Now you probably thought that this card was an easy one, because it said "Ox"ford United - but that was not the main reason for its choice, because the crest of that team actually shows an ox in a yellow shield.
And that relates to the fact that the city of Oxford derives its name from the fact that oxen and other bovines used to cross the River Isis nearby to attend the much renowned cattle market.
As for our man, John Michael Evanson, he was born in the north of England, at Newcastle-Under;Lyme, on the tenth of May 1947, but the much more southerly side of Oxford United gave him his first gig, when he joined them in 1966. In fact his first appearance in a match was on the twentieth of August, against Bournemouth. That was a 1-1 draw.
The problem with this is that our card tells us he "Came to the club by way of non-league side Towcester". A look at the history of that club says that he started there as an amateur in 1964. Finding any information about that team is not easy though as they folded in 1993. The current team is a brand new one that only started in 2014. However the original team seems to have started around the year 1890, as the Towcester Thursday Football Club, something which suggests they were an offshoot of a cricket club, and they kept that name into the early years of the twentieth century. They only joined the Northamptonshire League in 1929, and left in 1931. After that there is no record of which league they played for, until 1967-68, when they joined the South Midlands League.
And Towcester has another cattle connection, as its Roman name was Lactodrum, or town of dairy farmers....
Anyway, our man stayed at Oxford until 1974, when he turned up at Blackpool, swapping his yellow Oxford strip for an orange one. Then, in 1976, he went to Florida, and played for the Miami Toros (and Toros also means "bull"), but only for a summer, because in late 1976 he came back to England and started a three year stint at Fulham Football Club.
In 1979, he moved down to Bournemouth, and joined the team against whom he had played his first ever match. he played over fifty games with them and then left, for Poole Town. It appears that this was a quasi managerial role, but I can find no proof, though it could well be out there, and someone may be able to assist.
According to the Trading Card Database, this is the only cartophilic appearance of our man - but it is not, for he appears on the set of Daily Mirror "My Club" plain backed postcards, part of card 62, which shows Oxford United. According to the names in the lower border he is that one in the middle of the bottom row, who his sporting long and blonder hair. However these were issued in 1971, so maybe the spirit of the sixties had moved him towards a bit of experimentation with a more "Hippie" look...
If this is our man, then he also appears on another Daily Mirror set, of standard card size, called "Star Soccer Sides", and also issued in 1971.
Our set is first catalogued in part three of our British Trade Index, as :
- Soccer Stars 65 x 35. Nd. (50). ... BAR-129
However it does not appear in the updated version because that only covers cards issued prior to 1970.
Strangely, the set appears to have been a rolling issue, as several of the cards can be found in two versions, the second having new text, in order to reflect the move of that player to a new team - and there is a list of those at the Football Cartophilic Exchange/BSS.