For those of you who don’t know much about our opponents on Saturday (and to be fair, why should we be expected to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of every Northern Sunday League club after all?), Wikipedia has the following to say:
"Norwich Victorinox were originally founded in 1883, and were the works team of the Victorinox Swiss Army Knife factory, originally based just outside Norwich - hence ‘Norwich Victorinox’.
Following the Great Depression, the Victorinox factory was closed down, and the workers departed en masse to other parts of the country looking for jobs (see also “the Marrow Crusade”). A number of them settled near Manchester, and using their metal-working expertise founded a tin pot factory, as a workers’ co-operative.
Reviving the defunct ‘Norwich Victorinox’ name, the works team played in several irrelevant, badly-attended Sunday leagues over the next seventy-odd years, their greatest success until very recently being their AET win over a Macclesfield reserve side in the final of the 1978 Cheshire & Manchester Senior Floodlit Cup.
“When the Vics - Went up - To lift the Floodlit Cup - Were you there, Were you there?” Indeed.
In 2004, however, Victorinox attained the nose-bleeding heights of the Conference National. Fifth place in the Unibond Tinpot Alliance League (following administrative errors on the part of the club secretaries of Atletico Salford, FC Real Grimsby and Wallasey Park Avenue) was enough to tie the Vics in a two-legged play-off against perennial strugglers Whitby North End. Trailing by three goals to nil after the first leg, Norwich Victorinox won the tie overall by dint of North End going bankrupt, their average attendance of 18 not being enough to keep the wolf from the door.
Since then, Norwich Victorinox - despite being generally accepted as ‘rubbish’ (Richard Keyes), ‘horifically badly supported’ (Paul Parker) and ‘the most tinpot, amateurish and basically cr*p side I’ve ever played - they’re a joke’ (our own Barry Quinn) - have managed to remain in the Conference National.
That this is mainly as a result of other teams going bankrupt and giving them a reprieve come the end of the season is, it seems, irrelevant.
Norwich Victorinox - forged by steelworkers, saved by administrators"
I hope this helps, gents - as for the visit of the plucky Northerners, I’m willing to put in a couple of quid to help pay for their mushy-pea supper on the night. I hope you’ll find it in your hearts to join me.
Oxford United - officially about ten times bigger than Norwich Victorinox.
well, it made me laugh.:laugh: