Tolworth born and bred, Roger Stringer is the heart and soul of the Corinthian-Casuals support, having started coming to games as soon as we moved to King George’s Field in 1988. This is his Casuals story…

When did you first come down to Corinthian-Casuals?

I can’t remember which game it was, but it was the first season we were here. I used to play on this land as a kid and I had an older brother who ran for Epsom & Ewell Harriers when there was a running track here, and me and my other brother used to play football on the grass in the middle.

I was born and bred in Tolworth, on the Sunray Estate, in 1968. So, by the time Casuals had taken over from Tolworth United on that pitch, I was 20 years of age. I’d been to a few games here before that, when it was just a pitch with the white perimeter bars, and then it was in the paper that Corinthian-Casuals were moving here. I’d heard of them, in all the football history books I’d read as a kid, so I was all over it!

For the first 20-odd years or so, I’d go to at least half-a-dozen games a season there, because I’d go and see other clubs as well and I was a Chelsea fan for many a year. By 2011, after we won the Surrey Senior Cup, that was it for me. I binned everything else off and I’ve come to Casuals, home and away, ever since.

How many people were going in those days?

There were about 30 or 40 people dotted around, people with their dogs – hardly anyone at all. No one my age went when I was in my early 20s, it was all old people.

How did the fan base start growing?

Over the years, I asked friends to start going with me, which they did. A lot of them came, and a lot of them left – they came to a couple of games and couldn’t be bothered to come again. But the ones who did stay started to get their friends to come, and their friends then got more people to come. And that’s how the support built up over the years.

Did the atmosphere build as you went?

Around 2005 or 2006 I started cheering for them and singing as well. I was at the Man United game in 2004 and went to Wembley for the game against AFC Wimbledon there in 2008, and I’d just make up songs and shout them.

​That’s when the players started to notice. In those days, it was a jolly-up for them after the game, but once I started shouting and screaming, and singing for them, the players suddenly realised someone cared, and they upped their game. That’s the way I saw it, that’s why we are where we are today.

Your kids love the club too, don’t they?

Oh, they’ve been going since they were babies – Billy, Harry and Rosie. All three of my kids would come along in their pushchairs, and I used to wrap them up at night games, so they’d be fast asleep and I’d be watching the game.

A towering presence in the centre of our team this season, Marcos dos Santos plays with his heart and soul every time he goes onto the pitch. The Sao Paulo native is a boyhood Corinthians supporter and says representing Casuals is a source of great joy for him and his family. Dominic Bliss caught up with him to ask how he is enjoying his first season in Tolworth and embracing the fan culture…

How has this season has gone for you so far?

I feel great joy in being with this group this season. I understand that despite having some players from previous seasons in the squad, we are a group that is starting a project from scratch and this requires a lot of work and dedication from us. Whether we like it or not, it takes time to build everything we want, but it is clear to see that we have great and good fruits to reap soon. I am happy and motivated with the group and also happy with my performance so far.

Can you tell us about your football journey to this point?

When I was 14 years old, I went to my first club to play in the Paulista Under-15 youth league, playing for São Bernardo. I stayed there for a year, when I went to the centre of São Paulo, and after that I played for several other clubs. Then, in August 2018 I went to do pre-season at Penapolense to play in the São Paulo Junior Football Cup.

From there, I went to Grêmio Barueri, and I stayed there for about a year and a half, in the Under-20s, during which time I went up to the professional team and played in the Paulista Cup, as we reached the quarter-finals. After the first team were knocked out, I went back to the Under-20s, where we were champions in the Paulista Cup.

Soon after that, there was the outbreak of coronavirus, and I ended up without a club for a while, but I had a short stint at Colorado Caieiras, who were playing in the second division of the Paulista Championship.

I ended up tearing the ligaments in my ankle and was unable to play in the championship due to the long recovery. I got treatment at the club and then came to London, in search of realising my dream of playing in Europe.

I already had family here and the first club I played for had a lot of Brazilians, so I was able to get used to it quickly. Here in London, I had a stint at NW London, where I was champion in Step 7, and won two cups, then I played for St. Panteleimon in Step 5 last season, before having the great honour of defending this great shirt with Corinthian-Casuals.

How did you come to join Casuals?

Emerson Pilonetto and I already had an old friendship, even off the field. We had already played together on some teams, and he was talking to someone from Corinthian-Casuals and he was going to do a trial. He asked me if I was interested as well, because he knew I was a Corinthians fan. Of course I wanted to, so he sent a video of me performing, the coaches liked it and after that we started coming to training. Thank God everything went well.

How much do you know about the historical connection between Corinthian-Casuals and Brazil?

