Pablo voted our greatest League captain
You must have done something right if more than 90% of people voting in a poll choose your name – and that is exactly how Pablo Mills has been honoured as Crawley Town’s greatest captain in a poll conducted with the club’s fans as part of The Football League's 125th anniversary celebrations.
Mills, now of Bury, first had a loan spell with Crawley in 2007 but he really made his name with the then-Conference Red Devils when he joined them in 2010 on a permanent deal.
He led Crawley to a barnstorming promotion to The Football League as Conference champions and was named in the Conference Team of the Season before their debut season as a League club saw them follow one promotion with another and go up to League 1 at the first attempt.
Mills collected 91% of the votes cast in the poll with Josh Simpson and Dannie Bulman making up the rest of the top three.
The 2010/11 season was also a runaway winner in the poll to find the club’s best campaign, pulling in 90% of the votes, as we earned League status as winners of the Conference.
The man in charge of Crawley during their rise from the Conference to League 2 was Steve Evans who secured 48% of the vote as the club’s greatest manager. Evans left in 2012 and the man who replaced him, Richie Barker, picked up 44% as the Red Devils went up again to establish themselves in League One.
There was also a runaway winner of Crawley’s greatest player poll with striker Matt Tubbs, a star of those successive promotions, racking up 78% of the votes to come ahead of Sergio Torres and Bulman.
Mills, Tubbs and Evans sit alongside legends of the game including Sir Brian Clough, Bobby Robson, Sir Tom Finney, Billy Wright, Sir Stanley Matthews, Trevor Francis, Billy Bremner and Herbert Chapman who have all been named in a list of the greatest contributors to clubs’ league history in a vote as part of The Football League’s 125th Anniversary celebrations.
The names feature in lists for each of the current 72 Football League clubs’ greatest in various categories including managers, players, captains, fan favourites, matches and seasons. The polls were run by The Football League to celebrate each club’s own contribution to the last 125 years of league football. The results have been announced on the anniversary of The Football League’s formation on 17th April 1888 to bring down the curtain on a year of activity celebrating the start of the world’s original league football competition.
Nearly 100,000 votes were cast in the polls after clubs were first invited to compile their own shortlist for each category based on fans’ nominations via social media.
A list of the winners in each category can be seen at www.FL125.co.uk/vote, and a club-by-club breakdown for each vote with more detail on the winners can be seen here.
Supporters can find out more about The Football League’s 125th Anniversary at www.FL125.co.uk.
Fans also still have a chance to visit a special exhibition called ‘Game Changers’ at the National Football Museum in Manchester celebrating 125 years of The Football League, with contributions from every club. The exhibition is free to enter and open 7 days a week.
For more details visit http://po.st/GameChangers.
