Pat Lindsey Oral History Recording

Pat Lindsey Oral History Recording

Pat Lindsey

An oral history interview with Pat Lindsey

Michael Romyn

Kent's Sporting Memories

Interview recorded on 1 March, 2019

Pat Lindsey; Michael Romyn

Kent's Sporting Memories

MP3 file; also available in WAV
(1:19:20)

English

Sound Recording

Pat Lindsey

Sound recording

(1:19:20)

Kent’s Sporting Memories Oral History Transcript
Interviewee: Pat Lindsey
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 1 March, 2019
Location: Lydd Football Club, Lydd, Kent.

PL: My name is Patrick Lindsey, born in Lydd, and I’m 5/2/46 me birth, which makes me 72.
MR: And your parents, where were they born?
PL: My Mum in Lydd, and my Dad in Battersea.
MR: How did they meet?
PL: Army, my Dad was in the army.
MR: And their birth dates?
PL: …1910, sorry, and 1917 my Mum. I don’t actually know the dates.
MR: And your brothers, they’re older than you?
PL: They were.
MR: What are their birth dates?
PL: 1939, and 1936.
MR: And your 1943?
PL: Forty-six.
MR: So that’s seven and…
PL: Ten [their ages when Pat was born].
MR: So you grew up in Lydd. What are your strongest memories of growing up in the village?
PL: Community really. We knew everybody. Everybody knew you. If there were any problems it was sorted quickly! And great growing up.
MR: What did your parents do for a living?
PL: My Dad worked in the army camp, my Mum didn’t work a lot – she was home out, as they called them in them days.
MR: Where was the army camp?
PL: Just over the road here. That’s now terrorist training. We always had a regiment in, so it was good because they were really a part of the community.
MR: So they’d come in from the outside and always be in the village?
PL: Yeah, they’d mix with the villagers and it was great – I liked them because they played football, they played cricket, they intertwined with the community really.
MR: Did your parents play sport?
PL: No.
MR: Not at all?
PL: My Dad done boxing.
MR: Did he do that in the army?
PL: Army.
MR: Was he any good?
PL: Took hidings I should think! Had to didn’t they. They were just told to get in there and I suppose fighting for the regiment.
MR: Did he ever encourage you to take up boxing?
PL: No, but Lydd had a boxing club when I was little, in the middle of the town. A youth club, but it was a boxing club and I just remember it but not very well.
MR: Did it close down?
PL: It closed down probably in the late, early fifties I would think.
MR: What is it now? Is the building still there?
PL: Yeah, offices.
MR: Did your Dad ever go down there to box?
PL: No, but he took my brothers down. I know my one brother, Mick, boxed there. Because what happened was, they was tied with the army camp because they done boxing so there was always a training for the army camp as I saw it. I was told.
MR: But you and your brothers always played football? That was the main thing?
PL: Cricket and football.
MR: Cricket in the summer and football in the winter?
PL: Yeah.
MR: And so Lydd football club – has that always been around?
PL: 1895, I think.
MR: Your brothers joined?
PL: Yeah, my brothers played. He was fifteen, Brian, so fifteen on thirty-six, is fifty-one isn’t it? He played from 1951. And that’s, he was good, a very good player. Mick played seven years later. He still holds the record for goals in a season, ninety-one goals.
MR: That’s still the record.
PL: Yeah – that bloke over there, Docker Williams [motions to photograph], he held it before, I think he had seventy-two.
MR: I bet he was annoyed!
PL: Yeah, yeah. His son’s one of my best pals. Yeah, John.
MR: Has anyone got close to the ninety-one?
PL: No, I think fifty-ish. Different football now. We’re playing in a different league. We’re playing in a higher league. When I was little, you know, we’d win eleven – one against a team in Folkestone and probably Mick would have seven goals of that so you would soon tot up ninety-one, that many goals, but it’s still an achievement, you know. They were good players them two. And most of them teams up here that you there were good sides.
MR: Do you remember going to watch them play?
PL: Yeah, I used to go and watch them every week. Had a bus Lydd did, a coach, little coach. We used to leave the square on the Saturday and go all over. Folkestone was the main one, and Ashford for a start, and then we went into a higher league, and we was up around Margate and Canterbury and Dover and Deal, more round that area, Ramsgate, all that area, when I started playing, in the sixties, sixty-two or sixty-three or something.
MR: So travelling quite far then?
PL: Yeah, yeah. It was called the Folkestone and Hythe District, or the Folkestone League – that was just in Folkestone and around Folkestone, Swingfield, up around that area, and then we went into the Kent Amateur League which was all over Kent. That’s what they’re in now.
MR: Was that the top league at the time?
PL: The top amateur league.
MR: Did you play other villages when you were younger or was it always farther out?
PL: No, when we was very young, when I was very young - you’ve got to realise there’s no football in school hardly, in them days. We only played New Romney. When I was at Lydd Primary School we only had one away game, one game was at the Romney, New Romney. It was murder. You couldn’t lose, you was in trouble if you lost that one, you know. And you never had goalposts, you had, you know those things that you jump over, you know, I don’t know if you did it at school, the high jump things, they’re like stands – you had four of them for your goals. And no pitch marked out, on the Rype, that’s where we all played on that Rype out there, the big green, that’s where Lydd played up until I built this fourteen, or twenty years ago, still play there now, it’s the village green, it’s the big green out there, you’ll see it when you go by. And we never played any games, hardly any football at school. It was all done, it was our football. You had PE at school, didn’t you, but there weren’t much football. It wasn’t taught in them days, not like it is now. But we played ourselves, you’d get eight or nine people together on the Rype, we’d all meet up after school or in the summer or – but football was the main one.
MR: So no pitch markings at school?
PL: No, not at Lydd.
MR: What did you do? How did you know if the ball was out of bounds?
PL: Well we just carried on, you know? They didn’t mark any pitches out. There was nobody to do it, you know what I mean? The school teacher was about ninety, he was getting on, you know what I mean? There was only one game a season, one game. That’s when I was at school. It might have changed in later years, but I’m talking about personally, me.
MR: Is that the primary school?
PL: Yeah, primary.
MR: Do you know what year you started there?
PL: Well five onto forty-six, so fifty-one.
MR: Would there be a referee?
PL: Yeah, one of the teachers. I don’t think he knew much about football but he was the referee, you know, because he had to control it, didn’t he?
MR: And there’s be one match a year?
