Where the hell does your name come from? “Gerr off Hilditch! Thas not a Patch on Harry Lyons!” My early memories of Springfield Park seem punctuated by one phrase more than any. As the seemingly endless conveyor belt of sub-standard front men were inevitably lined up for comparison to the great man him self, each one in turn was deemed unworthy of following in his footsteps. Just think about it – if the likes of Newell, Campbell, Jewell etc weren’t worthy what chance did the likes of Powell, Daley and Page stand? Marc Hilditch is used as an example above but you could quite easily replace that with any number of others.

Who’s Harry Lyon?A true Latic legend Harry played for the club between 1962 and 1970. He scored 273 goals in his time at the club 67 of them in one season. Although this record is probably enough to give him this status on it’s own his reputation was sealed when he scored a match winning hat trick with only a bandage and couple of tots of whisky to protect his broken ankle.

You can read more about him on George Chilvers’ site but beware, I think the road on Robin park is named after lee-on in France rather than li-on of Wigan Ath.

Now I may never have heard the phrase spoken, at least not without a sense of irony, but to me it sums up those days where memories of chasing non league trophies were still fresh in some people’s mind’s and mucking about in the lower divisions wasn’t good enough for the completely different reasons to nowadays.

The name is a tribute, firstly to the man himself, secondly to the players who quite clearly weren’t, to those who tried to be, to those who nearly got to be, and to the current lot who hopefully will prove themselves to be “a patch on Harry Lyon”.

What is “not a patch on…”?It’s not brain surgery that’s for certain. The site is intended as a bit of a soap box for a group of ‘tics. We’ll only ever appear on the web and aren’t looking to compete with anything else. Hopefully you’ll find us at least a little interesting, maybe even funny at times, and our views will strike a chord with other fans, or at least kick off some debate.

Who are “not a patch on…”?Now there’s a good question. The site was set with the promise of contibutions from friends, as yet I’ve seen precious little evidence of that and a couple of articles aside “not a patch on…” has mainly been the inane ranting of an aging, lonely latic. Should the contributions start to flow then you should get to see the thoughts of about five or six of us all of different ages and different experience of supporting the club. But it’s not a closed shop, if you’ve something to say and think that other people will be happy, then give us a knock and we’ll see what happens. Just one big happy family – that’s us.