VIKING REVELLED AS EURO KINGS!
DEFUNCT TOURING SIDE STEEPED IN HISTORY
PASSING by the dilapidated ruins of Avenue Park in Greenford today, just off the A40 Western Avenue in west London, it’s hard to imagine that it was once home to one of the most prolific touring clubs in English amateur football history.
By the time of their demise in 2003, Viking Sports FC had clocked up an astounding 92 matches in 14 countries across Europe.
From confrontations with
Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia, to taking on Yugoslavian giants
Rijeka at their stunning sea shore stadium, Viking’s remarkable long distance adventures became a hallmark of the club.
Viking Sports was founded in 1945 by Roy Bartlett, father of Gordon, and it was Roy who provided the inspiration for these overseas exploits. An adventurous football romantic with an indefatigable appetite for planning and organisation,
Roy believed in football’s ability to bridge geographic and political distances. He was also quick to recognise the new opportunities for adventure that new and enterprising tour operators could offer working class lads.
Viking originally developed out of an occasional works club assembled at Roy’s wartime workplace, the A.E.C factory in Southall, west London. Three years later, in 1948, the club, then the only members of the Ealing Youth League, played their first overseas fixture, a 6-3 defeat to S.K. Furness of Belgium. This maiden voyage made Viking the first English youth club to play in Europe following the Second World War.
The 1950s saw the club establish itself on the senior amateur domestic scene, accelerating through the five divisions of the Dauntless League and, after gaining admittance to the Amateur Football Alliance, steamrolling their way through the three divisions of the Nemean League. In 1953, the club hosted their first foreign visitors, Fleurbaix of France, at Southall FC’s Western Road ground.
After regular trips to France and Belgium, Roy decided to really push the boat out. He arranged a fixture ‘behind the Iron Curtain’, against Desna Chernigov at the Yuri Gagarin Stadium in the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR in 1965.
After two years of meticulous planning and a 2,000-mile coach journey (driven by Alf Manders, the Beatles’ driver on their ‘Magical Mystery Tour’!) through a series of remote frontier border crossings and painstaking check point inspections, Viking arrived in the Ukraine.
A pre-match press conference, a specially arranged training session at the Dynamo Kiev Stadium, and the presence of a police outrider escort to the Yuri Gagarin Stadium were enough to convince the amateurs that their standard may well have been overestimated.
Freedom
The touring party numbered 14 players, including three goalkeepers and only four regular first team players. Indeed, in preparation,
Roy had written to 60 British manufacturers to assist. The sum of the response was 20 gallons of diesel, a pack of glucose products, three footballs and packet of ball point pens!
Sure enough, the hosts ran out
10-1 winners at a packed stadium. Despite the result, the trip was a resounding success. Viking’s tour party were granted a lavish postmatch reception hosted by the chairman of the City Soviets and the homeward leg was rounded off with matches in Germany and France.
It was the success of the Ukrainian tour that prompted another journey east, this time to Bulgaria and Romania. However, the political situation across the Soviet Bloc was delicate in the days leading up to the trip, particularly in Czechoslovakia where President Dubcek’s introduction of western style democracy had received a lukewarm reception in the Kremlin.
Viking’s Balkan tour was certainly ambitious: a 16-day, 4,000-mile coach journey via Belgium, West Germany and Czechoslovakia, with five football matches arranged along the way.
The trip started well with a 3-2 win in Germany against Waldneil, before travelling on to Olomouc in Czechoslovakia to draw 2-2 with Sokol. However, that same night the Russian-led ‘Warsaw Pact’ forces invaded Czechoslovakia, resulting in the club being marooned for two days in their hotel. With Soviet forces approaching, Roy made the decision to make a 300-mile run for the Austrian border.
It was during this break for freedom, that the coach ran into a column of Soviet tanks blocking the road ahead. After a tense standoff with a group of officers, the coach was waved through but only after Roy had convinced them that Bobby Charlton wasn’t onboard!
Dereliction
Remarkably, the Czechoslovakian experience didn’t put Viking off and the club completed another tour the following year, to Yugoslavia with a game against Rijeka at their beautiful Kantrida Stadium, partly carved into cliffs overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Having only been relegated out of the first division the year before, the side boasted two full internationals and an Under-21. In temperatures in excess of over 100 degrees, Viking Sports battled on to a brave 10-0 defeat. Back home the club went from strength to strength, moving into Avenue Park in 1966 and gaining election to the Middlesex League in 1969, the Hellenic League in 1980 and the Isthmian League in 1991. Alongside domestic triumphs, such as the Hellenic League title in 1986 and acceptance into the FA Cup in 1992, the club also nurtured several local talents who would go on to make their names in professional football, including Alan Devonshire and Les Ferdinand, and Peter Shaw, of Charlton.
Sadly, subsequent years ushered in a more difficult period for Viking Sports, with a combination of poor results, dwindling home attendances, and diminishing off-the-field support. In 1989 a disastrous fire started by vandals destroyed the clubhouse and dressing rooms. A name change to ‘Viking Greenford’, presumably to help link the club to their geographic base, did little to help the slide and the club folded in 2003.
With Viking’s old home languishing in dereliction and their adventures now largely forgotten, it would be some consolation to think that those long journeys across a fragile post-war continent may have at least left an enduring demonstration of the possibilities for friendship and reconciliation through football.