PL: About one a year. I don’t ever remember playing at New Romney but I think we did once, but I can’t really remember it but I remember at Lydd, you know, playing at Lydd. But it was, that was the big highlight, you know, you couldn’t lose against them.
MR: How did you get on?
PL: I don’t really know now but I would have thought we’d won. Have to say that don’t I!
MR: Was there more sport at secondary school?
PL: Yeah, Southlands. We all went, if you didn’t pass the grammar you went to Southlands, which is New Romney. But the rivalry was there then, because you had four, at New Romney, you had four places. You had Lydd, New Romney, not Brookland, erm, what are they called, out in the wilds, countryside, and Dymchurch. So you had Dymchurch, New Romney, Lydd, and the people that lived in the villages, you know, the farming villages – and that was the four things, and you had, you did have all your football there, inter against them, and it was really good. Southlands sport was good, really brilliant.
MR: So they split you off into villages at school for sport?
PL: Oh yeah, and that carried on, that’s why it was fierce against New Romney, especially. We was always being flattened as well, it was terrible! When I think of it now, there’d be so many red cards there would be!
MR: They’re creating these rivalries in the school almost?
PL: Oh yeah, we – you’ve got to realise that we never went out of Lydd, you know, till probably I was not much, till I was sort of fifteen, sixteen, so your whole community was in this lot, you go to school for five days, and you didn’t really have much to do with the Romneys or anyone. The Lydders tended to be friendly with the country boys, tended to be friendly with them you know what I mean? Because they was passive more than the other lot, you know, so there was always a great rivalry – still is. But the only thing is now, it’s like Lydd hasn’t got all Lydd boys and New Romney hasn’t got all Romney boys. When I played everybody come, and if you, like, if you actually left Lydd, which a couple did, you was a real traitor. You know, the same vice versa for Romney, which a couple did leave.
MR: To go and play for New Romney?
PL: Yeah, they probably couldn’t get in the Lydd side at that time, they wanted to play better football so they went, which is alright. It’s accepted now but you couldn’t accept it them days. It wasn’t acceptable.
MR: You didn’t leave the village until you were about fifteen, sixteen?
PL: No, I didn’t. Bus, 105. But don’t forget we had trains. Once a year we used to go to Ashford shopping, Christmas, on the train, with my Mum, yeah, and brothers.
MR: Was it the same with your parents? Did they leave the village much?
PL: My Mum, my Dad was in London, so, don’t know what he did but my Mum didn’t. My Grandad was a rag-and-bone man, he had horses and various things in Lydd, my cousins still got the ground now. My Grandad was. And I can remember him with the horses and the ponies and that when I was little. He had his own forge because horses have to have their feet shorn don’t they? And so we, my brother and myself, I wasn’t taking them, my brother was, he used to take the horses up to the forge. You know my Grandad was getting old then, so he got him to do it. I remember going up there a couple of times, the old boy and the forge. A lot’s changed, innit, since the fifties, you know what I mean?
MR: When your grandad died, did anyone take over?
PL: No, he finished. My uncle did it but he done it part time. My uncle kept on a couple of little ponies but then the tractors come up. He was, my uncle was a small time farmer, he had a little small holding himself, you know what I mean?
MR: In Lydd?
PL: Yeah, in Lydd. It’s still there. He’s dead now, my cousins have got the land.
MR: What did your brothers do for a living, when they grew up?
PL: They both started as mechanics but then National Service intervened. Brian – if you were doing an apprenticeship you could get deferred, but he didn’t want to get deferred he wanted to go in the army. He didn’t want to go in the army, he wanted to get it over with. He left Lydd when he was eighteen, and so we never had him eighteen until twenty, the football club. But he got posted to Cyprus when all the problems were on, he captained the army in Cyprus and a few professional footballers played with him, because he actually signed for Charlton my brother Brian did. But when he was to actually go away, he didn’t want to leave home.
MR: So he didn’t go?
PL: He didn’t play for them. Lydd were gonna get two hundred and fifty-pound, little Lydd, the club, that would have been in, when he was sixteen, so you’re talking quite a bit of money then, weren’t it?
MR: Did Lydd want him to go and play? To get the money?
PL: We didn’t want the money but obviously you want the person to go. I mean I wasn’t about then. I doubt there’s anybody alive now that was on that transaction. I was only reading it through our, because we’ve got all our, what do you call them, meetings, monthly meetings…
MR: Minutes?
PL: Minutes, I’ve got them right back for years, yeah. I haven’t got them but I think they’re actually in the museum in Lydd. There’s a museum in Lydd, and I think they’re in there. I can always get them. You can take them and have a good look, because they do belong to us still
MR: Growing up what did you do other than football and cricket?
PL: Well, it’s, until we got girlfriends I take it, from the age of fifteen really, until eighteen, nineteen, we’d all meet up and go on the Rype and play cricket or football, nearly every night of the week. You know, we were apprentices down at the power station, I was an apprentice, but we’d always be kicking the ball about, or the cricket club, they had nets down there and we used to go down there and play in the nets one night a week. And then I played tennis with my mates, and we played tennis, you know, it was all sport back then, hence not the learning! Well you know if you ain’t got the brains, you know, it’s not worth trying. Either you’re academic or you’re with your hands, I think that’s what the country’s forgot, you know. I’ve got, all my grandchildren, most of my grandchildren are all academic, you know, they’re all at universities and all that, my kids went there, well one did and two didn’t – the ones who didn’t are hands on, which I think the country should be like that now. This is one of our big faults. Not getting these boys in, or girls, that could do it manually. Not a fault of theirs, when you see how many apprenticeships are being done, it’s crap.
MR: Did you enjoy school?
PL: Yeah, loved it. Because, you know, my life was around the sport, especially at Southlands, you know. The teachers were nice, I thought, everything was right. You never woke up in the morning and think, ‘Oh I’ve got to go to school’, well I didn’t.
MR: What age did you leave school?
PL: Fifteen. And then I went, luckily the power station started, and I got this apprenticeship at about, it was brilliant for about, ten or fifteen other boys from Lydd and Romney and we all went down there as apprentices, carpenters.
MR: What year did the power station open?
