MEMBERS of the Old Corinthians’ football team had to make sure they didn’t oversleep on match days.

Games were held on Thursday afternoons, and some players spent the morning in bed, having worked all night.

Former player Bill Hudson recalls: “Half the team worked the night shift at the Cowley car factory and had to get up early on a Thursday afternoon for a 3pm kick-off.”

The picture shows the team in the late 1960s.

We published an earlier photograph of the players (Memory Lane, June 30, 2008), with an appeal for names from the authors of The Changing Faces of Summertown and Cutteslowe, the latest in the popular series of local history books.

We were successful in identifying all 13 players and officials.

Now Mr Hudson has produced this second picture, hoping readers will supply the names of three players he cannot identify.

As we recalled, the team played in the Oxfordshire Thursday League.

Mr Hudson, of Toot Hill Butts, Headington, writes: “We won the league on four or five occasions and we also won cups in 1966-7 and 1968-9.

“The team played in claret and blue.

“Because my brother Sean and I came from Burnley, the rest of the team decided they would play in Burnley’s colours.”

One prominent player with the team was Doug Buswell, who became well known as Oxford City’s centre-half.

The Thursday League flourished for many years, providing midweek sport for shop staff and others who worked on Saturday afternoons but had a half-day off on Thursdays.

It began in 1904 and, in its heyday, ran three divisions.

It attracted teams of railwaymen, busmen, postmen, policemen from the city and county forces and soldiers from local Army bases.

The league was wound up in 1976, hit by dwindling support and the growing popularity of Sunday football.

Can anyone fill in the missing names?