Appearances, scorers and a thumbnail historical perspective of each season the club has participated in.

This section of the archive has been built up from the local Hertfordshire Mercury and existing records within the club. However, these are not always complete either because the Mercury was devoting space to other items or the club itself failed to submit full reports. Sadly, as a result some seasons are as complete as they are ever likely to be since all reasonable research options have been exhausted. Goal scorers are however mostly complete.

Individual seasons are listed below with a link to a corresponding record. The format of the records was set up to aid my role as club historian by maintaining a growing record of appearances through each season. This should enable me to identify, for example, key stages or milestones in a player's career with Ware. So you will not find a strict line up of players in their positions for each match just a simple record of who played.

A note on friendly matches. In the earliest years of the club even after leagues had been formed, friendly games continued to be part of the fixture programme. As such they were full games and players' appearances in them counted as much as a competitive game. However, friendly fixtures did reduce in the inter war years as the number of clubs in leagues grew along with the range of cup competitions.

Even so these matches continued to be a part of the season's games and we had not reached the current situation where a multitude of pre-season friendlies take place often with a large number of players being circulated off the substitutes bench. The use of such pre-season friendlies did not start until the 1960s and even then in smaller numbers than currently.

So we have some friendly games that I count towards a player's total and others (more recent) that I don't even if goals scored in pre-season matches are added to a player's total. Determining the difference is not an exact science and I admit to it being a subjective decision in some ways.

Some friendly matches may thus appear with an X against the names of those who played or reference to them may be omitted entirely. These do not count towards appearance totals. A full list of our games and results can be found here.

Abandoned matches. It had been the habit to effectively remove these from the players' records. I haven't followed that policy. With substitutes allowed in competitive matches since 1966/7 (it had happened earlier in friendly matches) it is possible for a player to be injured as early as the first minute and have to be replaced. However that player still gets an appearance in the records.

To be consistent all players in abandoned games from whatever season now also get an appearance in the records linked to on this page. One match was abandoned in the 83rd minute, I'm not going to deny the players in that game a record of their appearance.

Similarly appearances and goals scored in games that are later abandoned or expunged from the records for other reasons were still registered in the heat of what at the time was seen as an official fixture. So they are also added to a player's count in these records.

All this means that some of the club's older records for appearances and goals have been amended upwards.

The season by season records. And now here are the individual seasons. Note that substitute appearances are shown against a blue background. Where no number is shown the blue indicates that the player was named as a substitute but I have no record of whether or not he came on.

Where possible, I am also aiming to accompany each season with contemporary press cuttings, adverts and pictures mostly from the Hertford Mercury to conjure a sense of the contemporary environment in which the club functioned.

Much of the research for this has been carried out at the British Library and Hertfordshire Archive and Local Studies in County Hall to both of whose staff I extend my thanks. I would also like to thank Ian Johnson, nephew of Horst Breiting, for the team photos and Horst's mementos from the early 1950s.

It's a personal matter but I prefer to view the sheets at a zoom level of 75% or 80%. That said, some of the images associated with each season, especially those that are copies of articles from the Mercury, might be better viewed at 100% or more. Unfortunately you have to set the zoom level yourself (blame Google, not me) from the field towards the top left of each screen.

Steve King

Ware FC

1. Map of opponents for 2024/5