I remember watching the Corinthians game against Corinthian-Casuals in 2015, but since I arrived in London I never fully knew about it. One time, when I looked at the profile of the Fiel Londres, I saw that they were going to games here in London, so I did some research and started connecting one thing to another and remembering the game in Itaquera. But I confess that with each report I see and each bit of the history I learn, I become prouder to be at this club. Knowing that I am where it all began is a source of great joy for me.

How have you enjoyed your time here?

I already joined this club loving it, but I was very well received by the committee. The players are very close and I believe that the affection of the fans is the main thing – they really welcomed me.

I’ve played 32 games this season, and among all these games there are two that really marked me. The first was when we were traveling to Jersey for a game far away, where we took a plane. I know that in all the games the fans are present and they always go and sing and encourage us a lot, but when we arrived in Jersey and were on our way to the stadium, we passed in front of a bar and I had the impression of having seen a pink Casuals shirt. I thought that it was just my imagination, but when the bus passed I saw all those people, and it was a massive party! Everyone was shouting, I couldn’t believe they would travel all that distance, and I felt a huge pressure because I wanted to come back with the victory at all costs, not just for myself but also for the club and for them.
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The second game that made an impression on me was against Abbey Rangers at home. It was a game in which we conceded a goal in the 15th minute and from then on, we were trying to equalise, but the ball wouldn’t go in. I remember very well our fans sang the whole game but when it was around the 80th minute it seemed like the atmosphere had changed, because the fans were singing louder and louder and banging on the stands. It seemed like we were winning, and their singing renewed my strength. I believe it wasn’t just me, because we were already attacking but from then on we started to be more intense and it was no surprise at the 84th minute when Diogo scored a goal, and with one minute left in the game Shea scored the winning goal. At that moment we could see how strong our group is and how powerful our fans are. In that game I felt a very strong connection between us.

We’ve all heard the story of the Corinthian Football Club and how it was brought into being by the need to gather the best English players together in one place to build a national squad capable of beating Scotland. The Corinthians’ white kit grew in fame and inspired Corinthians Paulista and Real Madrid to wear the same. It remains our away kit to this day.

The Casuals, on the other hand, have a more mysterious history regarding the choice of club colours. There are competing stories, in fact.

The team’s distinctive home colours of chocolate and pink have endured for 130 years and were reputedly the racing colours of one of Casuals’ founder members in 1883, Thomas William Blenkiron. However, it is just as possible they are based on the colours of Westminster and Charterhouse schools, whose players made up the bulk of Casuals’ early squads.

The alternative pink-and-chocolate history is a more romantic tale. According to this version, Blenkiron, a former student of the Charterhouse public school decided to dedicate the colours of his team to Mrs Marion “Annie” Haig Brown, wife of the headmaster and active supporter of all the school’s sports clubs. 

Mrs Brown was known for her pink shawl which she wore in support of the school teams. When deciding on the livery of his team, Thomas went back to his training days and without a doubt in his heart, he knew he would honour Mrs Annie. He chose pink for the colour of Mrs B’s shawl and brown as a nod to the name of his first-ever supporter.

After the merger of the two clubs, it was agreed and constituted that the team would wear the pink-and-chocolate team kit for official matches, while for friendly matches or special tournaments it would wear white in honour of the “Corinthian” history. After several years this fell by the wayside and Corinthian-Casuals went back to wearing a white shirt and blue shorts. 

The return to pink and brown took place in 1997, when manager, Trevor Waller, spoke to the board of directors about the financial difficulty the club sadly found itself in. The members were aware that the club needed new kits, because theirs were worn out, but they could not afford the costs of all the new home and away shirts. 

Trevor suggested, as a way to save money, that we go back to the “Casuals” model. The idea was simple: with that unusual combination, there would hardly ever be a colour clash with any other team, and this way they wouldn’t need to buy two sets of new shirts, just one would be enough! 
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The committee approved the proposal and today the “Corinthian” colours are used as an away kit. A practical but winning choice, the Corinthian-Casuals kit is arguably the most interesting and original kit in the entire English football scene and beyond. You can choose which version of the pink-and-chocolate history you want to believe!

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E. Farquhar Buzzard, or to give him his full name, Sir Edward Farquhar Buzzard, 1st Baronet, KCVO, FRCP, may not be one of the most often-celebrated Corinthians of his time, given he played for the club during its golden age in the 1890s. However, Buzzard had one of the most extraordinary off-field stories of any player to have represented this great club.

A renowned medical mind, he was not only Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, but also served as physician to three reigning British monarchs. He was Physician-in-Ordinary to King George V between 1932 and 1936, and then to Edward VIII in 1936, before being made Extra Physician to George VI in 1937.

