THE K'S ARCHIVES
An ongoing project to record and preserve the history of Kingstonian FC

1937-1938 SEASON

This is a (long term) temporary page in order to provide stats and reports for the 1937-1938 season. There are links to a single Surrey Comet report (as a JPG picture) for each game via the match by match stats below. Eventually it is hoped to provide a full season summary and multiple reports for each game with any other news items of interest but this will be some way into the future.

Grahame Lindsay under pressure in the game that saw K's beaten 2-1 by Shildon to put them out of the Amateur Cup.

First Team:
Match by match details (linking to reports)
Player totals- Appearances, scorers etc.
Combined excel spreadsheet- match by match and player totals.
Isthmian League Table
Isthmian League Results Grid- results and dates for all Isthmian matches.
 
Brief summary of the season:

The defence of Kingstonian's Isthmian League title began with the club forced to make several key changes to the team. Both Cyril Longman and Bill Whittaker were invited on an Islington Corinthians World Tour that took them as far as China and involved nearly 100 matches over the course of the season. Longman was replaced by Grahame Lindsay who was a promising goalkeeper signed from Hersham. He was to win a number of caps with Surrey but could be inconsistent during his two years at the club, playing brilliantly in some games but making bad errors in others.

Geoff Whittaker took his brother's place at centre half, and they also welcomed the return of "Stanley" Baldwin mid season who had returned from India after nearly 5 years there serving with the RAF. Injuries became a serious problem this season and K's were never to field a settled team. They welcomed back Stan Eastham after he had completed his army service, but almost immediately he suffered a broken leg in a non-footballing accident, and once again missed most of the season. There were also injuries to Richards, Geoff Whittaker, Jack Rogerson and Tommy Sinclair that kept them out for long periods. Lionel Thornton continued to have other footballing commitments which included playing for Corinthians in the F.A. Cup as well as his England Amateur selections. This led to a constant reorganising of the side, often needing to include reserve players in many of the matches.

K's got off to a fine start with an 8-0 win against Oxford City but that was as good as it got and soon K's were off the pace for any sort of title challenge. They went out of the F.A. Cup in the Preliminary Round at Sutton in an exciting game where K's had come from 2-0 down to level the scores and were completely dominating the play. Unfortunately, in his final game before the Islington Corinthians tour, Bill Whittaker made an uncharacteristic error that led to Sutton's 3rd goal and a 3-2 defeat. K's also exited the London Senior Cup at the first time of asking, losing 3-1 at Finchley. The London newspapers were now putting K's regular failure in the London Senior Cup down to a "gipsy curse" placed by someone who had a complementary ticket but had been refused entry 25 years earlier because the London Senior Cup rules required everyone to pay.

K's got revenge on Sutton with a 3-0 win in the Surrey Senior Cup First Round but failed to progress when they were beaten by Tooting & Mitcham in the following round. They did better in the Amateur Cup with wins over Waterlows (Dunstable) and Horsham, after a replay, but were put out in the third round in a home match against Shildon. K's seemed to have the game under control, taking the lead after five minutes and dominating the first half, but Shildon turned things around in the second half. Shildon equalised from a dubious penalty for handball against Geoff Whittaker and this gave them the opportunity their second half performance had deserved. A second goal came with Lindsay unsighted by a shot through a crowd of players and K's were unable to respond in the closing stages.

Any outside chance of a challenge for the title was quickly dispelled and K's were to win only 2 of their final 9 games and ended the season in 7th place. Goals had been hard to come by and Doug Whitehead was again top scorer with 23 goals. Only "Dickie" Abbott was to join him on double figures with 10.

K's only entered two minor cups that season and were beaten 4-3 by Ilford in the semi-final of the London Charity Cup and reached the final of the Surrey Combination Cup through a single game in the semi-final against Casuals. However K's had to withdraw from this competition due to fixture congestion.

The Reserves finished 7th in the reserve section of the Isthmian League while the Third Team finished 5th of 10 teams in the Kingston & District League Premier Division having reached the 4th Round of the Surrey Junior Cup and the semi-final of the Kingston League Cup.

 
Full details of the Reserves will be added at a later date.
 

1938-1939
1936-1937

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