Vale fans were furious as Stoke started bid to add City to their name

WITH STOKE-ON-TRENT CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF CITY STATUS THIS WEEK, PETE SMITH LOOKS BACK AT THE DISPUTE IT CAUSED BETWEEN FANS OF STOKE AND PORT VALE...

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A LETTER was printed in The Sentinel 100 years ago this weekend that set into motion what would prove la major, lasting change to Stoke City Football Club.

Stoke-on-Trent was granted city status on June 5, 1925 and, three days later, a Sentinel reader calling themselves A Citizen wrote in suggesting that it would be fitting if the area's premier football club added a new suffix to its name.

“I think it would be reasonable to change the name of our football to Stoke City FC,” they wrote, “and that the officials and players should try their best to bring back the higher class football to the City of Stoke.”

Stoke had been formed, so legend has it, in 1863 and were originally known as Stoke Ramblers. It had become Stoke in 1878, was Stoke when it was one of 12 founding members of the Football League, Stoke when it went bust and was reborn in 1908 and Stoke when it finished 20th in the Second Division, one point above the relegation places, in 1924/25.

The immediate aftermath didn't go quite how the letter writer might have expected.

First of all, there was opposition - not particularly from fellow Stoke supporters but by the black and white lot from across the city - with a suggestion that Port Vale, then playing in Hanley and having finished eighth in the Second Division, had an equal if not better right than Stoke to change its name to Stoke City.