December 14th 1914 - Great Hyde Hall - Soccer on a Sunday, whatever next, the Priests in the town are mortified, Sunday is a day of rest and for religious studies, not kicking a football around. Despite their protestations the men are adamant, it has to be Sunday, Saturday is when they get their clothes washed, equipment cleaned and to make sure they are ready for Monday. They need the help and assistance of the people they are staying with and they do take Sundays off, not only that but the shops are closed. A fizzer is a lot more scary than a stern look from a man of the cloth, the Majors bite really is worse than his bark and being on parade dirty or with faulty equipment could cost as much as a weeks wages. With many of the local men away the match is going to be virtually a wholly military affair. The Leicestershire Battalions, who are taking the part of Sawbridgeworth and the Sherwood Foresters, Harlow. Support has arrived from both towns in plenty of time and the public houses are brimming, the provost marshal and his men will supplement the two elderly Policemen. Arthur Barrett loves his football and knows the game is on, he will be there. Catherine has no idea her husband is so interested and is somewhat at a loss to explain his agitation and why every half minute or so he glances at his watch, he on the other hand cannot wait for Church to finish and hardly notices the soldier sitting next to Katherine. The match is the idea of Mr Bromfield, the Adjutant, keen soccer player, despite it not being an officers sport, and his challenge of Mr Smyth, his opposite number in the filthy foresters, as they are known already, has been taken up with some pleasure. Both teams think they have a great chance, both know they have some special players in their midst, the Sherwoods ex-Nottingham County and Derby, the Leicestershires many of the men from the up and coming Foxes side. Football has never been as popular as it is in 1914 and that spills over into the army- it is going to be an interesting game. Finding a pitch on which to play had been a challenge, the men already told to bugger off and find somewhere else, when they had set up a temporary goal on the cricket field, the hallowed grass protected by the vintage Mr Jones better than they supposed the Hun would defend Munich. The crotchety old man chasing them off with a wave of his stick, the men running away like so many bad schoolboys, even when Bromfield tried to intervene the old man would have none of it, a swift whack on the captains shoulder, “I say, no need for that,” telling him that this was not the place to practice. The solution had been found by the men who frequented the White Lion, where else! The town has a football team playing in the Stortford League and a pitch of their own, on the lawns of Great Hyde Hall. Permission sought and granted because the landlord, Tom, is the towns club secretary. The publican had also suggested the men take advantage of a man who frequently sat quietly in the corner of the warm and noisy public bar, with a shaven head, he had kept quiet when the army had arrived. Getting on a bit, the man works on the canal, at forty five too old to be selected for military duty. “You should really use Hanson,” suggested Tom, with a nod in his direction, “really, trust me, you should.” And so it is, with the sky grey and threatening, that two motley teams are led onto the slightly overgrown football pitch at the hall, freshly painted lime lines marking out the confines of the playing area. Already the supporters are making quite a racket. The linesmen, selected from the pioneers stationed nearby, one of who is completely clueless as to the rules of the game and who had a quick hours lesson the day before, struggle to get past the baying men, half cut by beer and a few bottles of whisky that have been liberated from the store behind the officers hotel. The first half is a dour affair, the men scared to go anywhere near the supporters and with a referee that is keen to see that the queue for the orderlies is not too long tomorrow, he is the senior medical officer, no one is allowed to get stuck in, until that is, one of the foxes, a name they have adopted from their home town slices into one of the Foresters. It is too much, the man from Nottingham rises, holding his backside, “you kicked me in the arse you bastard,” and with that he lets fly with a left hook one of the travelling prizefighters would have been proud of. Referees are the same no matter what level and ours is no different, apart from what he considered to be a slightly hard tackle he did not see the punch, just the aftermath and a thousand screams from the rowdy sidelines. With one man on the ground and another standing over him, he decides to blow his whistle for half time. “I cant play on,” says the man from Leicestershire holding an old cloth to his thick and bleeding lip. They only have one choice, to try Hanson, the old man from the town. “Summat special,” is how the bartender had described him. The second half starts in pretty much the same way as the first, the crowding men, more and more raucous, infringe on the pitch and more than once the referee has to stop the game to plead with them to jolly well get back so the game can finish. The arrival of the Major soon sorts the matter out, he orders the marshals to push them back, not an easy task, but the white caps are hard men with big sticks. The older Hanson is struggling, his age telling, it is obvious he has some skill but its lost in his puffing and panting as he dawdles his way up and down the right wing. Suddenly the game changes, proper football breaks out, even for a friendly the quality begins to show, the ex professionals, loose now, turn on the style. The passing is quick and on the slick grass the ball follows a relatively true path. The game is end to end, like all football of the era the teams are stuck in a great muddle, all players, apart from the goalkeepers, less than thirty yards apart. A corner!! To the Leicestershire side (Sawbridgeworth), maybe the last chance of the game. To a man they throng together in the muddying six yard box, all, apart from Hanson, who is hands on knees gasping for air. He has found it difficult to keep up. The ball sails high into the sky, a brown missile starkly contrasting against the dark grey. The keeper reaches and punches, the ball, moving quickly now curves away from the goal area, towards the spluttering old man. He sees it late, the cries from the other players and the roar from the crowd is muffled by his own heaving breathing. Its instinctive, twenty years of playing football encapsulated in ten seconds, standing upright he stops the ball with his tummy, a soft landing, he watches as the laces spin, the stitching of the ball, like the wrinkles on his forehead, turn as it drops downwards - he flashes with his right foot. Suddenly the crowd noise and that of his team mates is overpowering, he is motionless as they rush towards him, he is lifted high on their shoulders. The referee, thank God,thats enough of that, blows full time even as the goalkeeper, cap in hand, reaches into the back of the net to pick out the ball. 1-0 .
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 10:36:55 +0000
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