Charles Henry Hardwick is just another working man, who like so many others lives only for the relief of Friday, payday. Another week in work and another week he is able to provide for his wife Mary and their two children, soon to be three. But it hadn’t always been this way. For a brief period in his history Charlie Hardwick wasn’t just another working man.
In 1901 the new century had been marked by the birth of a son William, Then, Charlie was a foundry worker and football was a religion he was all too willing to pay homage to, but which to be a disciple of was only a dream, dreamed by millions. One day Charlie Hardwick woke to find it wasn’t a dream. The dark, airless heat of the foundry was exchanged for the expanse of mown green of The Wednesday’s Football Club. As a professional footballer he was to cross social barriers and stand shoulder to shoulder with men of a different class. The dream lasted for two glorious seasons and was to end as abruptly as it had started, sending him back to the foundry and reality.