Blog

Football and the Mail

Here at Central Mailing Services we are definitely enjoying Euro 2012. The office sweepstake was hotly contested, with even non football fans getting involved.

We thought it would be a good time to see if football and Direct Mail had crossed paths before and found that they had!

Some interesting trivia concerning the European Football Championships:

“To commemorate the European Football Championships in 1996 (when ‘football came home’) a set of Football Legends stamps was issued in May that year.

Designed by H Brown, the stamps featured:

19p stamp – ‘Dixie’ Dean, most famously of Everton although he started his career with Tranmere Rovers. A prolific centre forward, Dean stayed with Everton as they were relegated to Division Two in 1930, and the club subsequently won the Second Division in 1931, followed by the First Division again in 1932, and the FA Cup in 1933.
25p stamp – Bobby Moore, who unforgettably lifted the World Cup at Wembley in 1966. Two years earlier, Moore had skippered West Ham United to FA Cup glory, and then sandwiched these two triumphs with a Cup Winners Cup win – also at Wembley – in 1965.
35p stamp – Duncan Edwards, one of the famous ‘Busby Babes’ of Manchester United; who tragically lost his life as a result of the Munich air disaster in 1958. Edwards did not win the FA Cup, but his stature in the game as one of the world’s most complete footballers remains undiminished.
41p stamp – Billy Wright was the epitome of the one-club player, turning out for Wolverhampton Wanderers 541 times; winning the FA Cup with Wolves in 1949. He was also the first man to win more than 100 caps for England, playing 90 of those games as captain.
60p stamp – Danny Blanchflower, who captained Tottenham Hotspur to successive FA Cup wins in 1961 and 1962. The first of these two victories was paired with the league title to create the first ‘double’ since Aston Villa in 1897. Only Ipswich Town’s league win denied Spurs and Blanchflower a ‘double double’ in 1962.”
Source The British Postal Museum & Archive 

Here is to a successful Euro 2012 for Roy Hodgson’s men – who knows, maybe we’ll get to see some of England’s modern stars appearing on a range of stamps this year!