By David Richardson
WOKING are set to rewrite the history books – by changing their founding date to the correct year!
The Cards are launching into a new era under American investors John Katz and Drew Volpe, who plan to turn the club full-time and take it into the Football League for the first time, and will be revising the club’s branding, starting with a new club badge.
As part of the big change, Woking will be changing their founding year to 1887 – the year the club was actually formed – instead of 1889.
The famous Non- League side played their first match on Saturday, November 5, 1887 in a victory over Chertsey after the Surrey Advertiser & Country Times had revealed in October how a new Association Club had been formed in Woking.
“No one seems to know for sure why 1889 has been used over 1887 as the ‘Officially Founded’ date of the club,” said the club’s historian Mark Doyle. “There’s written confirmation from early newspaper reports and early Woking FC yearbooks which directly relate back to 1887, in addition newspaper reports at the time of the Cremators famous FA Cup encounter with Bolton Wanderers in 1908 repeat the line “the most momentous event in Woking FC’s 21-year history”.
“The first printed confirmation of ‘Founded in 1889′ that I can find is in the early 1920s. A plausible theory for this error is that 1889 was the first year that there was a printed football fixture card. There again it could be as simple as a club official making an error with their mental arithmetic when the club started playing again after the Great War – I guess we will never know for sure.”
The club has produced two new badges for fans to vote on and the winning option will be announced on March 1.
Katz said: “Starting with the right date for the start of the club is the first stage in the process of building the club’s identity. It’s no longer time for us to be a sleeping giant but a club with ambition, desire and the will to win. Working together as a community for years to come.”
