The Stagbearer

The Stagbearer

The Stagbearer, first published in 1932, allowed club activity to be efficiently recorded and distributed. Originally a printed magazine, with many adverts, it included articles, reports and results from matches, coaching and training hints and an events timetable. It ran in that format for around 20 years, and finally halted for lack of a typist. Intermittently resurrected over the years, it’s now been replaced by the website, e mail, information sheets, notice-boards, Facebook and Power of 10.

The old copies of Tthe Stagbearer remain a compelling read, especially the columns written by C.G. Austin throughout WW2, which capture the news sent in by members in the armed forces worldwide. Reading it now, we know what was about to unfold, but Geoff Austin did not. History springs to life off the pages, as raw as it was at the moment he wrote it.

When Birchfield Sporting Tales interviewed Tom McCook in summer 2013, he summed up the importance of Stagbearer thus: ‘ Geoff Austin ran Stagbearer and it was invaluable, particularly during WW2, because it used to be sent to prisoner-of-war camps, and it would give information about what various people were doing.’

Reading it alongside the Birchfield Club Minutes of that time, Sporting Tales is struck by how skilfully Geoff Austin did this. There is no mention of the bombing of Birmingham, the evacuation of school-children, and the severe effects that the war had on daily life, although these are well-documented in the Club Minutes books. He trod a careful path, remembering how much families were already suffering, and the worry that the P-O-Ws must have felt for their families. The Stagbearer continued to publish the re-assuring round of familiar results from the matches that continued, whilst weaving in excerpts from letters home from Club members, to keep them in touch with their team mates, wherever they might be.