The next chapter from Fifty Not Out.
This was a very long chapter, the highlight being an interview with long-time Villas member Haighy. In tribute to the old boy I have culled most of it to retain largely his words.
4 – THE GOOD OLD DAYS
“Say goodbye to the oldies, but goodies, because the good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.” Billy Joel
I have no idea when my long association with the Villas started, but it stretches almost fifty years. Long before there was always Brian Cresswell Haigh. Rumour has it Haighy has been a member of the club since it was formed circa 1902.
The old boy hardly seems to have changed; there must be an art to looking so scruffy. He celebrated sixty five years at Villas in 2011, finally retiring as El Presidente in 2019, tearing up the annual speech repeated word for word since the days of the Bay City Rollers.
In our younger days, Haighy always seemed to be at the ground in his slippers telling anybody that could stay awake long enough what a fine pair of opening bowlers him and his sidekick, Tom Brown, had been.
Whilst most people were enjoying the Swinging Sixties for reasons other than cricket, the already balding Browny and bespectacled Haighy were terrorising local batsmen with a twin-pronged swinging, pace attack captained by the legendary Ernest Jackson.
Haighy has seen it all at the Villas…
The War Years
We started playing cricket around about when I was ten so that must have been about when the war was still going on in the forties. Down at St Cuthbert’s church on Wrose Road there was a patch of spare grass…if you hit the ball to the off-side it generally went under the old building which meant you were out and had to crawl under like a miner to get the ball back.
We were never sure what we might find under that hut. So we all slogged it to the leg side – across the line – like early versions of Viv Richards only I bet he weren’t doing it because he was crapping himself about the Boogey Man under the hut.
There were no houses, the cricket field stood in acres of ground with the old pavilion up in Critics’ Corner open to the elements, although the Luftwaffe never seemed bothered enough to bomb it.
There were no toilets or running water either and we locked it up every winter hoping that it would still be there when we came back the following year. It was so riddled with holes that even the hedgehogs gave it a miss for winter and in those days kids did not burn things down for kicks…not that they could have because it was riddled with damp as well!
We had a bucket for a pee and if you wanted anything else well it was a long walk into the long grass and more tales of Boogey Men. I’m telling you we had now’t in those days just the fear of Hitler coming and stopping play for good.
Manhood
Eventually, I made my debut for the Under Eighteens in 1947 safe in the knowledge that the Luftwaffe had gone but now even more terrified trying to bat on the Villas wicket.
We didn’t have nets or fancy helmets and we rarely practised because it was dangerous enough playing on the wicket let alone trying to find a patch of grass flat enough not to threaten losing a few teeth.
Soon they picked me for the Second Team and I’ll never forget my first match because we only had ten men…some things have not changed.
We started with eleven but when we were warming up – none of these fancy circus cones you lot use these days we just had two balls – which were both thrown at our opening bowler, Bill Tomkins. He was a coalman who turned up to games blacker than soot – our first overseas he were!
He must have had some soot in his eyes and, as one ball screamed towards his head and the other a bit lower down; he missed the second one and went down pole-axed, carried off on the back of his coal cart. Mrs Tomkins was not happy.
A couple of years later I made my first team debut but I had no boots so the Treasurer, Sidney Wilson, bought me a brand new pair of buckskin boots. I got a bollocking after getting two quick wickets with the opposition labouring to get a total and running out of overs.
We didn’t want these two out but in came Eddie Paynter, ex-England captain, who smashed a hundred; my team mates were livid at me for taking wickets! Nay, how can a young lad understand that one?
Ernest
Ernest was livid. He didn’t care if the opposition were none down or all out just how many they got. Still the buckskins felt that good I took the nails out and went off clubbing in them. I think I met Dot that night and even felt that flush I bought her a coke!
The club was run and effectively owned by The Three Wise Men in those days.
Willie Burnhill was a textile man in the good old days. Albert Berry’s family owned Berry’s print works in Shipley and, amongst other things, The Theatre Royal and a local circus, which could have been the Villas I suppose, given what went on most Saturdays in summer.
And finally there was Hubert Long, a respected local banker who worked for the bank that became Nat West.
They bought the field from a turnip farmer through a company called Willowfield Estates Ltd and eventually they sold it to the club for £500 in the forties although I don’t think any money changed hands.
Maybe it was money laundering for a cart of turnips.
Skint
Although we were always skint we weren’t really because we had three wealthy local benefactors. Each year at the Annual General Meeting at the Wrose Bull, we arrived to see how big the loss was that year.
At the end of the meeting the three of them simply opened their wallets and things were okay again.
One year the pavilion just blew away in a storm and we had to collect the scattered bits and put it back together again. It looked like a patchwork quilt and time was not on its side by then. If you said it was air conditioned you would not be far off.
We didn’t have a garage which was just as well as we didn’t have any equipment apart from one mower. We cut the outfield by hand, it was like painting the Forth Bridge.
Once again The Three Wise Men came to the rescue and in the fifties we finally got a new pavilion which was opened by the legendary Brian Sellers, former England and Yorkshire captain. Sellers were hard as nails and he stayed to watch all of our first game from the new hut.
As one of the opposition was close to fifty I bounced him, hit him flush between the eyes and laid him out. Seeing their star man laid out unnerved the rest and we skittled them to win the game. Afterwards Sellers came up to me.
“Did you mean to hit him on the head young ‘un?”
“I did Sir” was the truth but any ball on the Villas track in those days could kill you.
“Good lad” he smiled and walked away for some more cake.
Gilly Potter’s Raccoon Coat
There were some great characters. Gilly Potter turned up each week, heatwave or not, in a raccoon coat, all he was short of was a hunting hat and a shotgun.
