Preview: Chairboys vs Silkmen

Last updated : 21 January 2005 By MAD Reporter

The 1845 Act for the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway was conceived to smash the monopoly of the London and Birmingham Railway for rail transport between London and the Midlands. The route continued on Great Western Railway lines from Oxford via Reading to London's Paddington station. But there was an alternative route between Oxford and Paddington - The Wycombe Railway. The original ten mile line authorised in 1846 connected to the GWR main line at Maidenhead before meandering north via Bourne End to High Wycombe. The building of the line was troubled by financial difficulties and on it's opening, the line was leased to the GWR. In 1862 a fourteen mile extension was opened to Thame and two years later the final thirteen miles to Oxford was completed. The line being single track and broad gauge throughout.

The GWR route to the Midlands was some seventeen miles longer than the West Coast Main Line route via Rugby and only single track. It was known as the Great Way Round. The impetus for shortening the route came from the Great Central Railway, who were looking to improve route availability from their London terminus of Marylebone and proposed in 1899, the forming of the GW&GC Joint Committee which took over the building of a line from Acton on the GWR mainline just west of Paddington to High Wycombe with a loop to Marylebone. The line from Acton to Oxford being doubled and further shortened in the standard gauge throughout such that it became two miles shorter than the opposition WCML between London and Birmingham.

Founded in 1884, the club became Wycombe Wanderers three years later. In 1896 they joined the Southern League. They left the Southern League in 1908 and in 1921 joined the Isthmian League achieving some success over the next 60 or so years. In 1985/86 they joined the Alliance Premier League although they spent a year back in the Isthmian before rejoining what had now become the Conference. Wycombe moved to what was then called Adams Park in 1990 and achieved Football League status in 1993.

The game on Boxing Day Holiday at the Moss Rose was highlighted by an early goal from Danny Whitaker, lashed in from the edge of the box. The Sky Sports Goals On Sunday report of the game then gets mixed up about the scorers of the two late goals, crediting the Wycombe goal to Macc and vice versa. But what happened was that Wycombe's big defender Roger Johnson forced the ball over from a corner just about in extra time, before Alan Navarro popped up to score the winner. The two sets of celebrations resulting in there being no handshakes between the managers as the teams went up the tunnel after the match.

Since that game, the Silkmen suffered two poor defeats before the reshaped side claimed the win against Kidderminster. Meanwhile the Chairboys lost to a resurgent Oxford before taking two good draws against Cheltenham and Swansea.

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