TUFC's lottery 1954

I can't pretend to know about ALL of those gentlemen but I can put this to you................
Was Leslie Williams in fact the Cecil Williams who went on to become a director of the club? I'm not sure, but I have an inkling that old time director had a history of club involvement going back to those days. Maurice Wolff was an absolute rock in the structure of the old Supporters Club (so was "Frederick" his christened name?). When I first worked for the club in 1974, he was long dead but his widow, "Mrs Wolff" was a wonderful old sole who still sold lottery tickets for the professional commercial department and still insisted on calling them "Jacks and Jills" ~ the old title of the original old style competition that her late husband had pioneered. She must have been well into her eighties even in those days and regailed me with tales of how she and other volunteers made the player's kit in the days of rationing immediately after the end of the Second World War and of how the black shorts were in fact made out of re-cycled blackout curtains! I also remember how she used to organise "darning parties" where the players socks would be repaired and made comfortable for the next game.

There was a good deal of mistrust and resentment when Tony Boyce decided to professionalise the fund raising and bring in Plymouth Argyle's Public Relations Officer Fred Easton as the club's first Commercial Manager, but the FACT was that the world of fundraising had moved into the professional age and age old gentlemans agreements of not poaching one another's punters had long since passed.

Fred had a very able assistant, a former school master called Bill Pearce who put in much of the cold calling and door knocking necessary to enrole members from farther afield than the club's support that was now necessary to create an effective income stream and ~ you've guessed it; he in turn got "poached" by Argyle and went on to set up a simply stupendous operation for them that stretched from Land End to the very edge of Bristol.

I well remember in "my time" the respective Commercial Managers of the three Devon clubs: Bill Pearce at Argyle, Alex Jackson at Plainmoor and City's Ray Ellis having frequent meetings and "swap shops" of lottery outlets that were more suited to one club on it's doorstep rather than being a "black person in the woodpile" of the opposition and the regular falling outs and subsequent fraternal making up between all three clubs!

One such "super agent" that we at Plainmoor had was Reg Sandford, a Brixham coastguard; for at the time he had no interest in United or even football at all; but was a highly driven and hard working "door knocker and doorstep salesman" who worked incredibly hard to build up a fantastic retinue of members for us in that part of the bay . He absolutley fell in love with the club and could always be seen right up to his death working behind the scenes ~ in his later days as a front of house steward in the directors facilities and his daughter of course is Annie Sandford the club secretary and in my eyes a living legend who simply must be awarded a testimonial by the club before too long..............and a really gate busting one too. Poor Anne has stuck with the club through the Pope years, the Webb years, through the Bateson and Roberts regimes. She was a young schoolgirl helping ut on match days when I was there all those years ago, so she can't yet be forty can she? Maybe, but we shouldn't really enquire that of a lady should we.

So yes Barty, no doubt your old mum did buy her bingo tickets from Argyle, but little doubt too that Bill Pearce had them on sale in the area as a "lost leader" handing out so much commission to his sellers as to render them virtually unprofitable but then he was stopping us selling ours wasn't he and I also suspect his agent was one he took with him when he moved from Plainmoor to Gnome Park!