PL: Open or start building?
MR: Both.
PL: I reckon about 1960 because I was fifteen, so we’ll do it on the fifteen. I was born in forty-six, so that’s fifty-six, say fifty-seven, so probably fifty-nine, sixty it opened, around about. I was fifteen, fifteen and a half when I went down there, so I was fifteen in the February and went down there in the summer.
MR: With some of your friends?
PL: Yeah, with my friends. One, two, three, four, five, at least six friends.
MR: Were you doing different things?
PL: No, we was all carpenters, that lot, the six, we were all down there for carpentry.
MR: What were you building?
PL: The power station. It’s shuttering. Power stations are made of concrete, most of it, they made the shutters to case the concrete when it was poured, you know. Yeah, it was a good time.
MR: Was it a good job?
PL: I liked it.
MR: What was your working day?
PL: We worked from seven thirty till five thirty. They used to have coaches that travelled, about thirty, fifty coaches probably travelled from all over Kent to here, and we used to catch it down on the roundabout or up here to go to work. That would be seven o’clock. They’d come from Hastings, all done that way the buses used to come from.
MR: So all the workforce was bussed in?
PL: They had a camp on the site for the Paddy boys or travelers. They was normally Irish people [unclear].
MR: Good group? Everyone got on?
PL: Yeah, everybody got on. Pubs were full in Lydd then, you could imagine, every night was busy for five years, yeah.
MR: And the buses would take them home again?
PL: Every night, yeah.
MR: How long did you stay there for?
PL: Five years, six years, yeah. And then we started, and then B started. Dungeness A was the first one, then Dungeness B started, then we all went on Dungeness B on different firms. I had about three years there and I got really fed up down there because there was no work. You went to work and didn’t work all day long because what happened, they found a problem with the design of the nuclear B and so you would go to work and sit in the canteen all day long. Well there’s nothing worse than that for anybody I don’t think.
MR: Were you still getting your wages?
PL: Oh yeah. We usually scooted out to the pub at dinner time, unofficially.
MR: So you were twiddling your thumbs most of the day?
PL: Yeah, so I left and went self-employed. That was it.
MR: What did your friends and colleagues do?
PL: A lot of them stayed on the B. But there’s only two or three I see now that come by and are mates, we’re still matey, but times have changed and everyone goes their own way don’t they, you know. I do see them from time to time, we meet up.
MR: When all the construction had finished did all the jobs dry up?
PL: Yeah. A lot of these people went onto the permanent staff, or some went on the permanent staff, and others just got jobs, you know, other places. We’re all retired now.
MR: After work it’d be back to the pub? Would you be playing sport in the evenings?
PL: After work. Well see, after you was eighteen, seventeen, eighteen, the pub you wasn’t in until you were seventeen, eighteen. After that we’d meet up and play probably darts, I didn’t play darts because I couldn’t, but I’d go to the pub with the other lads, play darts, you know, and anything that was going on. Another thing we used to do was go to Hastings or Folkestone or Ashford, watching the football on the Wednesday night. We used to take, you know, we’d bring me brothers, and we’d take, took a couple of cars up and we’d watch Hastings or whoever was playing on the Wednesdays, or Ashford or Folkestone. That was the big highlights of life really.
MR: Were they in a professional league?
PL: Yeah, like they are now really. You know, they were the three teams.
MR: Were they pretty good?
PL: Yeah. Most of them were ex-professionals who had come down from London, in all of them, there weren’t many locals. Not many locals played for Folkestone probably, two or three but not many. They were all ex London, mostly.
MR: So your match day was on the weekend?
PL: Saturday. We’re a Saturday club. We used to play Sunday a bit but not a lot. That’s what that lot did, the Grasshoppers, took over. Took over, and a lot of Lydd players played for Grasshoppers. They all played. It’s a bit different now, but it was then. Because Lydd was small then.
MR: What do you remember about starting out playing football at Lydd?
PL: When I used to go with Lydd, probably from when I was seven, it was just a community. You’d take, you’d fill the coach up nearly and we’d go off to all over – it was a big day out, big afternoon out really. And the Rype out there you’d probably have a hundred people watching. It was a part of the community, sort of thing. More than it is now, which is quite sad really.
MR: Who would come and watch? Would your Mum come and watch you?
PL: My Mum watched. She was a menace. Everybody’s parents came and you know, lot of people, just lots of people interested in Lydd, really.
MR: That’s great. So a lot of people rooting for the team…
PL: Well there was a lot of them, you know, I’m not saying everybody but there was a big, you know, it was the talk of the town if you lost, especially if you lost against New Romney. Bad one!
MR: Was your brother – as a prolific goal scorer – considered a local hero?
PL: I don’t think, because you never had ‘em. They didn’t like playing against him, the opposition, you know, but it was always football talk all the time, really. But no, you never had heroes in them days to be honest. He was just good at that and somebody else might be good at birdwatching or something else, do you know what I mean? Everybody took an interest in somebody else’s thing, you know, somebody else’s interest
MR: And so everybody on the team in those early years was from Lydd?
PL: Mostly, yeah mostly. Obviously we had a couple of soldiers probably, but no, you’d never have many outsiders. There was very, very few. I can look at those photographs and I can tell you anybody who’s not Lydd.
MR: Was there a junior team or was it just the senior team?
PL: All Lydd had up until the Grasshoppers started was a senior side. And then Sunday football started, and then we all played for a pub, we did, and there was no rules in that one, you had the referees but there was no, if you got sent off you didn’t get banned or anything like that. So us lot, Lydd, we went and played for the Dolphin pub in Lydd, and we had a good time, you know, it was a real good, it was social, only. And then they started up a Sunday Grasshoppers, a senior side which a lot of boys, a few of Lydd played for them, and then the juniors started up, I think by one of the ex-Lydd players, juniors side, but I’m not quite sure.
MR: Roughly when was that?
PL: I would say, this is off the top of my head now, something like thirty year ago…I can find out for you.
MR: So the pub games on the Sunday were very different from the Saturday games?
