BACK in 1950 there was no senior football team in the town of Burton-on-Trent but that all changed on July 6 that year.
In a packed meeting at Burton Town Hall the football club we know and love was brought into life. Only a few weeks later, Burton Albion would play the first match in the club's history and start the rich traditions that Brewers fans have come to love.
But we owe the club's existence to the people who packed out the Town Hall 65 years ago today and who proved there was an appetite for a football club in the town again after previous Football League outfits had folded.
Rex Page, long-time sports editor of the Burton Mail, and the author of Wellington Street to Wembley - the first of two books about the club he has successfully published, recorded the momentous event as follows:
"A public meeting attended by 700 people at Burton Town Hall elected a caretaker committee to nurse the bouncing new baby. It was democracy at its most effective because each member of the audience was allowed to vote on the name. Burton Borough received 150 votes, Burton County 52 and Burton Association 7 but overwhelmingly it was Burton Albion that appealed most to the gathering.
"The meeting decided that the club should be financed by 20,000 five shilling shares and Lloyds Foundry enthusiastically volunteered their Wellington Street Ground."
Burton Albion had been born.
And we can now reveal that it was July 6, 1950. Rex originally believed that it was July 5 but he has since delved further into records of public meetings and we can be confident that it was July 6, 1950 that started it all.