4 – Growin’ Up
When I was a lad – here we go I hear you say – as far as a junior cricket structure went at Villas we had one team that was effectively “one size fits all” competing at the Under Eighteen age level. Coaches were indeed merely forms of transport as Shane Warne so famously inferred and helmets were only worn by the Germans in never ending black and white films you watched every Christmas with your gran hoping she would nod off having spiked her sherry with enough vodka to kill the cat just so you could just go out and play football. As for child protection, it was only ever needed if the groundsman and resident grump, Tom Brown, caught you playing football on the cricket pitch that he cared for as groundsman at the time.
In those days, Browny, as we all know and love him, despite his many eccentricities which seem to continually expand with old age, was probably going through a mid-life crisis. Fortunately for his late wife Brenda, dearly missed by many and as completely devoted to Tom as he was to her, he never sought to cure this with the odd twenty-year old Eastern European girl as many of us are prone to attempting in later life. A battered old black MG car evidenced Browny’s crisis with a silver hand painted “V” adorning the bonnet, like a poor man’s Starsky & Hutch. The good thing was that it made that much clatter and smoke that we could hear him coming miles off and clear off the field. It was definitely more Chitty Chitty Bang Bang than Ferrari and certainly it had never seen a catalytic converter.
Match Of The Day And Mrs Blackburn’s Wrinklies
In the winter football was our game because as kids we simply loved playing sport and whatever the weather we would be outside getting “black bright” as the term went although I am sure this term would be banned now by the politically correct brigade. We played full-blown games between the future First Team Captain Dave Tattersall’s expensively recruited Willow Gardens mercenaries and the rest of us – the poor kids. They had shiny kit and shin guards but they needed them and when we could not get a full game going we played mini games on the spare land where the clubhouse and car park now sit. For target practice we used the old garage situated right where the clubhouse entrance is now using it as a goal, culminating in the door being buckled to such an extent that it would hardly shut. It could not have been my fault, as most people know I could not hit a barn door from three paces. Although the door would not shut for years it hardly seemed to matter as there was nothing in there worth nicking with the advent of a motorised lawn mower still years off at the perennially broke Villas.
We also used it, terrifyingly so on reflection, to climb on to it is rickety asbestos roof to spy on the legendary Mrs Blackburn who liked nothing better than to get her kit off and catch some rays in her back garden in those days. She was a self-contained nudist colony right on our doorstep. We did try getting closer, crawling on all fours through the long grass and weeds, but we were useless at the silent approach and we would never have made the SAS so it was back to risking a broken neck and asbestos poisoning to cop a glance of her wrinkly old boobs through Duck’s dad’s binoculars. There was definitely something in the water around Villas. Maybe we should have sacked cricket and opened a nudist beach? In desperate times we used it as a hiding place when Browny caught us off guard manoeuvring our way around the garage till we could scarper for our lives.
We were also encouraged in our footballing endeavours by a great guy called Barry Boyd and his dad, Percy. They set us up in our very first five-a-side team entering tournaments all over Bradford. Barry was a single guy in his thirties still living with his dad in a house adjacent to the field, had a great job “repping” with a local bakery and so was quite affluent with a passion for MG sports cars and life in general. In the world we live in today Barry would have had to have more checks and tests than a pre-op heart surgery patient to provide the entertainment we all benefited from. In those days nobody cared about cramming thirteen of us into a Morris Ital and haring off to a tournament minus a pair of shin pads amongst the whole team. Happy days, but Percy’s sad death was calamitous for Barry who seemed to give up on life almost immediately such was the loss he felt and the house reflects this today as a boarded up testimony to a life destroyed. All of us that Barry helped owe him a huge debt of gratitude for some wonderful times and encouraging our love of sport in general because he followed the cricket with equal enthusiasm.
The Villas Open
Apart from football we also converted the outfield into a pitch and putt course. Now this was years before the likes of Callaway and Ping so the only gear we could muster were hand me down, wooden-shafted clubs that sent a shock up through your arms and body every time you hit the ball. Fred, our next-door neighbour, gave me a set of clubs and an old cloth bag that looked like a worn out condom and must have been older than Fred. They almost begged you to put on a pair of Plus Fours before you teed-up. Most of us had gear like this apart from the Tattersalls who lived in a beautiful old bungalow close to the cricket field. Lord Denis of Willow, the head of the Tattersall dynasty, was a world travelling wool merchant and he would bring all sorts of goodies back from the Far East amazing us as young kids with the technology of the Far East and just how much you could smuggle in a bale of wool.
And so it was that middle son Richard joined us one afternoon for driving practice. With our stone age clubs we could barely drive the modest distance from Duck’s house to the changing rooms but, after a couple of plays and misses very much like his batting, Richard finally creamed this ball with his gleaming new five iron and watched horrified as it sailed across the field, whizzed through a hedge and was followed by the explosion of broken glass. Equally as quickly, Richard abandoned the sleek new five iron sprinting off in the opposite direction of home. It was left to Lord Denis’s chequebook to achieve peace and goodwill to all and I had a new five iron tucked into the condom.
Games People Played
There were other games we played as a group of youngsters that did not result in damage to the ground or the surrounding houses but were more likely to cause us physical danger. British Bulldogs, which I am sure would also have to be renamed now in these deranged times before it was then banned for brutality to kids, was a game where the big lads basically minced the smaller lads. The “rules” were simple. You ran at a wall of lads like American footballers minus the protective gear and tried to get from one line to another. You either went around, over or under the wall or made a late attempt when bodies were all over the place to sneak past unnoticed. It was here that scores could be settled within the boundaries of a “game”. The “wall” was often made up of serious big lads like Brent Shackleton, Nick “Ginger” Gibson and the psychotic Brian “Ackers” Ackroyd. In addition there were proper rugby players like Rick Lawrence andJohn Brennan aka JB the uncontested scruffiest bloke in the world. It was not a good time to be a seven stone weakling and your fate was a severe mashing if you did not get through.
