Port Vale have today planted an English Oak at Vale Park as part of the "For Club and Country project", which aims to create a woodland memorial to footballers who served their country in the First World War.
Playing, managing and admin staff were all in attendance, marking the occasion with a minutes silence. Neil Aspin planted the tree with help of four local students from Moorpark Junior School.
In partnership with the Woodland Trust and National Football Museum’s ‘For Club and Country project’ The Premier League, English Football League, Professional Footballers’ Association and Football Association are planting trees to create a living legacy to the footballers who served and died 100 years ago in the First World War as part of the national, Football Remembers campaign.
Players became so much more than just heroes on the football pitch. Some of the more unlikely heroes of the First World War were the footballers of the time, who bravely joined up and went off to war. As they left the hallowed turf of professional football pitches for the trenches of the front line football and families were changed forever.
Almost every team in the league sent players to the front between 1914 and 1918 and many never returned. Those that did were never the same again. The Woodland Trust project For Club and Country also remembers the women, who single-handedly kept the national game alive during the conflict, playing in front of hundreds of thousands of supporters.
Our Valiants who lost their lives in World War One and Two are as followed:
Frank Cannon
Joseph ‘Tommy’ Regan
Leigh Richmond ‘Dickie’ Roose
John Shelton
Robert Suart
Jack George Yuill
Tom Cooper
Haydn Dackins
Sam Jennings
Tom Cooper
Haydn Dackins
Sam Jennings
Freddie Mills