ОБРАЩЕНИЕ ДИРЕКТОРА "ПОРТ ВЭЙЛА" К РОССИЙСКИМ БОЛЕЛЬЩИКАМ

So, here we are - our good friend, Sergey, has asked me to write a few words for this excellent new Port Vale website that he has made.

Port Vale is one of the oldest football clubs in the world, having been founded in 1876.

In 1892, we were founder members of the English Football League Division Two, the world's first professional league competition.

Our home is at Vale Park in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, which is in the North Staffordshire region of England.

Just as the famous author of Sergey's home region is Mikhail Sholokhov, so the famous author of The Potteries (the nickname for our region, because of its first-class ceramics) is Arnold Bennett.

Bennett had some amusing words to say about Stoke-on-Trent football and its fans in his famous novel, "The Card" -

http://net1.netcentral.co.uk/steveb/bennett/burslem.htm

You can download and read the whole story here -

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12986

- if you wish, and see how the book's hero, Denry Machin, becomes Chairman of the fictional Port Vale (which Bennett called "Bursley").

Back in the real world (if football counts as real) our club has had many ups and downs, and many great characters, in its long history, and you can read

about some of these here -

http://www.onevalefan.co.uk/clubhistory.php

One of the biggest downs came when the club went into financial administration in 2002, and came within a whisker of going out of existence altogether.

However, after a long struggle, this led to what I consider the very biggest up in the club's history, the fact that Port Vale is now entirely owned by its

own supporters, who are the shareholders of the new Port Vale company.

You can keep up with the very latest news from the present day about the club, by looking in regularly here -

http://www.port-vale.premiumtv.co.uk/page/...,,10381,00.html

- to see how all of the club's staff, footballing and backroom, are re-building our club into something great.

Port Vale is very much a family and community football club; we play a very active part in many of our local social initiatives, and are also a big part of

the efforts to regenerate some of the older and poorer areas of our town.

We also keep in touch with our extended family of Vale fans all around the world, especially by means of the One Vale Fan messageboards -

http://www.onevalefan.co.uk/forum/

- in particular, the General Discussion Forum.

We are overjoyed to welcome Sergey's fellow football fans from Russia to come and chat with us there.

Like most families, we are usually pleasant, but occasionally, we argue. : )

See you there !

Best wishes,

Glenn Oliver

Director

Port Vale Football Club