The darkest game of all though was with Ackers. From his bedroom window overlooking the changing rooms, he would challenge us to make the ten-yard dash from changing rooms to score hut and try to pin us with his air rifle. You may find this hard to believe but he had no shortage of volunteers and the adrenalin surge you got could not be equalled. It may well seem that I am describing a bygone age and, given that it was some thirty plus years ago, maybe this is so. We had never heard of alco-pops and the only slammer we ever seemed likely to experience was the local nick. The three main social events of the year, actually probably the only three events, seemed to revolve around the Annual Gala, Club Dinner and Bonfire Night which was where the club raised the few quid it needed to lurch into the next year it really was that hand to mouth. Although the club owned its own ground it had precious little else and each year was a battle for survival.
That’s Entertainment?
The Gala was an all weekend event that necessitated the hiring and erection of two marquees on the wasteland in the corner and Mrs Blackburn keeping her kit on all weekend. As youngsters it was our job to “guard” the marquees, which was a great excuse to sleep out and basically try our luck. The boys and the girls were in separate tents but after a lecture from club stalwart Brian “Haighy” Haigh around the birds and the bees – basically “stay away from Our Janice” we were free to torment the girls including the wonderfully buxom Janice as much as we wished. Needless to say there were many early disappointments and our knowledge of girls progressed little over those weekends. Janice had defences stronger than a sea wall as many would testify including Richard Tattersall who found golf a touch easier.
In those days, the Club Dinner was a grand affair where everybody got dressed up and enjoyed a five-course dinner at a local ballroom. Yes we went suited and booted and the ladies wore dresses. In the run up to the annual dinner you took a crash course in how to use a knife and fork and tried manfully to remember how to do a waltz – which was not some down market vodka drink. And yes I did say a waltz. It was the only way you could get near a grope. There’s probably a link there somewhere. And just when you thought that you could put that waltz into good effect with the object of your desire you would get collared by said target’s mum and dragged off to the dance floor for a “getting to know the mum” dance. With hindsight I suspect that there was a mum’s cartel set up to protect their daughters from any miscreant. I am also sure it’s why, after a few experiences of the mummy waltz, flowery talcum powder and a threatening: “Don’t even think about touching my daughter.” I resorted to getting hammered at most events. It’s worked for me ever since.
Progging
The final event of the year was Bonfire Night, another bygone age of innocence where you did not need a risk assessment form to go out and have fun. It started almost as soon as the season ended with “progging” for wood. We collected wood by various means, effectively begging, more often stealing or and sometime borrowing it although the borrowed stuff was seldom returned for obvious reasons. One year, we collected a huge number of planks courtesy of NEGAS short for the North Eastern Gas Board. As these were clearly painted red and white we then stole some of Browny’s whitener for the wicket and painted all the planks on both sides to disguise them. It was a military style operation but the following day an irate local builder turned up accusing us of nicking his planks. He may have had a point, but when he identified the newly dried NEGAS planks as his own, and hauled them on to his van, we were wetting ourselves because the NEGAS logo was emblazoned on the edge of all the planks something we had all missed despite our planning.
As a final mention of bonfire night, if I can use this opportunity to offer an apology to an unknown old lady for nicking her bench many, many years ago and offer to the Gods the knowledge that Jonathan “Chorlton” Elliott had nothing to do with it. One night we had been out scavenging for wood when we came upon a bench. Chorlton was a boy of conscience and reasoned that it may be some old lady’s, she may be blind and her Labrador may not tell her that the bench had gone just for a wheeze as she sat down for her early morning cuppa. Chorlton could be described as a touch intense at times. Nevertheless, we uplifted the bench and began to haul it away to its final resting place atop our growing pyre. Although he was a man of conscience Chorlton was not averse to a degree of violence and began to lay lighted fireworks in our path. It was like walking through Standard Firework’s version of a minefield and I’m sure we would have been in mortal danger had Chorlton bought some of those dodgy Chinese home explosives. And so if your mum or gran came out one morning and she was blind and ended up on her backside, then on behalf of all of us I apologise.
Chris Evert
In between all of this we did see cricket as our reason for being and in 1976, the summer of an endless heat wave; a drubbing from the West Indies; Chris Evert looking awesome at Wimbledon and the notorious trial of Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe who was accused of trying to knock off his gay lover Norman Scott but had better luck with his dog, Villas entered an Under Fourteen team in the Bradford Junior Cricket League following two friendlies at the end of the previous summer. The following year I was made captain and ended the season having played fifteen and lost fifteen.England would have to wait; there was a job to do. As far as the Under Eighteen team went it was clear that if you had two legs you had a chance of a game as early pictures show Duck and me on the front row looking about half the age of the older, sideburn-sporting hippies on the back row. And as I sat there with my black trainers, yellow socks and home-knitted sweater you can see how easy it is to explain that I now have to have the latest gimmick going each and every season no matter how unsightly a lycra-clad forty-something in sunglasses can be in a dressing room. If it is got a logo on it then I’ll wear it and to hell with all the “got all the gear, got no idea” sledges. I agree.
The team captain and apparently local pin up boy, although impossible to believe when viewing the current model, was Brent Shackleton who lived adjacent to the ground and was born to bowl fast and slog it like a mad man. The sight of a slim Brent with long hair has become a collector’s piece. Quietly though there was a revolution brewing and it was led by Brent. There was talent at the club and not just in the pyrotechnic arena. The most successful period in the club’s history had begun. “The Rising” was just around the corner.
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