[Official Site] The Oakwell Hall Of Fame Initial Inductees

Saw another club launch one recently and they just plonked 75 people straight in. It was tricky to try and weigh up what to do. There's not a right or wrong way I don't suppose and I can promise folk there was no agenda not to include certain individuals. The seven members of the panel had full autonomy, believe me.

Imagine if we'd just done it ourselves, as a club, and just banged the 75 'greatest' in our eyes. What then? Give it a few years and you've got dross like Butterfield getting shortlisted....

There's a debate about Patrick and JD among a few supporters, and we expected that.

But the panel made their choices. They picked five individuals from five separate eras, forming the final 25 names. From the formative years into the war years right into the modern day. Think about it - much easier to pick folk from the last 40 years than it was for say, the 1960's to 1970's. So there's some absolutely huge names missing. But that'll help keep this project going forever, fingers crossed.

 

It’s a fantastic idea and well done to all involved! We’ll all agree and disagree over which players should / shouldn’t be included. We are lucky to have had some fantastic players over 130 years.
The Dennis exclusion is very annoying though, in fact, weirdly enough seen as I’ve never met John and wasn’t alive when Ernest was around, it’s actually upset me a little bit.
Patrick Cryne wasn’t the only man to save the club, Ernest and his board of directors did that in from what i’m told were very bleak times.
As for John, the upcoming film will hopefully be a welcome reminder just what a remarkable thing he did for this club and for this town.
I’ll always be grateful for Patrick Cryne and its daft comparing tarn heroes but if i could only choose one modern day owner / chairman to be automatically inducted it would be john dennis 100%

 

Sorry just seen this before i typed my comment. As long as panel was aware there may be a JD / PC debate im a little happier. Would hate JD to be forgotten totally from BFC history which he seems to have been in recent years. Hopefully that will be rectified in the near future

 

I believe JD should be inducted, and I'm sure one day he will be. We aren't doing this for just a year otherwise we'd have just auto-inducted everyone and not bothered engaging or holding an annual awards night.

Of course there's divided opinion. It's football, an opinions game.

 

When you look at John Dennis (hopefully that's next time) it should be his dad as well, as a pairing, think that would mean a lot to him.

 

I wasn't on the panel. It's why Butterfield, McCourt, Potts and O'Connell didn't get on the list. A good thing, then.

But seriously, I can't imagine JD and his father not being auto-inducted in the future. I'm not on the panel, so I shouldn't be able to say that, but as stated, their achievements speak very loudly for inclusion.

As they do with Bartrop, Tufnell, Robledo, Eaden, Futcher and so on.

It's year one. And no matter who the panel chose in this first year, they were bound to leave greats out.

In 65 years we'll be inducting Stephen Dawson or summat. Not that we'll be around to see it. Thankfully.

 

I don't have a problem with it. I disagree with the choices, but that's different. I think it's a good thing.

 

Who's on the panel?

 

I think it's a fantastic thing, and recall posting a long time ago after we played QPR away and they had 2 new hall of famers being interviewed on the pitch. So I'm delighted we have a start and think a lot of praise should be given about the format.

I'd love it to evolve more still. Are there any plans to add more statistical data to profiles? A little table of say debut, goals against, appearances in cups, league, subs and so on. It mentions some in the text, but a quick glance would be useful. And also, what about footage? I think the vids you unofficially did, and with what Dyson and Graft have done have shown what can be achieved with sheer will and imagination, and to have our true heroes officially recognised with footage, maybe interview for those still with us, and archive showreels of players careers and iconic moments in an official place would be fantastic.

Just an aside, has the club considered an updated online database showing stats on starts and goals, it may be another little way of highlighting all that's gone before and where modern footballers may sit compared with their peers. If the club still has an official historian, I'm sure they could try and make the data more public. Just another way to make stats and history of our club more accessible to our fans old and new. When I first started watching, I loved the Oakwell centurions piece. I would never have heard of jimmy Baxter, Arthur Kaye, Jonny Steel or George Robledo otherwise, and i'm so very glad that I did.

I'm mindful that the more time that goes by, sadly, we'll lose some of our older legends, and history may miss out on seeing what they did. As new generations vote, it's only reasonable to suggest they will vote for who they know and have seen. Adam Hammill is always more likely to receive a vote than Ernie Hine our record scorer, or Cecil McCormack, the most goals in a season. So in a way, I'd like the panel to show more bias to players of old initially, to ensure some of our greats do make the hall and those that are still with us might see it happen, and potentially capture interviews and footage.