PL: Oh yeah! There were no rules – there was rules but there were not too much problems with getting booked or sent off. If they sent a person off that was the end. You weren’t banned, you know, but that lasted a few years. It was good, you know, there was no Sunday football, that was the only reason, then Sunday football started coming so they was all done away with because they, people wanted to play in organised – see we used to play, let me tell you the Sunday teams. We were the only Lydd side, right, you had one at Dymchurch, Bonnington, probably half a dozen sides, Folkestone, there was probably only half a dozen sides you had, but they played probably once a month, that’s all you played. It wasn’t regular if you know what I mean? It weren’t regular.
MR: And they were all attached to pubs?
PL: Yeah. That’s the pub we drank in, the Dolphin, all of us, you know. We played darts. I didn’t play but the boys all played darts in the Dolphin, all the various things. You’d meet up every night because there was nothing else in the town was there? There wasn’t a youth club then. They’ve got one since, they’ve got a youth centre now, but not in those days…
MR: Would the opposition come to the pub as well?
PL: Oh yeah, for a bit of food and a few pints or something, and that was it really.
MR: It was all pretty friendly then?
PL: Oh, it was all friendly. Once the game ended that was the end, it was all mates. You most of them from playing football. Even on the Saturday, a lot of them played against us on Saturdays, so you knew who the good players were, you know, ‘He’s got him playing this week, you better watch him’, sort of thing. But we had a, Lydd had a good side at that time, a very good side…
MR: What age were you when you played your first match for Lydd?
PL: Fourteen. Shouldn’t have been, should’ve played fifteen but they were short.
MR: At fourteen you’re still essentially a child going up against men…
PL: Oh yeah, when I watch these boys down here, fifteen-year-old, we’ve got one at the moment. I said, you see football’s got much fitter now than we were, they’re much fitter because they do training, we never trained because no one was in for it, you know what I mean? Nothing for it. But we’ve got a young lad now, very good footballer, he’s about sixteen and you look at him, and that’s the good thing about having football in groups, ages, so they’re playing against sixteen-year-olds now, where we weren’t, we was playing against – when we was sort of sixteen playing against the miners of bloody Deal. You imagine playing against a miner – it was murder! Once you were eighteen it was alright because you could get amongst them then, but when you were sixteen it was a bit hard
MR: Were the miners a particularly rough team?
PL: The miners, you knew you were playing football against miners, yeah.
MR: Where were they from?
PL: Tilmanstone and Dover, all round that area. There’s collieries up there, up around, there’s still loads of coal in that area, I think it goes under the sea, doesn’t it, up there? Then they closed all of them when they closed the mines down, they all got closed down. You had Chislet, Snowdown, Tilmanstone, Betteshanger, there’s four I can think off the top of my head, there’s probably more.
MR: And they’d be in the same team?
PL: They’re all different teams…You’d go up there and play them, you know.
MR: And they all worked in the mines?
PL: They all worked in the mines. They were hard. Good though, they was good sportsmen, you know, you go in the welfare club afterwards, it was brilliant. They had food and everything. We never, I mean we do now, when we played on the Rype, there was no food, you know, we went to a local pub. But when we first started playing we didn’t go to the pubs because there was no local pubs open, you just went home, after you played your game at Lydd, then you met up at eight o’clock, in the pub or wherever you were going.
MR: The pubs opened at eight?
PL: Six. You went home and got washed because there were no showers, they never had any facilities, just a room to change in, on the Rype.
MR: Would the opposition hang around or would they go home?
PL: They went home then. Until we actually got organised, that was probably in the sixties, sixty-odd, they built a new pavilion on the Rype where they had showers, and then we was tied up in the Dolphin, like I said, so he would put some food on, so he was making money out of them – we’d say come back for a drink over there and they would most times, you know.
MR: Pretty raucous nights?
PL: Usually I’d probably have a few beers and that would be it really. Never got hammered or anything, but we stayed in the pub until he kicked you out, which was eleven o’clock in them days, about half ten or eleven or whichever it was. We used to have a late one now and again, but now it’s, now it’s all hours, bit different now. The police used to come round, in them days at half past ten the copper would come round and come in the door and check if, who was serving, probably a copper, one he knew, he’d get a drink and wouldn’t leave till last, you know that’s the difference in a village isn’t it?
MR: Was that the village policeman?
PL: Yeah. Oh, we knew him, we knew all the village police. They used to come and watch the football, they’d stand out on the Rype watching it all. They was on bikes then, weren’t they? They were on push bikes, there weren’t any cars. We had one copper playing for us actually.
MR: Was there much crime in the village back then?
PL: No. No. Nothing that you would say crime. If there was a crime they were soon caught because everybody knew who everybody, you know, any stranger come to the village they knew straight away. And they knew the ones who would be doing it so, you know, the cops knew really.
MR: What was your kit like back when you were fourteen?
PL: Pretty rough, you know they had to last. And now the kits, they go through them like, you know, terrible now, they don’t look after them really like we had to. We used to take the kit home and wash it ourselves, that was the problem because you couldn’t drop anybody too much, you know what I mean? To drop a player who had the kit, it was hard, because they was all Lydd boys weren’t they? Then I think when I started running it we took the kit ourselves and washed it ourselves, I washed it for years, the kits for Lydd, for years. I’m still washing it now, here, I mean for years I washed the first team kit or any team I did.
MR: Did you have shin pads back then?
PL: Yeah. I don’t think they have them now, not like we had them. No, they’re so light now compared to what we had. I’ve seen many a player playing with you know, kit cars, kit cars and all folded manuals for the pads, yeah. Instead of pads, they’d have a, you know, because they didn’t really have a lot in them days, I’m talking the early days. Not many of them but I have seen it were a bloke will have like the cowboy books, you know, about that big, and they put that in the thing.
MR: Like a yellow pages or something?
PL: Yeah, yeah but smaller, I remember that, yeah.
MR: Where did you get your boots from? Did the club have some?
PL: No, in Lydd they was a, what are they called, bootmaker.
MR: Cobbler?
