Glover's big ambition

At the end of the 1974/75 season, Prescot Town Football Club was voted out of the Lancashire Combination after finishing next to bottom and even though they were 10 points ahead of bottom club, Ashton Town, who were re-elected.

It was the culmination of a decade through which the club had struggled against mounting debts and shrinking gates. For one Combination game in their last season they attracted just 25 faithful fans through the ramshakle turnstile and the iconic stand had fallen into disuse.

Forced to seek pastures new, Prescot Town was admitted into the first division of the Mid-Cheshire League for the 1975/76 season. Here, they would come up against sides such as Warrington Town, Rylands, Linotype, ERF, and Alsager Technical College.

During the close season the larger-than-life character, George Glover, took over from Mick Maleedy as Manager of the club. Maleedy would stay on as Coach. Glover had been an apprentice at Liverpool before playing for Horwich RMI, Altrincham, and Prescot Town in the early 1960s, either side of spell at Burscough. He had been a useful utility forward. After hanging up his boots, he had built up his business interests to include Manhattan nightclubs in Ashton in Makerfield and Orrell, three discount stores and a furniture manufacturing company.

The flamboyant Glover was determined to get his old club back on the non-League map and breezed into Hope Street in his Rolls Royce, with big ambitions. He believed that the way to success for a struggling non-league club was to persuade a big-name personality to sign for you, thus drawing in the crowds and bringing in much needed cash. Glover’s first act was to secure the donation of an all-white strip, from Liverpool FC (including their famous liver bird

crest!)

His next eye-catching move was to sign the former Aston Villa, Chelsea and Liverpool centre-forward, Tony Hateley from Bromsgrove FC. Hateley, was an immediate success and scored four goals in his first six matches for Prescot. His presence certainly gave a boost

to attendances early in the season, with the club secretary, Jimmy Beesley, saying that gate receipts from the first two home games had been more than the whole of the previous season. From an average attendance of under 50 in their last season in the Lancashire Combination, the average for the early Mid-Cheshire League games was nearly 10 times that figure!

In September 1975, a crowd of over 1,000 (including a spotty teenager who has somehow become the editor of the Prescot Cables match programme) turned up for the FA Cup First Qualifying Round match against the Cheshire League leaders, Stalybridge Celtic - something that hadn’t happened at Hope Street for about 20 years. The big attraction was the sight of two former Liverpool stalwarts, Tony Hateley and Ron Yeats, then playing

for Stalybridge, in opposition. The game was drawn one-all, but Town won the replay at Bower Fold, only to bow out of the competition in the next round.

Just a few weeks into the season, Glover had refurbished and reopened the main stand, and revealed ambitious plans and illustrations to develop the Prescot Town club into a leisure centre, including squash and badminton courts, a multi-games room and a restaurant overlooking the pitch enabling supporters to watch the game in comfort. New dressing rooms and floodlights would also be installed. Glover estimated the cost to be in the region of £50,000.

He had approached the council with the aim of purchasing the Hope Street ground. Glover said his immediate aim was to build gates up to 3.000 - “bigger than Wigan Athletic. If we are successful we can get into the Football League”, he said enthusiastically. “The facilities

at the ground are fantastic, so the potential is really great. It would be for the people of Prescot – a social centre that is needed in the town”.

With things going well, Glover next revealed that he had set his sights higher and he had reportedly offered George Best £500 per game to turn out for Mid-Cheshire League club. But the former Manchester United genius decided to take his talents elsewhere as he crossed the Atlantic to feature for the Los Angeles Aztecs in the NASL!

Glover also had plans to invite former Evertonians, Johnny Morrissey and Derek Temple to join the Hope Street fold. “I have no doubt that I can really put the club on the map by the end of the season”.

Had it happened, it is safe to safe that times at Hope Street would’ve been “interesting”