The clue here was that these players come from MOTHERwell. This seems to be the only football team in the World that has Mother in its name - though there was briefly Mother City F.C. in South Africa, which was founded in 1999 and closed in 2002.
If you know of any other teams, or have any cards showing Mother City F.C. please tell us.
If you are a Motherwell supporter there are a huge amount of cards to collect - check out TheTradingCardDatabase/Motherwell who says the total is 1,266, starting with Gallaher`s 1910 set of Association Football Club Colours 31/100. That card shows Jimmy Murray, who was actually Irish. In his day the team played in a different strip to this shown, namely blue shirt and white shorts - and I always think wearing white shorts for a football match on a muddy grassy pitch is a headache waiting to happen for the team laundrymaid, who obviously had no say in the matter.
It appears that the first time our strip made its cartophilic appearance was on the 1924 set of "Footballers" by Glasgow confectioners John Fishill, for the only two cards of F & J Smith "Footballers (1912) that feature the team are black and white and show Jim Bellamy in a jumper (which I thought, wrongly, must mean he was the goalkeeper) and Colin Hampton in a suit and tie.
So I cannot find this set in our original British Trade Indexes, the final set listed in part three is "Football 86", and part four simply diverts you to the previous volume without adding any extra cards.
The album for this set has a title box which is exactly the same as the title box on this sticker, apart from the fact that the circle on the album is a coloured Union Jack. At the bottom right is a box and logo which announces that this is the tenth anniversary of Panini, and also a notice that if you collected these stickers you could help raise £50,000 for Cystic Fibrosis. I have not found anything else out about this, so is there anyone out there who can explain how this scheme worked ?
This sticker is from the final section of the set, and the fact that there are two strips does not actually mean that it is a scene from a match - it is simply the two strips that were used by this club at the dates given on the right and left hand side.
There is a checklist, of sorts, at LastSticker/86-87 - it is actually a chart to allow you to swap the cards but it serves our purpose as well.