PL: There was a shoe shop, it was a shoe shop and there was a cobbler in there, and that was his father, that bloke who got seventy-two goals, it was his father in law. He had all the football boots in there, but you used to have to put, when I first started playing you had to put studs in the boot yourself, in the old boots, and then it all changed. Then sports shops started, in the sixties, so you’d go and get them from there.
MR: How would you put your studs in the boot?
PL: With a hammer. They had a little, the studs were round like that, with spikes in them, right, and you would then get a hammer and hammer it in the bottom of the boot, yeah, very small, about a quarter of an inch long, or six mil long.
MR: So were these just everyday boots?
PL: No, they was football boots. They were leather boots, big, and they’d come right up here. I didn’t play in them very often, much, myself, I did have them but only when I was quite young, up to probably, probably twelve, fourteen, then they started bringing continental ones in which were the black ones, black and white, little studs, they was molded they were, the studs were molded. Another stud was, another one I knew was a bridge, it was just a flat piece of stud, instead of the round ones, they was nailed. Some people had them…
MR: Did the studs ever fall out?
PL: Yeah, they fell out quite regular, and that’s when you had to knock ‘em, knock ‘em in. The boots had to be cleaned regular [unclear].
MR: Did you play in all weather?
PL: Oh yeah, that’s when, I call them babies now because they don’t want to play when it’s wet, too wet. I mean if you go out on that Rype out there where we played it was absolutely, you know, if we didn’t get a game it was sad, it was sad, regarding the weather.
MR: It would have to be pretty extreme to cancel the game?
PL: I can only remember a couple of games ever being cancelled on that Rype. It actually don’t hold water. It doesn’t hold water, the Rype. That’s beach under there, like part of this, it’s beach, so the water went straight through, so when other teams were rained off, we never, no, we never did.
MR: What about in the snow?
PL: We’ve cleared pitches off, but it wasn’t that bad, you know, but we have done played in the snow out there, yeah, a lot of times, lots of times, we’ve had the teams here, you know, very rarely cancelled, ever. Never. Unless it was bad.
MR: When you joined the Lydd team at fourteen were you on the same team as your brothers?
PL: No, I was in the reserves, yeah. There was another team, which should probably go in your memories – there was a team called Snowflakes, which was all the fisherman down Dungeness, and they, to play football on a Sunday, us, we had to ask the vicar permission, can you imagine that now? Yeah, you had to -the bloke, a bloke called Harry Whiting, was treasurer and secretary for fifty years, before, you know, when I was playing, maybe he can hear me, good old boy, but he had to go and ask if we could play a friendly, it was only a friendly, and we used to have friendlies with, could be, I remember one, playing the Dungeness Snowflakes, they were called, and there was a few players that played for us on a Saturday, they come from Dungeness see – we actually, they don’t call, we call the Dungers like Lydders really, if you know what I mean because we all went to school together here, primary, because they used to come in by taxis, the Nesser families did, they used to have taxis up here every day, and a few players that lived there played for us, in my time, you know.
MR: Did the vicar ever say ‘no, you can’t play?’
PL: No, not to my knowledge, not to my knowledge.
MR: Was it just a respect thing?
PL: Yeah, it was a Sunday.
MR: And that was on the Rype?
PL: On the Rype, yeah.
MR: When was this?
PL: Probably fifties, late fifties, early sixties. Well, if you look at this, I’m just trying to think now, they must have got, because, then they started playing so they must overruled them in the end because they played on the Rype Sunday football didn’t they, for the Grasshoppers, so they must have got, you know, they’d have to go – because the vicar and the council were really tight, quite close together on the community, probably that’s when, because of the community that was and this guy Harry Whiting he was a councilor, Mayor, Freeman of Lydd, so, you know, he was all together so he probably did it for respect I would say.
MR: So he was the Mayor?
PL: Yeah, he was the Mayor, done everything he had. He was a good old boy.
MR: Were there a lot of councilors in the village?
PL: Probably half a dozen, don’t quote me on that. Yeah, Lydd village probably had a mayor, eight councilors or more.
MR: And they’d play football and be working in the village?
PL: They’d mostly be working in the village. Not many played for Lydd, Fred Wood-Brignall, who’s on there did, he’s our Chairman, he’s our President now, still our President, Fred, he played for us, you know, anybody on the council who done sport played for Lydd. Not many.
MR: The reserves played matches…
PL: Every week.
MR: On the Saturday as well?
PL: Yeah.
MR: Before?
PL: No, no, home and away, so there’d be one week here and the reserves would be next week.
MR: Did the reserves and the main team play against each other?
PL: Well, when we had preseason friendlies, what would happen, you would have your friendlies then you’d have your first team’s defence and the second team’s forwards, and the first team’s forwards and the second team’s defence, it would only be a friendly, sort of friendlies you had, and we never played against each other a lot in football, but that was part of, you know, your preseason, playing together. So all the first team played, it might have been, might not have been all one sided so we split it up. We don’t do it now though.
MR: You never trained?
PL: No, never trained up until probably, Lydd, I’m trying to think, it would have been twenty-nine, I’d have been thirty, say thirty, so put thirty onto forty-six, seventy-six. So we didn’t, Lydd Town, we didn’t train, what I remember the bloke come from Folkestone who played for us and he started training. So that’s how I remember, so we didn’t start really training at Lydd.
MR: Did you have a manager?
PL: The first manager was my brother Brian, yeah, he was the first manager, that’s when they, we used to, Lydd used to pick it on a committee every, the teams were picked by committee every Tuesday night at the Royal Mail, that was a committee meeting and you’d go up there, and then the trouble was, when you were on the committee, people would have their favourites, you know, so in the end it had to be done, gone, we had to have a manager, and my brother, we had a vote, you know, we voted at an AGM, but he took over probably, it will be in our books.
MR: So who selects the committee?
PL: AGM.
MR: And they’d select the team?
PL: Every Tuesday night, we’d sit around the table, and say you’d got, ‘Who’s in goal?’, ‘Yep’, ‘Right back?’, ‘Well, he had a bad game last week’, and then you’d go to a vote, him or the reserve, and then obviously, the bloke never got a chance in the reserves really, that’s how it carried on [unclear] because they were all friends weren’t they? Which is understandable, when you leave it to one man it’s down to him then innit.
