It’s hard to believe there’s anyone with a deeper, more long-running association with the club than Ethel Treagus.
The association with her hometown club goes back to her childhood, and one particularly harrowing incident back in 1947. She was taking part in the Bonfire Night procession when she was pushed by a spectator, causing her torch to set fire to her costume.
“I was terribly badly burned,” Ethel told David Arnold, in a piece for his Sussex Express column. “I spent a long time in the Queen Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead being treated in the specialist burns unit. I was already a big fan of the Rooks and one thing that really cheered me up were hospital visits by Lewes FC football players such as Norman Wickens and Ben Simmons.”
It was another Lewes player who really captured Ethel’s heart some years later: Gordon Treagus. Ethel grew up with Gordon on the Landport Estate, but he didn’t really set any pulses racing until he pulled on the red and black.
“He started out with the 3rd XI and I suddenly saw him in a new light,” Ethel said. “He was so handsome and impressive racing up and down the Dripping Pan. We soon got talking and found we got on really well. Gordon became the love of my life.”
Gordon wasn’t the only player to take a shine to Ethel. In 2016, Henry Muggeridge scored in an away game at Brentwood before racing over to Ethel in the stands and planting a smacker on her.
“Henry’s so special,” she told the Non-League Paper, who ran a full-page splash on the kiss. “They’re all so special – they mean everything to me. The whole club does. Lewes is my life. It has been for as long as I can remember and it has brought me so many happy memories.”
It’s by no means a one-way transaction, either. For as long as any of us can remember, Ethel has been stationed at the top of the Philcox, selling Golden Goal tickets for the Supporters Club. Whenever a player picks up a serious injury, it’s Ethel who’s getting fans to write get well messages in a card she’s bought.
She is truly the first lady of Lewes FC and we absolutely treasure her.
