Card of the Day - 2021-12-04

Unusually, this set has no firm issue date, even our original Churchman Reference Book of 1948 has “? 1914”, it is even odder because the dates in this book were supplied to us by Churchman themselves and the printers Mardon and Hall. It is also untitled, you may believe there to be one, because it has those large banners at top and bottom, but not a one contains any notion of a title; this is almost certainly why it is known as “Footballers – photogravures”, “Footballers – photogravure portraits”, and “Footballers – brown”.

The player, G. Holley, actually George Holley, of Sunderland gave us our first clue, (the Holley – or Holly). He was born on November 20 1885, and stayed with Sunderland for most of his life, playing in the 1913 F.A. Cup final, and he also played for England many times, finally becoming became a coach/trainer. He also appears on other cards, F. & J. Smith’s “Footballers” Series 2 (S548-220.2ii - 1909) card 98 which is a curiously numbered set indeed; the confusion seems to have arisen out of the first set of fifty, which was numbered 2-52, because for some reason cards 1 and 13 were not issued. This ought to have led to the second series starting at 53, but 53 and 54 were not issued either, so the second series starts with card 55 and ends with card 104. He also appears on F. & J. Smith`s “Footballers” (S548-220.3 - 1914) 116/150 - which has “varying advertisements” to the reverse, and was also available as pale or deep blue backs, though both were priced at 3/6d a card in the 1950 London Cigarette Card Company catalogue, which means that none was scarcer than the other. Finally he is shown in his England kit on Wills “International-Footballers – season 1909/1910” an overseas issued set which was issued branded for Scissors and United Service from November 1910, and branded for Flag at a different date, (which I cant find). At one time this set was catalogued together as W/242, but now the Scissors version is catalogued as W675-506, the United Service version as W675-532, and the Flag version as W675-431.

George Holley died on 27 August 1942, I first wondered, given the date, if this was a war related incident, but he was almost sixty and apparently he had been unwell for some years. You can see his stats at the England Football Online website

His son, Tom Holley, was also a footballer, and you can see him on a card as well – Carreras “Popular Footballers”(C151-365 - 1935) 31/48. There might be others, of father and son, so do let us know if you know of one

Holly is one of the best known of all the Christmas trees, it may be prickly, but it is sculpturally beautiful, and also comes in a variegated form. It is also a provider of food for many species of birds with its easy to locate bright red berries, and its sharp pointed exteriors give our feathered friends somewhere to hide should a larger predator come along.