Fast Fiction: Winter In Wanslow
Winter in Wanslow is a bleak time when you are player-manager of the local football club, as Richard Mallinson reveals.
One winter in the 1950s I moved to a small Midlands town called Wanslow as player-manager of the local football team.
I lodged with a Mrs Ida Kilver and her sick husband in a terraced house in Grist Street, not far from the ground.
'I ope you'll find the room to your loikin,' said Mrs Kilver, 'the last gentleman we ad ere were a bit finicky.'
The weather was atrocious and elderly people fell on the ice and broke their bones. Some of them died later in the town's large gloomy hospital.
We were near the bottom of the division and hardly anyone thought we could survive. Gates were pathetic and I was paid a pittance, even for those days.
The trainer, Jim Frender, had played for Wolves long ago. 'What will you do if you lose this job?' I asked him over a pint in the pub at the end of Grist Street.
There's bugger all else that ah can do,' he said, his grey face twitching.
Next day against Wickley United I rallied our side as the ice turned to mud. Ten minutes from time I headed the only goal of the match.
That night in the bar the club chairman, Arnie Underwood, said, 'Well done, lad' and bought me a half.
Then he said, 'We can't afford to keep old Frender on as trainer, yow know.'
'That seems a bit -' I began.
On the Monday morning I shook hands with Jim as he left the ground for the last time. 'Now ahve got to go ome an tell t'missis,' he said, pulling up his collar.
As for me, I lasted until the end of the season, by which time we were out of the relegation zone - but only just.
Arnie Underwood said, 'Nay, lad, we can't go on driftin loik this, we need a man from one of them bigger clubs.'
'And how much will you pay him, you tight bugger?' I almost asked.
When I told Mrs Kilver that I was leaving she flapped her duster, causing her husband to cough and gesture helplessly with a cigarette.
