News archive
Witton Albion news, 2008–09: what the site recorded and what it left out
The last version of the club website kept a news archive of just ten stories, nine of them match reports. It stopped on 3 September 2008, two months before the manager was dismissed and seven before the club was relegated.
In August 2008 the Witton Albion website was rebuilt, its third version in under two years. The new version put a lead story and a short "news feed" on the homepage and kept everything in a page called the News Articles Archive.
That archive never held more than ten stories. All ten survive, and nine of them are match reports that have been restored on this site as individual pages. What makes the list interesting is where it stops.
The ten stories
| Posted | Story | On this site |
|---|---|---|
| Mon 24 March 2008 | Report on the home defeat by Fleetwood Town | Witton Albion 0–3 Fleetwood Town |
| Sun 30 March 2008 | Report on the win over Lincoln United | Witton Albion 6–0 Lincoln United |
| Sat 12 April 2008 | Report on the win over Guiseley | Witton Albion 1–0 Guiseley |
| Sat 26 April 2008 | Report on the final-day defeat by Worksop Town | Witton Albion 0–3 Worksop Town |
| Wed 30 April 2008 | Report on the play-off semi-final | Witton Albion 1–1 Buxton |
| Thu 1 May 2008 | The chairman is invited to speak at a seminar on raising money online | Covered on the match video page |
| Wed 27 August 2008 | Report on the win at Prescot Cables | Prescot Cables 1–3 Witton Albion |
| Wed 27 August 2008 | Report on the home defeat by Hednesford Town | Witton Albion 0–2 Hednesford Town |
| Mon 1 September 2008 | Report on the defeat at Guiseley | Guiseley 2–0 Witton Albion |
| Wed 3 September 2008 | Report on the home win over Ilkeston Town | Witton Albion 2–0 Ilkeston Town |
The first six were carried over from the previous version of the site and belong to the end of the 2007–08 season, which is covered in the 2006–08 news digest. The last four are the only news the new site ever published about 2008–09.
Where the news stops
The homepage was archived in early September 2008, in November, twice in December, and in January and February 2009. Each time its lead story was the same: the win over Ilkeston Town on 2 September. The news archive page, copied again in March 2009, still ended there.
The rest of the site carried on. The fixtures list was updated with each result, the players page grew as new signings were added, and the league table was kept current to the end of the season. But no story was posted about anything that happened after the first week of September, and a great deal did.
What went unreported
Eleven defeats in a row. After the Ilkeston win Witton drew with Ossett Town and then lost every league match from 9 September to 15 November, eleven in succession, as the fixtures and results list shows. They also went out of the FA Cup to Gateshead in a second qualifying round replay and out of the FA Trophy at the first attempt, at home to Worksop Town.
A change of manager. Nigel Deeley, appointed in May, was dismissed with his assistant Andy Nelson on 2 November 2008, the day after the ninth of those league defeats. The league's newsletter reported that the club's officials had also been alarmed by falling crowds. They turned to Gary Finley, who had managed Witton from November 2004 to October 2005, with Lee Coathup again as his assistant and the captain, Brian Pritchard, as player-coach. The acting chairman, Mark Harris, said that in his earlier spell Finley had built the nucleus of the team Jim Vince went on to develop.
The bottom of the table. Finley's first match, at Ossett Town on 8 November, was lost, and the newsletter recorded that Witton had gone ten games without a point and dropped to last place. The run ended with a 2–0 win at Bradford Park Avenue on 22 November.
A partial recovery. Under Finley the club won two league matches in December and five at home between late January and mid-March 2009, and had a run in the League Challenge Cup that ended against Guiseley, the eventual winners. Nineteen more names were added to the players page between December and May.
Relegation. It was not enough. Witton finished 20th of 22 with 42 points and were relegated to Division One South; the final standings are on the league table page.
The league news feed
Alongside its own archive the site had a "League News" page, a feed of headlines supplied by the Northern Premier League about all its clubs. The Internet Archive copied the list in April 2009 but none of the stories.
Most of the headlines concern other clubs: managers leaving Marine and Grantham Town, a memorial match, fair play awards, club of the month awards. One, dated 7 April 2009, has a Witton connection. It is the announcement that FC Halifax Town had dismissed their manager, Jim Vince, who had left Wincham Park less than a year earlier and taken several of his players with him. Other records give the date his time at Halifax ended as 9 April.
Sources and notes
The dates in the table are the posting dates printed in the news archive, not the dates of the matches; the match dates are on the individual report pages. The account of the autumn of 2008 comes from the league newsletter and later published accounts, since the club's own site is silent. The statement that the homepage's lead story never changed is based on the copies listed above and on the news archive page itself.