MR: So people got annoyed?
PL: They get very upset. I can remember an instance that one bloke, I remember one bloke, played for years, and he was a bit of a drinker, and my brother was doing it, and he’d been picked for Lydd for all the time. He never got picked this week, and somebody dropped out, and I had to go, Brian said to me, ‘Pop round to his house to see if somebody will come’, and he never knew he wasn’t playing, he didn’t come, you know what I mean? Sort of thing. He didn’t play for us but he thought he was playing and turned up out there, see, and that’s when they had to get a manager in, that’s the thing of why we had to have a manager. Yeah, I was only quite young when I went round there, probably sixteen…
MR: So there might have been some interchange between the main team and the reserves? Sometimes a reserve would get picked?
PL: Yeah, hopefully, you know people would never give their place up. If a person was good enough, he got in, you did have, and when the older people give up then it all come in. We actually, we got in, our team got in, we actually took over at sixteen, seventeen, because they’d finished, they were retiring in block really. All that was left was two players of that lot, that team, that carried on playing – my brother Brian and Don Cartman and Willis Burgess, my other brother packed up, he went in National Service, he went in, so we lost him for two years and when he came out he didn’t play much football, he was still good but his interest wasn’t there then as times had changed you know.
MR: So the team was very much comprised of eighteen and nineteen-year-olds? There weren’t many players in their thirties or forties?
PL: No.
MR: Why was that?
PL: Well there was, on the runner teams, if you know what I mean – I mean most people in them days packed up playing football probably thirty, thirty-five, didn’t they, you know. Not many playing over thirty, I wouldn’t have thought. That team there played on a bit longer, the team before our team. Most of that lot, I’d say most of that lot packed up twenty-five, I’d say, thirty, they got married. People got married earlier as well, didn’t they, started getting married earlier.
MR: And then your lot came in and became the first team.
PL: First team for a few years, then I went into management. I packed up playing and went to manager – I forget the manager before me, dunno…my brother died, he had a heart attack, just died, you know like, didn’t know anything about it, just dropped dead, and I took over as the manager. And that will be in that book, probably, we can find dates for that.
MR: Whose house was it in which you took the team photo?
PL: GT Paine.
MR: And who was he?
PL: He’s a big farmer, landowner. You know, he was top man in Lydd for years. I think he was mayor for thirty years or something, unopposed. Speaks for itself.
MR: So he was considered quite powerful in the village?
PL: He was powerful in the village, yeah.
MR: Did he have sons?
PL: he had one son who tragically shot himself.
MR: Did you know him?
PL: Played with him.
MR: He played football?
PL: No, only kick about in football. He was private school, and when he came home from summer holidays, they asked a few of the local lads to go and play with him and we used to go and play in the big house that he lived in.
MR: Did many of the boys in the village go to private school?
PL: Only him. Only ones that went to private school in this village was the big farmers’ sons, really, that I can remember. They all went, all the farmers’ sons went to private school, that I can remember.
MR: But you’d see them on summer holidays?
PL: Yeah, when you saw them you spoke to them and you was friendly with them if they was local.
MR: What did you do for a living after working at the power station?
PL: Subcontracting, carpentry. Up to, I’m trying to think, that was probably when I was about twenty-six, and I went sub-contracting for three or four years all over Kent, doing shuttering, working for Walker Brothers – they were a civil engineering firm. But then, me personal you want to know? When I was twenty-nine I got a job at Hotel Imperial Hythe as a carpenter in charge of the building, the hotel. There was a family called the Marsdens, smashing family, and I was employed by them for thirty years, I stayed on for them, twenty-nine and a half years. We had one hotel, two hotels, three hotels when we started. We had Hotel Imperial, Stade Court, which is in Hythe, and one in London, the Hogarth, and then we ended up with twenty-two, all over England, and the nearest one to you would be the Centre Court in Hampshire, in Basingstoke, there’s the Centre Court there, and we had some in Winchester, some in, all over Yorkshire, and I used to do, go out on a Monday and go all over England. About twenty years that was, great job. Brilliant job.
MR: Did you retire after that?
PL: No. They was bought out by a big group and made everybody redundant, like they didn’t have their own building company, they subbed out to these firms, but one of the directors bought a hotel in Tunbridge Wells, called the Spa Hotel in Tunbridge Wells and I went up there for eight years with a man called Mr Scragg, and I did until I retired and I retired, I haven’t retired actually, but I mean that stopped going up there because his daughter took over and me and her didn’t see eye to eye on building.
MR: And so the other side of your life was the club?
PL: Yeah, yeah. And married with four kids.
MR: What year did you get married?
PL: Fifty years ago. April the fifth this year.
MR: A girl from Lydd?
PL: New Romney. Trouble!
MR: Did you settle in Lydd?
PL: No, I lived in Lydd for a couple of years and then I built me own house in New Romney, Littlestone, which I’m still there.
MR: You built it yourself?
PL: Me and my brother in law and friends.
MR: Four children?
PL: Four.
MR: And how many grandchildren?
PL: Eleven I think, or twelve now. Yeah, they all come here. My sons love sport, one didn’t really, they didn’t want to play it really. The younger one, boy, he was reasonable. The two girls they were very interested but just didn’t play sport, like their Mum actually, she didn’t play sport.
MR: If you were a girl growing up in Lydd what was there to do in term of sport?
PL: They had a netball team once, that I remember, they had a football team, girls football team – there’s big money in women’s football, grants. We haven’t got one, the Grasshoppers have got one. Yeah, they had not a lot to do really. It was very, I’m just trying to think what they would do. They did netball, they had night, they did go to night classes at school, you know, in different things. I can’t think of anything else.
MR: And jobs?
PL: Again, some of the women down the power station as, you know, doing book work, bookkeeping, you had typists and that sort of thing. Most of the girls all got jobs either in Lydd or out of Lydd. Times were changing, they were travelling, commute around Folkestone, around, you know.
