Between the Sticks. Alan Hodgkinson

last a couple of games. That was some going as our football matches on the rec lasted for anything up to three hours between teams of up to fifteen players. A boy who wanted to join the game would have to wait for another boy to accompany him. The pair would then decide who was ‘chalk’ and who was ‘cheese’. As the game continued, the pair would then present themselves before the rival captains, one of whom would choose ‘chalk or cheese’. There were variations such as ‘beef or pudding’, ‘jam or tart’, all with foody connotations, like the ball we played with. I have since learned that many lads of my generation played football through the war years with a pig’s bladder. If you hit the bladder really hard, sometimes it would burst on impact, hence the term, ‘he really bladdered it’, when a player hits a really hard shot at goal.

      When the pig’s bladder did eventually give up the ghost, you simply went to the local butcher’s to ask for another. Someone then blew it up and tied the bladder’s ‘tube’ into a knot, like a balloon. No one ever had any fear of catching a disease from it – we never considered such a thing possible. And, gruesome and unhygienic as it might sound to put a raw pig bladder in your mouth, I can’t recall a lad ever being taken ill from having done so.

      Many of the lads who played football on the local rec were older than me. As a seven-year-old it is difficult when most of the boys are three or four years older because the physical difference is so pronounced. So I could feel I was fully participating in these games, I always opted to go in goal. There was always plenty for both goalkeepers to do in kick-about matches but, as time went by, I became conscious of the fact that I really enjoyed being a goalkeeper. What’s more, I began to display something of a talent for it.

      I had a go at every sport at school and seemed to do okay at most. I represented my school and the district at football, cricket, badminton, basketball, table-tennis, swimming and athletics. I was, however, very keen on gymnastics and in time I became a good gymnast, good enough to represent the city and South Yorkshire. Gymnastics helped me achieve things other small lads could not, such as greater agility, flexibility, the ability to stretch, reach and dive to longer distances – all essential to good goalkeeping.

      The recreation pitch we played on would not have been out of place in the foothills of the Himalayas. Any team playing up the slope was in need of Sherpas and oxygen masks to stand any chance of making progress. The pitch had been laid on what had once been a Victorian rubbish tip and, as the pounding of hobnailed boots took their toll on the topsoil, the rubbish tip beneath began to give up its treasures. Many a game was halted while one of my pals unearthed something peculiar. The most striking find was a cast-iron Victorian bicycle dug up from the sea of mud in the bottom goalmouth.

      It was during the post-war years, in what has been termed ‘football’s golden age’ when Football League attendances hit a record high, that I first began to collect items of football memorabilia. The first item I treasured was a scrapbook made from sheets of brown paper filled with newspaper photographs and cuttings of my heroes, which I diligently affixed to the pages with a glue I made from mixing flour and water.

      I realise as I look at them now, that most of my childhood heroes in those scrapbooks were goalkeepers. Ted Burgin of Sheffield United was an acrobatic goalkeeper with a thick mop of black hair who had written to United for a trial when with non-League Alford Town (Lincolnshire). The amazing thing about Ted was his height; he was only 5 foot 7 inches. You simply will not see a professional goalkeeper of that height in today’s game, where clubs are looking to develop goalkeepers of 6 foot 2 and more. Sam Bartram, a keeper who served Charlton Athletic for twenty-five years, was considered a giant of a man at the time at 5 foot 11. Frank Swift (Manchester City), the first goalkeeper to captain England, was a larger-than-life character and a fabulous goalkeeper. He had fingers like bananas and many a supporter of a certain age is willing to testify to having seen Frank’s ‘party piece’: catching and holding a thunderous shot with one hand.

      When I was thirteen to fourteen years of age, my book of goalkeeper heroes expanded to include Jimmy Cowan (Morton and Sunderland). Jimmy had an outstanding game against England at Wembley in 1949 when his heroics helped the Scots to a famous 3–1 victory. I listened to the match on the radio and can well remember Raymond Glendenning’s rich and plummy commentary peppered with superlatives in praise of Cowan’s performance.

      Bert Trautmann, the former German paratrooper and POW who stayed on in England after the war to carve a great career for himself with Manchester City, was another hero of mine. As was the dependable Ronnie Simpson of Newcastle United who, much later, at the age of 39, kept goal when Celtic became the first British club to win the European Cup in 1967.

      Looking back, the press cuttings I collected tell of a game that is alien to the football of today. It wasn’t better or worse, just so very different. They also reveal that during the war, when football was regionalised, the game was also mighty different to that of the immediate post-war period. The Football League North Division of 1944, for example, comprised an eye-watering 54 clubs, albeit each club played only eighteen matches. Huddersfield Town were crowned champions and, as one glances down a league table that seems to go on forever, there, to the eternal delight of Liverpool fans, I am sure, is Manchester United, in the bottom half, two places behind Crewe Alexandra and Rochdale.

      As a small boy I went to Laughton Council School, then to Dinnington Secondary Modern. Unbelievably now, the class I was in at Laughton Council School comprised forty-seven children, and what’s more our teacher had no assistance. It’s a wonder any of us learned anything at all – by the time she had taken the register it was nearly playtime! I was never an outstanding scholar, more fair to middling. At Dinnington Secondary Modern my favourite subjects were PE, of course, English (I love to read), music and history. Though something of a scamp, I was never a source of trouble at school.

      I had a really happy childhood. My dad harboured the hope that I might one day become a concert pianist and paid for me to go to piano lessons. My piano teacher was a genteel old lady who did her best with me, but the lure of football was too great in the end. Although I never played truant from school, piano lessons increasingly got in the way of games of football on the rec. I would set out for my piano teacher’s house with good intentions only to then bump into a few mates who would say, ‘Fancy a game?’ Without exception, any inclination I had to play Schubert’s ‘The Trout’ would play second fiddle to me trying to be be Bert Trautmann.

      I suppose there was more than an element of Dad wanting me to live out his dream of being a top-class concert pianist. To this day I still feel a tinge of sadness that I couldn’t do that, but I hope my long career in football in some way compensated him for me not being able to be the Victor Borge of Sheffield.

      When I was around thirteen the family moved some three miles to Sawnmoor Avenue in Thurcroft. It was to be a house move that would have a fantastic and life-long effect on me for, when we moved into our new house, I caught sight of a young girl who lived opposite. Even at the tender age of thirteen, I realised there and then that I had seen the girl of my dreams.

      Being a gregarious lad, I made friends quickly in my new neighbourhood. I started to go about with a group of young lads and girls, and to my excitement and delight one of the young girls was my neighbour from across the road who, I quickly learned, was called Brenda. Our group, surprisingly unisex considering we were all around thirteen years of age, liked to meet up on a Saturday night and go dancing at the village welfare hall in Thurcroft. When it came to dancing I made a beeline for Brenda and couldn’t believe my good fortune when it became apparent she appeared to like me as much as I liked her.

      In the ensuing weeks we spent as much time as we could in one another’s company. What today people may refer to as ‘chemistry’ was perfect between us. I had never had a girlfriend to speak of, nor had Brenda had a boyfriend of any note; we were incredibly naive but I was aware that every moment I spent in her company was magical and special for me.

      In time we graduated from the dances at the local village hall and broadened our horizons by travelling the four or so miles to the local swimming baths in Rotherham where, on a Saturday night, the swimming pool was covered with boards to form a dance floor. The attraction of the dances at Rotherham Baths was the music provided by a proper dance band, The Clifton Group, as opposed to a quintet