4 out of 4 the last time

A quick trawl of the records indicates that the last time we did this was in 76/77 (that's the season before the Championship one).
Again started at home with 1-0 over Weymouth, then 2-1 and 2-0 at Nuneaton and Wealdstone before 1-0 at home to Chelmsford.
The 5th game was a 0-0 at home to Grantham.

In 99-2000 we won 7 of the first 8, but had the record spoiled at Dorchester in the second game with a 0-0.

So when was the last 5 out of 5?

The Good Book never fails to deliver! In 45/46 we were in the Southern League West and our opening results were...
Bedford A 2-0
Bedford H 3-1
Cardiff Res H 3-2
Cardiff Res A 1-0
Yeovil & Petters H 7-3
We lost 4-1 to Yeovil in the 6th. For some reason both matches with opponents were played consecutively that season. We only finished 3rd.

turnstyle13 wrote:

In 99-2000 we won 7 of the first 8, but had the record spoiled at Dorchester in the second game with a 0-0.

Looking at the archives what brilliant crowds we had in that season averaging 997 in the league. The away grounds too: 936 for that second game at Dorchester and 1,005 at Clevedon on a Tuesday night in March, couldn't imagine that now.

The irony about the four successive wins in 76/77 was that we followed them up by losing 2-1 at Western League Barnstaple in the F A Cup 1st Qualifying Round. We then went on to win two and draw three of the next five league games, one of the wins being at eventual champions Wimbledon, and the first league defeat wasn't until the tenth game, at home to Bedford.

With the friendlies that Results list on the web looks fantastic !

Timbo_b-o-a wrote:

turnstyle13 wrote:

In 99-2000 we won 7 of the first 8, but had the record spoiled at Dorchester in the second game with a 0-0.

Looking at the archives what brilliant crowds we had in that season averaging 997 in the league. The away grounds too: 936 for that second game at Dorchester and 1,005 at Clevedon on a Tuesday night in March, couldn't imagine that now.

Funny, just scanning over those archives by eye (and not actually crunching the numbers), it seems there was a noticeable rise in attendances from 98/99 (2nd season after dropping out of conference) through to 00/01, before dropping again from 01/02 onwards (when I started supporting!!). I'd always assumed that it had been a slow gradual decline since the original conference days, but those numbers are better than some of the mid-1990s attendances when we were in the Conference (and compare very favourably to mid-80s numbers).

Interesting that mid 90's attendances were mentioned in this thread - I seem to remember crowds being much better then with us being a solid Conference premier side, but in fact this wasn't necessarily the case. I was looking at the match program for the FA Cup tie with Bristol Rovers in 1994 at which point we'd played 7 out of 21 home games and were having a moderate season to that point. Our average for those games was fractionally over 700, and while the visits of Yeovil, Merthyr and Halifax would have boosted numbers it's hard to imagine the season average being as high as 1000. Perhaps it's a case of wearing rose-tinted glasses when trying to recall past football stats.

I see we finished 4th in the 76/77 season. It seems unbelievable now that the runners up that season were Minehead, especially now that they are languishing in the Somerset League and are 2 leagues below the likes of Odd Down. I think at that time they were managed by Bob Boyd and had the likes of Jimmy Jenkins, Derek Bryant and Andy Leitch in their side and were all prolific goalscorers for them.