Two Rooms And A View: 40 - A Football Period
...An old sports jacket or a jerkin worn with an open-necked shirt was the standard uniform, with a pair of gym shoes providing all-the-year-round footwear. Several pupils wore short trousers until thirteen years of age. Generally, we were a healthy lot but acne was rife, teeth misalignment common and hair-lips not unusual. During the winter, everybody seemed to have a cold and the right-hand coat sleeve was a common replacement for the handkerchief...
Robert Owen recalls his days at the "big'' school.
Academically, I coped very well with most subjects, although we never got any homework during my four years at the school. At the Christmas exams in December 1946, I came fifth top out of a class of forty. My best subject was mathematics and worst, English literature.
The academic mix of pupils throughout the school, was amazing. Several 'A' form pupils were near grammar school standard, yet a number of others in lower forms could hardly read or write. An old sports jacket or a jerkin worn with an open-necked shirt was the standard uniform, with a pair of gym shoes providing all-the-year-round footwear. Several pupils wore short trousers until thirteen years of age. Generally, we were a healthy lot but acne was rife, teeth misalignment common and hair-lips not unusual. During the winter, everybody seemed to have a cold and the right-hand coat sleeve was a common replacement for the handkerchief.
While the school had most problems with those in the C forms, those in the top form were not all 'goodies'. Coal was very scarce and over and above the weekly ration, it wasn't unusual to search for alternative sources of supply. One such source was the droppings from the coal wagon on the railway line near Egerton Road. Unfortunately two of my class colleagues, were caught by the police collecting coal from this line. They were brought up before the Juvenile Court and punished. Our Headteacher was furious, but in the eyes of many, their classmates became local heroes.
Not many pupils used bikes for school. Perhaps this was because of the lack of storage facilities. Bikes were left three or four deep around the inside of an old air raid shelter at the bottom of the school yard. There was no light in the shelter and the darkness lent itself to bullying, theft and alternative use as a toilet. It stank!
Once I became aware that we were going to have a football period every week, I pestered my mother for a pair of football boots. I think she really saw this as an unnecessary expense, but on her next visit to the second-hand shop, she came back with a suitable pair. We had an old cobbler's last and hammer in the house and I remember buying some new studs and attempting to re-stud my new pride and joy. Some new white laces were also purchased and I stole a knob of lard from our rations to grease the outside of the new boots. I need not have bothered with the new studs because as time would tell, most were lost on the very hard ground on which we played.
Every class had a 75-minute sports period, yet the school had no sports field. The nearest facility was at the Brinkburn Recreation Ground about half a mile away. This had three football pitches, mostly covered by ash with a little grass each side of the field. About three times a day, a crocodile of approximately forty boys and a teacher, would be seen hurrying across Stanhope Road and along Prince Edward Road, now Temple Park Road, carrying footballs or cricket gear, according to the time of year. Most pupils in our class enjoyed football but a few were not interested. They hardly moved during the twenty-minutes each way game, and must have used more energy walking to the Brinkburn than playing football. After the game was over, we were ushered back to school for the next lesson, or lunch, in an unwashed and often dirty condition.
Our first football period in September 1946 – like many others to follow – was disappointingly rained off. I recall the period because Jack Shipley used it to democratically select team captains and four teams. He first asked for nominations for team captains. Receiving only four, no elections were required. The team captains of Red, Blue, Green and Yellow then progressively selected their team, one at a time, from the rest of the class. This was rather unfair because pupils came from three different junior schools and an individual's sporting ability was not always known. As a complete newcomer I was one of the last to be selected for the Green team.
As the classroom scribe, my records indicate that we made 17 visits to the Brinkburn during 1946/47 and that at the end of the season the class league table was as follows:
P W L D F A POINTS
RED 17 8 5 4 29 18 20
GREEN 17 7 7 3 24 23 17
BLUE 17 7 7 3 22 25 17
YELLOW 17 5 8 4 15 24 14
The leading goal-scorers for the respective teams were:
Lawrenson (Red) 18, Owen (Green) 10, Kinelato (Blue) 9, and Emms (Yellow) 7.
The hours of the school day were a little unusual by modern standards with a long period for lunch. This was to allow some pupils who lived at Simonside or West Harton to return home for their midday meal. The long period for lunch also allowed time for a very popular annual inter-class football competition at the Brinkburn.
The school was divided into junior and senior sections and classes played each other on a knockout basis. To add more interest, each class was named after some political or military group in history so we could have the Cavaliers versus the Roundheads or the Romans versus the Picts etc.