Between 1936 and 1937, he was also president of the British Medical Association, gaining the rank of Honorary Colonel in the service of the Royal Army Medical Corps and being made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in the 1927 Birthday Honours.

All those achievements, however, pale in significance as far as our audience is concerned next to his 20 games for the Corinthians, in which he scored twice, and a further 20 appearances for the Casuals, for whom he totalled four goals.

Buzzard’s talent had shown itself early, as he was a First XI player at Charterhouse school, where he played as a forward and was renowned for his goalscoring prowess, netting four times as his team managed eight in a crunch game against old rivals Westminster in 1890.

Then, at Oxford University, representing Magdalen College, he switched to full-back as his side won the Inter-Collegiate Cup three years in a row during his time there. They were so dominant that, in the 1893 season, the Magdalen first and second XIs scored a combined 102 goals and conceded just six. According to A.M. Cooke’s biography of Buzzard, the team’s celebrations after one of those cup successes were “of such character that the dons were moved to take action,” threatening to send down the team officials if they repeated the feat and celebrated in any such fashion again.

As one of the triumphant college’s best players, Buzzard – nicknamed “The Bird” for obvious reasons – was also part of the Oxford University team, showing his versatility further by playing half-back, in sides that beat Cambridge in the varsity match. Alongside him in that dominant Oxford team were fellow Corinthian legends C.B. Fry, G.O. Smith and G.B. Raikes, all of them among the greatest amateur footballers of their time.

He managed to get his mate Fry into deep water on one occasion, persuading him to pose nude in various athletic poses to portray muscular structure. The photos later appeared in a book, much to the shock of Fry’s sister’s friend, who came across images of her acquaintance unclothed in the window of a bookshop in Regent Street.

After graduating, Buzzard played for Old Carthusians at the peak of their powers, as they reached 11 major finals (Amateur Cup, Charity Cup and London Cup) between 1892 and 1897. In one of those finals, he chose to represent his old boys against the Casuals in the London Senior Cup final in 1896 and finished up on the winning side.

Most of his games for Corinthian came in the 1894/95 season, when he was a regular at left-half and scored in a thrilling 5-4 defeat to Aston Villa. Among the other games he played was the traditional New Year’s match against Queen’s Park in Glasgow, where once again his team lost a high-scoring game by the odd goal, going down 3-2 in front of 10,000 people. That formed part of the team’s tour of the north and Scotland that winter, in which Buzzard played a key part, scoring in a 6-3 win over Dundee Wanderers. One game – a 2-2 draw at Aberdeen – was played in six inches of snow.

For all his exploits in varsity and amateur club football, however, Buzzard missed out on an England cap, which comes as a surprise when you consider his time with Corinthian overlapped the period in which they provided the entire England XI. He came agonisingly close on one occasion when the player he was slated to stand in for rose from his sickbed, insisting on playing.

Buzzard was an all-round sportsman, earning an Oxford blue in lawn tennis, and continued to wield his racket into his 70s, often defeating opponents half his age at tennis and squash. He entered the singles draw of the local tennis tournament near his home in Godalming well into advanced age.

In all sports, he always played “with intense concentration, because his aim was to win.” After seeing his son doing handstands in the outfield of a family cricket match, he reportedly returned home looking “very glum”, saying, “To think that I should have a son not keen on games.”

He needn’t have worried, as that son, Anthony Wass Buzzard, became an accomplished sportsman and played tennis at Wimbledon, including doubles alongside his younger brother, Teddy. Anthony’s daughter, Gillian, who helped us with our research for this article, competed at Junior Wimbledon and represented London University on the tennis court.

Footballing prowess seems to have been limited to the one generation, though, as Farquhar’s younger brother, Archie Dougan Buzzard, also played a handful of games for Casuals.

Farquhar strongly believed that team sports were good for the mind as well as the body, pointing out that they put players into a constantly changing environment in which they were expected to react quickly and precisely to the challenges they faced. It was, he said, good training for life to “make rapid decisions in rapidly changing surroundings.”

Buzzard passed away in December 1945, at the age of 73.

Words: Dominic Bliss

Corinthian-Casuals and Epsom & Ewell have decided to end our groundshare agreement at King George’s Field at the conclusion of the 2024/25 season.

Unfortunately, regular use of the pitch by both clubs’ men’s first teams, as well as Corinthian-Casuals’ Under-18s side, has taken too much of a toll on the playing surface. Consequently, we have come to the difficult decision to end the groundshare after one season.

All at Corinthian-Casuals would like to thank Epsom & Ewell for their help in making improvements to the ground this season and wish them the very best in their search for a new home.

We look forward to the remainder of the current campaign, in particular the game between our two clubs on Saturday 8 February.

Corinthian-Casuals will not be seeking another groundshare arrangement for the foreseeable future.