MR: How’s the village changed since you were younger?
PL: Myself I don’t think it’s changed too much, but everyone I speak to thinks it’s changed a lot. I mean obviously we knew everybody who lived there, but, as I’m out quite a lot, I know most people. If you’re like a Lydd person who just stays in their house and didn’t - if I never had the football club meeting all these people I probably wouldn’t know anybody that come into the village, but this is sort of, people come down here you’re meeting people all the time. They come to watch and various things and so you talk to them, you know somebody else [unclear]…It has changed a lot, I think the most change since growing up really is all we had before power stations was farming and farms, either chickens or whatever it might be. You, everybody automatically would have gone there or at the army camp, but there was nothing else for the school leaver, it was normally agricultural.
MR: People go elsewhere to work rather than stay in the village?
PL: Yeah, well there’s not much to do. I mean there’s a few stay in the village, local garage or something like that, but there’s not much other, there’s not many apprenticeships either like we were talking about earlier…so I say if you went round there’s probably be a lot of kids out of work.
MR: Is the pub still open? The Dolphin?
PL: The Dolphin’s still here. I don’t use it that much now because of the drink and driving. I live at Littlestone, I get a taxi if I go in there, ten quid’s cheap isn’t it, to get home, better than losing your license.
MR: How has the football team changed?
PL: Well it’s changed because there’s not many Lydd boys – our reserves at Lydd now are all Lydd boys, mostly Lydd boys in our reserves, but they don’t want to go, this group of Lydd boys don’t want to go forward. They’ve been together since they was ever played football and they’ve stayed together – they’ve won most things, but there is three or four who could play higher level football on the Lydd first team but they are contented playing in that, so.
MR: Because they’re with their friends?
PL: With their friends. Yeah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
MR: It sounds like when you were younger – you and your friends…
PL: Yeah, it was, it was. But I suppose we all had to go in the first team, really.
MR: But now some of them wouldn’t make it so they’d be split up?
PL: That’s what I would say, yeah. That’s the truth. In the higher level of football. I would say most of them would make it if they really trained – the level that our first team’s in, if you’re not going to train hard, you’re not going to last, that’s the problem. I think this season they’re training hard but they’re not getting the results.
MR: How successful has the team been over the last couple of decades?
PL: Up an downs I would say, but very good team spirits in the teams, you know what I mean, so that’s what you really need, if you’ve got that, you’ve got something, haven’t you?
MR: Where do they come from if not from Lydd?
PL: Well, Lydd’s reserves is probably Lydd. Lydd’s first team is a couple of ex-players from Lydd who have gone to Folkestone, and Ashford, ex-players who have played for Lydd when it was mostly Lydd, their dads played for Lydd, and then kids came to Lydd with their dads and they carried on at Lydd, so that is the tie. And they’re mates with all the boys in Ashford so they get the mostly Ashford players now, around that area. It’s sad really.
MR: Is it still a community? Do they socialize together?
PL: Not really, if I could tell the truth. Not really. And it’s a problem. It really bugs me.
MR: Is it a geographical thing – people living in different areas?
PL: Yeah, I think it could well be that, yeah.
MR: What else could it be?
PL: Probably that we don’t have enough dos, togetherness, you know if they were all together they’d be like we were. If you meet people twice or three times a year you’re not going to be very friendly but I think if you say once a month or more, you know, and I think if the teams, if both teams intertwined you’d probably have it, wouldn’t ya? This is what we’re trying to do. It’s hard work though. When they’re all locals and you’re gonna fall out with them because they don’t want to go up. Then your name’s black in the town. We’ve kicked them out, you know. It’s a case that they should want to play at the highest level, I think anyhow.
MR: Has the interest always been there from the town? Do they still watch the games?
PL: Not many now. Not enough, but that’s with everything. In everything, it’s the same in everything, in every sport it’s hard, cricket is the same. At the moment Lydd’s got a good cricket following, I think. I only look at the results, I don’t follow them because I don’t live here but if I do come over on a Sunday I go and park up there and watch, you know.
MR: You said when you were younger about a hundred people would watch a Lydd game – what about now?
PL: Thirty, roughly, where there should be three hundred, in theory. With Lydd’s population there’s probably three thousand then, now there’s probably seven thousand.
MR: I suppose there are other distractions?
PL: There is, there is. I mean they’ve got so much, you only have to look at your own family, my own family, they’ve got so much going on other than coming to Lydd in sport and other things, they’re always doing something.
MR: What about cricket in Lydd. Did you play on the village team?
PL: Yeah. I played when I was fifteen, started, my cricket career wasn’t like the football career. We played, first of all when I was – when I was very young, we was cricket mad, Lydd were, and Lydd had a good cricket team, both brothers played, Mick didn’t play much but Brian played a lot, and we had like a little village cricket club down the lane owned by that GT Paine, the man, he owns it, the field. And it was a real village team and it was a very good team, they played Saturdays and Sundays and we was there every, from probably from seven or eight we was there every Saturday and Sunday right through. Because that was committed to the town, everybody went down there watching, well I say everybody a lot of people were interested. Then this GT Paine wanted to, the cricket team to move to play on the Rype, so they put a square on the Rype, a new pavilion, 1956, I need to check on that, probably late fifties, and they built a new pavilion which is there now, and they moved from the village cricket ground up on to the Rype where I started playing, I was fifteen then. I played three years probably for them, up there, and then really, I lost interest in cricket really, drinking, women, it’s the age isn’t it? You know, and I lost interest, but what they did, after three or four years, they moved back down to the old field. In the summer you’ll see a big green patch out in the middle of that Rype because it’s a beach, it’s where the old square was – we only played there three or four, well I can’t say how many years, but it was not that many years. I played when I was fifteen, I finished when I was eighteen, really, cricket. So, and I don’t remember playing there very many years. But I used to come and watch them, sit and watch them, I still go, like I say now I still go and watch it, but it was good, the community and the cricket team. We, I was playing with my brothers and not many of them footballers played cricket, about three or four only played, they played football, they didn’t play cricket, surprisingly. But it was a good community, I mean that was when you sort of had your tea there. Did you ever play cricket?