Well done though, everyone should be proud of this and I look forward to see it grow and develop and hopefully will serve our future fans well, long after we're all gone.

 

I think it's a good start.
A lot of names that resonate for me. Had to go for Tommy Taylor personally, although like Whitey says there are a lot more that should be added as time goes on. For me John Dennis is one of those. My Dad's favourite Barnsley player was George Robledo.

 

One other thought... for the first 2 years (maybe 3), what about having 2 induction intakes per season? That would still only have 20-30 in the hall of fame, but it would have a nice size to it relatively quickly. I think given 30 in there after 3 years, there would still be lots and lots of ex players and staff that could easily be brought in. Just in my time, I can probably think of a dozen who played around 200 times or more and gave many good moments and gave fantastic service.

 

Thanks for your input. Believe me, we will endeavour to improve and enhance things as time goes by. But there’s very little video footage around of so many of the players shortlisted. It really does bother me that nobody at the club over the years sought to archive such records.

Statistically we will be able to keep improving things. The current HOF section on site is pre-event. It will look slightly different post-event. There are things I can’t divulge at present but safe to say I’m looking forward to the awards ceremony itself and how that will influence the website post-event.

The number of inductees and when and how they are added is something that will be looked at over time. It was felt that adding lots and lots initially would dilute it and leave later years a rather strange affair. Time will tell.

Pleased with the response though because this is something that as a Reds fan myself I’ve always felt needed introducing. Around 12 months of ideas and planning went into it so that we could do it justice.

 

That's really very sad to hear that footage hasn't been protected, but not surprised considering other things i've heard down the years about holding information, and even more important that footage and content that is held is preserved and displayed. ITV and BBC must have archives that can be drawn upon to some degree? Not sure if British Library ever got round to a video archive, they certainly have an insanely rich newspaper library, maybe news articles of the day could fill in when we're going back generations. Used to be based at Colindale, but think they were in the process of moving it at the time of the move to St Pancras.

I'm sure people would be happy to see footage where it can be captured, but sadly understand where it doesn't.

And completely agree about it being well overdue. Its so important to help pass the baton from one generation of supporter to the next. And current generations seem to digest visual content so much more than the written word and folklore.

I think one of the things i've enjoyed the last few years are the BitC videos that have interviewed ex players. Plus the snippets from GRAFT. New content of players whimsically recalling key moments of our history and theirs. Just wonderful.

Keep it up, and a huge well done.

 

This x1000. Its a massive piece of work, but we should be able to look up any ex-player on the official website and see a photo, bio, games played, goals scored, debut, who they joined from and left for, even video footage for the later players, etc. All past results should be lookupable too - so when the Ipswich 3-3 game comes up (as it does on a regular basis), we have the information to hand - possibly including match reports too

Copies of the old programmes online would be great too so we can look up previous games against the next opponents.

I know it will not be easy before the 70s, when we are probably relying on the source information being accurate and still in existence, but it could be a wonderful resource for present and future fans of the club.

 

That's a lot of work and would take us years. Even Man Utd don't have such a thing on site.

Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful idea. It's something we've looked into. It would require someone taking it on as their only job. With historians helping them. So it's not being ruled out.

 

I'd start with simply digitising the historians records. The info is obviously there as it gets trotted out when a player leaves us as to how many appearances and goals they've got.

I've a rough list that was based on Brian Dennis' official history to 1998 and totted up from games ever since but it was updated very infrequently so not at all official and subject to small errors. But i'm sure that historic list would be accurate and a good base. You might even find someone volunteer for such a thing, would just need scrutiny of overview, but populating an online database wouldn't take too long for just under 1200 records. In time, if such an archive was pushed, you then have starting points of lists of appearances for every player and goals, just in simple tables.

 

I've got a nice book called Oakwell Centurians. Not home at the minute but I guess it is about 25 years old. As the name suggests it covers players who played over 100 games for the club. That may be a good starting point.

 

Leave all this with me. Let us crack on with the HOF this year and I promise we'll look into a proper player database in the future.

 

If you can just sign and date here please.... ;-)