Joe McConnell
The Die-hard Fan: Roy Oliver
Roy Oliver has been a Bromley fan for 64 years. The 77-year-old is the club’s historian and a true “Bromley Boy”, starring in the famous book and film “The Bromley Boys”.
My first full season was in 1960. I saw all the home games, but didn’t go to any away games – I was only 13 years old.
My father took me there for the first time in the 1950s. We went during the interval because back then the entrance was free: money wasn’t always a lot. My grandmother ran the tea bar.
I started going to two or three away games, local ones like Dulwich and Tooting and then by 1962-63 I was going to most of the games. After that I went to every game and I still do today.
I was on the support committee for 36 years and I’m still involved in everything that goes on down there. We were volunteers, so in the summer you would do the field work, weeding, painting, whatever you had to do,
One of the most important things about watching a team like Bromley, especially for me, is the friendships that are made. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone talks to each other.
My kids call me the totally crazy historian. But history has always interested me. I always loved history in school, so learning about football teams… like our first shirts from October 7, 1892. They were blue on one side and olive green on the other.
Bromley were one of the biggest amateur clubs in the country after the war and during the 1950s. There were amateur clubs internationals in that team. All the best players wanted to go to Bromley and then some went to bigger clubs like Stan Charlton who went to Arsenal.
But the mid-60s to the mid-70s were terrible years. The ground was in terrible condition. The fences were falling down. There weren’t many sponsors. And then John Biddle came from Cray and the recovery started. We went round and round very quickly, going up to the Isthmian Premier and then down again. And that continued until about 2004. 22 years later, we’re now in the EFL. Amazing.
There was also the fire in 1992, when the whole grandstand burned down, the club room and everything else. It was pretty devastating. We had to play all our home games away.
But it’s a funny game, you know. Fans are very fickle. They support the team when it wins and disappear when it loses.
