Edgar Kail England Amateur Cap

England international Edgar Kail was by far Dulwich Hamlet’s most illustrious player. 

A skillful inside-right, Kail won 21 Amateur caps and 3 Full caps (versus France, Belgium and Spain in 1929).

The cap in the picture is from March 1924 when England beat Wales 2-1 in Llandudno.

Gazers at blazers

The Dulwich Hamlet Pop-Up Museum was a great success, with about 60 or 70 people coming along to see some of the things we had on show. The highlights included an England cap of the legendary Edgar Kail, the shirt that Ernie Toser wore in the 1937 Amateur Cup Final and the winner’s medal that he won three years earlier in the same competition.

The walls of the boardroom are decorated with pictures as it is, and first time visitors were in for a treat. Added to that there was also a chance to view a number of rarely seen team photographs, programmes, picture cards, posters, autograph books, handbooks and other ephemera from my own small collection. 

The most popular item on show was Sid Simpson’s pink and blue striped cricket blazer. Some suggested that if we were to reproduce them they would be a big hit on the terraces at Champion Hill. 

Another highlight was a newspaper report after the 1932 Amateur Cup Final when Edgar Kail put on one of his greatest displays. The relevant section can be seen below.

It was a great joy to flick through a series of scrapbooks from the 1940s and 50s that Alex Crane brought along, and chat with young and old about the rich and glorious history of the Dulwich Hamlet Football Club. 

There was a wide range of visitors from 96 year old Bill Kirby, our most senior supporter, down to one year old babe in arms Oisin Molloy-Vaughan. Although Bill first saw Dulwich in the 1930s, more than half of those who signed the visitors book saw their first Hamlet match in the 21st Century.

E.H. 'Tim' Coleman Autograph

On Ebay at the moment there is an autograph up for grabs. With a starting bid of just 99p you might just get lucky.

The ancient sheet of pink paper is hand-signed by Dulwich Hamlet's England international goalkeeper E.H. 'Tim' Coleman. Coleman kept goal for the Hamlet either side of the First World War and was a member of the Victory side of 1920. That team won the double - the Isthmian League and the FA Amateur Cup, and one or two other pots as well.

Coleman played for the full England side eight years before Edgar Kail made his three apearances.

Coleman gathers the ball for England v Wales in Cardiff, March 1921.

The England team

The Dulwich Hamlet Pop-Up Museum will be open on the afternoon of Saturday 7 May. On display will be another of 'Tim' Coleman's signatures. This one with the whole Hamlet team on the back of a postcard. The exhibition is for one day only - opening at 2:00pm until 5:30pm. We look forward to seeing you.

Pop-Up Museum

It gives us great pleasure to announce that the Hamlet Historian will be setting up a Pop-Up Museum in the club boardroom for the afternoon of Saturday 7 May 2016 from 2:00pm until 5:30pm.

At 3 o’clock the same day a Dulwich Hamlet XI will play a match against the Dulwich Hamlet Supporters Team.  I have played in a couple of these matches myself, the first of which was my debut for the Supporters Team over twenty years ago. I will never forget the game because I had to mark my hero Frank Murphy in the first half and Player of the Year Gary Hewitt in the second half! So put a note in your diary to come along and support this event, and others over the same weekend. Details can be found at the Dulwich Hamlet website.

The Dulwich Hamlet FC boardroom is almost a museum in itself anyway, and the club have graciously allowed us to use it for a couple of hours. If you have not been in there before it will be well worth taking this opportunity. Feel free to come along and say hello and check out some of the exhibits and memorabilia that we hold.

Among the items on display will be one of the legendary EdgarKail’s amateur England caps, Ernie Toser’s Dulwich Hamlet shirt from 1937 FA Amateur Cup Final, and one of his two winner’s medals. The Ernie Toser shirt, which he kept in a drawer for decades, was the prototype for the popular TOFFS retro shirt.

If you have any Hamlet related paraphernalia that you would like to bring along to show us, we would be more than pleased to see you.