There was the City Gent who brought his brolly to the game again oblivious to the weather but he left in a fit of pique after Norman Naylor’s dog, Dandy, ran off with one of his expensive Italian loafers.
Things were changing as developers moved in during the fifties to start to build the houses you see today. What was a collection of farm fields and stone quarries started to become new houses and the old Swain House FC pitch that ran alongside the cricket pitch at the Willow Gardens end was swallowed up.
A lot of the stone for the London Embankment came from around the Villas. We traded a strip of land at the Willow Gardens end to get a much bigger piece at the other end which is why you have the short boundary.
It got a bit better in the sixties when we had a Double Numbers game which raised enough money – by now the Three Wise Men had passed on – to buy our first petrol mower, an ATCO which we all stood around fascinated by.
And then Gerald “Geraldo” Taylor hit on a great idea to mow the outfield quicker. We bought some old gangers and Geraldo fixed them to his dad’s car, borrowed allegedly to go courting and drove around the field in ever decreasing circles, this big grey car with a clattering mess of metal and grass cuttings exploding behind it. Mr Taylor Snr had a car permanently covered in grass cuttings.
Our Granville
By this time Granville Lawson was groundsman and I don’t know if it was because he was one-eyed or just rubbish at painting because the lines on the wickets were thicker than motorway road markings.
One day an umpire commented on how thick these were and Granville, not noted for his diplomacy, fixed his one good eye on the umpire and said “they may be thick but they should help blind umpires like thee lad”’
Granville also opened the batting with little Wilf Binns who also only had one eye so we only had two good eyes to open the batting…no wonder we never got any runs!
Villas was no different from other grounds though and playing at Woodlands old ground was really hairy as the field was surrounded by wheat fields. Granville and me were looking for the ball one day – I should have taken somebody with two eyes – when the farmer snuck up behind us with his shot gun and chased us out of the field.
We did try to improve the wicket and dug it up more than once often being surprised with what we found. One year there was a slab of stone that took ten of us to move and we had to break it up by hand.
Then we found an old mining tunnel that runs across the ground and made the mistake of sending Browny down with a torch, only for him to get stuck. We pulled him out and filled it in before anybody found the City Gent’s missing loafer.
The Dark Arts of Selection
By now although we were surrounded by new houses and had a new pavilion ourselves but we were still skint from year to year. We didn’t really struggle for players though and there were that many that if you didn’t turn up on practice night you weren’t picked.
Not that anybody practised as we had nowhere to practise. We just turned up to await smoke from the Selection Committee meeting room to announce the teams for the weekend. This had a dozen members on it and the Main Committee was over twenty so it was no wonder we got now’t done.
There were loads of players and standards were very good. Most Bradford League teams had internationals turning out plus Yorkshire players and could be watched by thousands.
The Bradford Central League was also really strong as a result and many Bradford League players finished their days in the league still capable of playing at a really good standard.
We also had a weekend team that had several days out a year with coach trips to faraway places like Redcar, Saltburn and Birstwith. At Birstwith the opposition walked off the pitch to abandon the game in response to the calling of the local church bells at the behest of the local squire who owned the pitch. The buggers had made sure they batted first though.
We sang songs on the way there and songs on the way back.
We also had a Half Holiday League team as by the sixties, with Ernest as captain we had an influx of postmen. Even the tea lady for these matches – Gladys Betts – was a post woman.
Captain Haigh – Villas Go On Strike
Eventually I took my turn as captain and two games stand out. I captained the side when the players went on strike in protest at me bowing to a Committee order to bowl our so-called spinner, the legendary Arthur “Arturo” Rooney.
Arturo’s best mate was John “Panto” Panton and together they had protested at me not bowling them. Truth was Panto had been done for chucking a few weeks previous. Chuck it? He could barely get it from one end to the other!
Arturo bowled in this baggy sweater big enough to house a family of refugees, big “donkey-droppers” that fell from the sky only for a batter to smash them back into the sky. I tell you my Dot could turn a ball more than Arturo!
So we had the other lot about eight down for not a lot and I brought on Arturo with the Committee men watching on.
Bang went the first out of the ground followed by several more balls prompting the first ever shutters to be erected over windows around the ground the following week and neighbours reminiscing about the Luftwaffe.
Finally I brought back my openers and we bowled them out. When I got back to the dressing room everybody was getting changed – the team had gone on strike – nobody would bat!
Eventually, our keeper, a young lad called Terry Crabtree was persuaded by his dad to open with me. Terry normally batted at seven so this was a big promotion and do you know what..we won by ten wickets! Which was just as well as Arturo and Panto were next in at three and four…if you thought their bowling was bad!
Arrested!
The final disgrace on my watch though was the only time the First team have been rounded up by the police.
We’d been bowled out for the lowest ever total at Thornbury for 13! and were so down we just thought “bugger it” and decided to go out on the ale so we dropped our bags off and got the trolley bus down to Bradford.
Later on – don’t tell Dot this one – we took another trolley bus up and out of Bradford and went to a place called the Blue Cat at Guiseley where there were loads of Leeds girls who were a bit different from Bradford lasses.
Unfortunately, our opening bowler, John Pullan, had the most possessive wife you could ever meet, not that John could be bothered with other women as the one he was married to terrified the life out of him.
She ruled him with a rod of iron but remember there were no mobile phones in those days so she called the police! Somehow they tracked us down and, imagine this, told us all to get off home – which we all did without question – and I never ever went to the Blue Cat again.
By the time the seventies came along I was almost into my forties and the new houses had started to bring young kids to the club. Everything was about to start to change faster than ever before…but nobody ever found the City Gent’s loafer.”
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