A New Season Ahead

Put those long lazy summer days behind you. The football season is back. The fixtures are in the diary and that age-old Saturday routine begins once more.

We've had a quiet summer in the museum. Our small band of volunteers have been getting on with their lives, so at present very little has changed. However, bear with us; several developments are afoot.

Prior to the Rochdale game David Pendleton will be giving a talk on 1907, the year when politics and local identity shaped the sporting map of our city. Valley Parade was nearly abandoned, the famous Bradford Rugby Club became Bradford Park Avenue and a merger was fought with passion by the City fans. Finally, in the wake of the abandonment of rugby at Park Avenue, Bradford Northern Rugby League Football Club was formed. The presentation starts at 1.45pm.

Sports Grounds Section Returns

After a brief period lost in cyberspace, our section of the website devoted to the sports grounds of Bradford has returned The text is back at least and the images will return soon. You can find it here.

Amazon and bantamspast

In order for us to pay our costs in running this site we ask visitors to buy their Amazon goods through the link below. This will earn us a small percentage of the goods' value. It means that you can help us at no extra cost to you, and we don't resort to placing annoying sponsorship pop-ups! So far we have raised over £90 in four years of operation, which may not seem a huge amount, but it all helps.

Many thanks to all of you who have bought items through our site.

bantamspast.co.uk is an ever-growing record and celebration of the history of Bradford City Football Club: from FA Cup victory to the fire disaster, the depths of Division 4 to the Premier League, it's all here. And alongside accounts of such big events are reminders of players and matches perhaps less remarkable in terms of success or failure. They are however no less significant in our collective memory and in what makes us all supporters of what we believe to be the world's greatest football club.

bantamspast.co.uk evolved from the highly successful ‘100 Years of Claret & Amber’ exhibition, held to celebrate Bradford City’s Centenary at the Bradford Industrial Museum. Over 10,000 fans visited the exhibition, which ran from 21 September-16 November 2003. We’ve combined text from the exhibition storyboards with images of the exhibits to give a virtual tour and allow the exhibition to live on. We hope this site will become a focal point for those interested in the history of Bradford City. Indeed, we expect that the site will evolve and expand. Contributions will be the lifeblood of this project. Scanning programmes, photographs, recording interviews or researching the missing history of the club takes valuable time. We welcome with open arms all who wish to help in anyway they feel fit. This is your project, one for and by ordinary Bradford City fans. The sole aim is to record City’s history and make it available to as many Bradfordians as possible.