Port Vale 1971-72

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The 1971-1972 season saw Roy Sproson’s 22-year career at the club come to an end, in what was an otherwise unremarkable campaign. With only 2,743 supporters, in a 2-1 defeat to Rotherham United, manager Gordon Lee angrily declared that “the attendance was nothing short of a disgrace to mark the end of a legend”.

By the end of September Vale were performing well on the pitch, and off it had sold the main car park to The Co-operative Group for £30,000. The era saw a rise in violence at many matches across Great Britain. Local businesses had their windows smashed, local residents were menaced and fights broke out in the community. Local rivals Stoke City also won the 1972 League Cup final in front of a crowd of nearly 100,000 at Wembley Stadium.

We saw the passing of English ceramic artist and designer Clarice Cliff during this period. From December 1971 to January 1972, the first exhibition of Clarice Cliff pottery took place at Brighton, East Sussex. Living her later years as a recluse, Cliff reluctantly provided comments for the catalogue, though she refused an invitation to go to the opening. She died on 23rd October 1972.

The exhibition and the first book published privately, ‘Clarice Cliff’ by Peter Wentworth-Sheilds and Kay Johnson (L’Odeon publishing), a few years after in 1976 marked the start of a major revival of interest in Cliff’s work, which has continued to be sought after by Art Deco ceramic collectors ever since…