Centenary Dinner launches busy weekend for Reds

The club’s Centenary celebrations have been seriously disrupted by the pandemic but the delayed dinner goes ahead on Friday with a ‘sell-out’ event launching a busy weekend for the club.

One hundred and eighty guests will attend the function at the town’s Washington Central Hotel with some former players and supporters travelling great distances to partake in the event.

The top table will include four stalwarts from the Football League days and two players who certainly made their mark during the non-league era.  Dave Butler, Peter Foley, John Ogilvie and Mike Rogan will be joined by Kyle May and John Reach and that little group have amassed over 2,000 first team appearances between them.

But there will also be players there who represented the club in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties with even a deputation from the current first team squad.

Club chairman, Dave Bowden, is delighted with the response from former players and sensed it would be popular with supporters.  “We have players travelling from Scotland, London, the north east and Lancashire whilst there are supporters coming from Merseyside, Birmingham, Glasgow and the Isle of Man with the majority of travellers staying over for the first team game on Saturday,” he said.

The club have compiled a film recording events through the various decades and three excerpts from that will be shown during the evening and a full version of the memento will be available towards the end of the current season.