly in the firmament
of the Scarborough and District Sunday League Division Three twenty-five years ago.
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Much water has flown under the bridge for all of us since those heady days,
and the passage of time has no doubt dulled many memories,
good and bad, of the people, places and incidents that were part of our misspent youths,
but somehow the recollections of this phenomenal football club
have grown more vivid over the years,
and trying to set the tale down in words has made it all seem
like something that happened yesterday.
These were unprecedented days, marking for many of us the transition from boyhood to adulthood,
or at least from school to the real world,
and perhaps Box Hill was our way of announcing to the real world that we were part of it.
Of course, the great enterprise failed,
and failed miserably by any normal criterion against which such projects are judged.
Any doubts you may have about that will soon be dispelled
if you scan the pages that make up this site,
a tale of disaster frankly told.
And yet, the memory of the club lives on like no other,
not through any undue sense of reverence or, still less, of achievement,
but rather as a monument to the spirit of a group of youngsters
whose pride and faith in each other was so strong
that they felt they really could take on the world.
This is the story of an important year in my life:
I hope it was important to you too.
If you still remember Box Hill,
and are interested enough to scan this site,
then, for you at least, it wasn't a total failure.
The contents of this site have been taken, more or less word for word,
from the booklet, "Box Hill F.C. 1974-1975, The Latest Story Ever Told",
which was first inflicted on the world in 1990, to coincide with the reunion of that year,
and, for some unknown reason, has been reprinted twice since.
No great technical merit is claimed for this web site;
there are no gimmicks, no fancy HTML and no Java.
At least not yet.
It's just the facts, a bit of purple prose from me,
and a few low quality but irreplaceable pictures to round it off.
Please be warned, the pages with pictures,
and (especially) those with press cuttings, may take quite a long time to download.
Site Directory. |
All the pages are displayed below in chronological order.
Each one has a link to the next page in the sequence, and one back to here.
This web site developed and maintained by Steve Burns.
Needless to say, I've found a suitably embarrassing photo of myself from
autumn 1974 to amuse all my friends.
This version dates from February 2000,
the introduction of Style Sheets,
for those who care about these things.
Any further information required,
any errors or omissions,
any dissent,
any quirks on specific browsers,
in fact any feedback of any kind,
please contact us by e-mailing Steve by clicking
here.
Finally, some related web sites that Your Author thinks might warrant a look:
By the same author (in more ways than one!),
Horsforth Fairweather F.C.
My web site dedicated to the Dutch World Cup team of 1974,
Holland 1974.
I've only ever found one other web site devoted to Sunday football in Scarborough in the 1970s,
Hunmanby Hornets F.C.,
though it appears their club is still going to this day,
a real achievement by any standards.
For nostalgia of another kind, Peter Hudson's
Penthouse Reunion web site.
You may like to know that Box Hill now have an entry on the
Friends Reunited web site under Teams and Clubs.
Site hit count, since September 1999:
