Who Said Being A Club Historian Is Boring?

Who Said Being A Club Historian Is Boring?

It certainly isn't for Ron Parrott, historian for both Hereford FC and Hereford United.

Ron explains:

There I was minding my own business a couple of days ago when I received a phone call from an unknown number and thinking it was yet another nuisance call, I was reluctant to answer it, but I did. A voice the other end said "You don't know me but my name is Dennis Turner........." the poor man didn't have chance to get any further before I interjected, "Not Dennis Turner the referee?" He was amazed and said "How on earth did you know that?"
As far as I was concerned, there was only one Dennis Turner and it had to be the legend from Cannock who refereed both the FA Cup third round ties against Newcastle United! It was indeed him and he went on to tell me that he used to have a programme from the Newcastle game at Hereford, fully signed by both teams, but the father of a friend of his daughter's didn't believe that he refereed these games so he lent them the programme about 10 years ago to prove it to them but sadly, never got it back.

Dennis happened to be staying at the Warner Hotel at Holme Lacy with his wife June, for a week so decided to pop into the Club to ask if anyone could help him to obtain a copy of this programme. Sadly they couldn't but gave him my number in the hope that I could......... hence his call. After his call, I dug around in long unopened draws and managed to fish out a copy, in pretty decent condition too so I rang him back with the good news and he arranged to come out to my home to pick it up.

It was a real pleasure to meet him again, after first meeting him at the 25th anniversary Giant Killers' dinner, and a great thrill to sit down with him over a cuppa and reminisce about some of my heroes of the 70s and he recounted some wonderful stories about Norman Hunter, Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles, Johnny Giles and Bobby Moore. I felt like a star-struck teenager! Now aged 82, he's kept himself fit and trim and looks good on it too. It was a real pleasure to help him out with the programme and he was thrilled to bits with it. I refused to accept anything for it but like a true gentleman, he'd come armed with a bottle of Warner Hotel's best wine and it would have been rude not to have accepted that........ wouldn't it?

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