Meads Celebrate ‘Les Russell Day’

Footbal club remembers their founder member

On Sunday 29th November the Old Meadonians Football Club celebrated the day when, in November 1929, founder member Les Russell, a pupil at Chiswick County Grammar School for Boys, crossed out ‘Science Exercise’ on the front of his science exercise book and wrote in ‘OLD MEADONIANS FOOTBALL CLUB MINUTE’ in front of ‘Book’!

The day always has a bitter sweet feel to it as club members owe a double debt to Les since he was killed in the first year of the Second World War.

The name ‘Old Meadonians’ derived from the colloquial name for the school, ‘The School in the Meadows’, meaning Dukes Meadows and marks the club’s progress from acorn-like beginnings when, in the early thirties, the Brentford and Chiswick Times reported that the club felt it could now turn out eleven players each week, to these days when it runs ten sides and provides football for over two hundred players in a season, ranging in age from sixteen to over sixty.

For those willing to brave the inclement elements, Riverside Lands had a veterans cup game versus Fitzwilliam Old Boys on offer, kicking off at 11am. The hardy types were justly rewarded when a Meads’ team consisting of the core of the club’s sensationally successful first team squad which, in the decade from 1998, had won fifteen trophies and boasted between fifty and sixty medals between them treated spectators to a tasty hors d’oeuvres to the day’s proceedings by beating the doughty visitors 2-nil.

All then adjourned to the welcoming warmth of Meads’ well appointed bar in the Boathouse to be joined by their contemporaries from the past five decades who had finished their lie-in, for a buffet, good ale and reminiscences to the soulful sound of a fine nine piece outfit called ‘Jazz Mondays’.

December 2, 2009