MR: No.
PL: Well like down there for instance you go down and start at about half past one, you’d have tea at I’d say four o’clock I think it was, then you would have all tea and jam, bread and jam, that sort of thing. And the lady did it, Mrs Henson, the family, when I was there Mrs Henson did it all, the Henson family, and it was lovely down there. So I must have gone down there, I remember going down there with that so I must have been going with me brothers when they was down there and that because it was good, it was good. The Rype never had the feeling, there was no feeling, it’s a massive bit of land there, when you walked out to it you was sort of miles, you know, to the green like, especially out first ball you have to walk a bit longer!
MR: So it was a different group of friends?
PL: Yeah, well you had a lot of oldies in that team, breaking into it was very hard at fifteen, you know. I was lucky, I kept wicket, I was at school, I played cricket at school and I kept wicket for Lydd when I was fifteen because the boy, the man packed up and I had, them three years were brilliant for me personally. When you’re fifteen and playing against, with players that are good players, much older players. I weren’t a good cricketer, I was reasonable.
MR: You must have been pretty good to keep wicket at fifteen?
PL: Oh yeah, I was good. I think I was a reasonable wicket keeper. I didn’t use to let any byes get by, I can tell ya, I mean if you look back at how many byes went by or anything, I was pretty agile in them days, But I lost my interest in it, which is sad, because I am interested in the cricket club, you know, being a Lydder. We had a tennis club in Lydd, that’s down the Dennes Lane, owned by that gentleman Mr Paine. When I first started playing tennis, me and my uncle Mervin, [unclear] and Michael [unclear] were all the same age, probably about ten, and these old people where trying to teach us how to play tennis, so when we went to the senior school, over New Romney, nobody else played tennis, so we could play, so me and Mervin we cleared everything up there. We was playing inter – because you would play a tournament against New Romney, the coast, so we represented, me and Mervin represented Lydd. Well half of them we was playing against, none of them could play tennis properly so it was a walkover for me and Merv, six nil, six nil it was!
MR: That must have been satisfying…
PL: Yeah, it was unsatisfying if they took a point of us, you know what I mean? That’s how bad they were. Yeah, and there was a bloke called David Born (?) who was head boy, who I took the wicket keeper from, no, who went to Folkestone and played wicket keeper for Folkestone. I took the cap and the gloves off Tony Browning, a cricketer called Tony Browning, he made me keep wicket, he was about forty, I was fifteen!
MR: Did you stop playing tennis when you finished school or did you keep going?
PL: We played it until it just folded, the interest, the old people packed up. Sad really because I drive by there, you still see it now people in there.
MR: It’s still going?
PL: No, it faded.
MR: Did women play tennis there?
PL: Yeah, women, Mrs Fielder and a few more, they was quite, getting on in their age though if you know what I mean? Because we was fifteen, thirteen to fifteen, so they would have probably been forty.
MR: What sort of surface was it?
PL: It was grass. In the end I was actually mowing and marking it out! At fifteen, fourteen or fifteen, yeah, under their guidance. I can’t actually quite remember in my mind, I’ve got a good memory but I can’t think of the people that was there, other than us, you know, the footballers.
MR: That’s a shame though...
PL: Well they did start another one, a hard court one, which was down by the cricket, it was council, but that folded. I think they’re still trying to get it going now I think.
MR: Can you tell me about the move from the Rype to Lindsey Field?
PL: Well what happened was, I’ve got to think back now, we, the Rype is not an enclosed ground, so we couldn’t go any higher than the league we’re in, and so my mate owned a firm over there and he owned these two fields, so I said to him can we – our second team had a caravan down here, our second team played down here with the plan that we were gonna come down here, so that we could play in a higher level of football. You know, in the Kent Amateur League we could get away with it but we couldn’t have gone any higher. So, we reluctantly left the Rype because it was all, the council paid for everything really, we just paid four hundred quid a year, less than that I think, and that was it – we turned up on the Saturday, played, everything else was done. They mowed for us…so in the fact I bought these two fields. I think I did, first, I can’t remember if I did or not, but at the end of the day I had to buy these two fields off those people, so, and then we got a lottery grant of one hundred and twenty-eight thousand and built it ourselves, a self-build. First one the lottery had ever done – the bloke that come, they couldn’t believe we were going to do it, there was a bloke called Jim Bryden(?) from the lottery, and we had to go up, me and Kevin Hunt, who, I’ll show you Kevin, he’s in the juniors and he’s in the seniors, Kevin, me and him went up to London, the head office there was outside the station, what’s the station in London, big station…Euston, just outside Euston that was the lottery big offices there. We went up there and met this Jim Bryden and told him what we wanted to do, nobody had ever done it, he said, ‘You reckon you can do it?, I said, ‘Yeah, because that’s my game, building’. And me and Kevin, we self-built this…and done the pitch, done everything, still doing it now! A few years on, Kevin’s still with me, my number two like, really.
MR: What year did you get the grant?
PL:…[The club moved to the new ground in 1999. The official opening was in August 2000]
MR: So that was very big for the club?
PL: Oh yeah, massive. Sad thing was though, old Jim said to me, because he came down here for the opening, he said, ‘You should have gone in for two hundred and fifty [thousand], you would have got it’ – it winds you up done it when he said that, eh? But he actually, the lottery actually stopped giving grants to football clubs and sport, because now you have to go through another one, it was still lottery, but it was just from the lottery, but now you have to go through the FA for football.
MR: If you hadn’t have got that grant you’d still be on the Rype?
PL: Yeah. Yeah, we’d be out there, yeah. We kept the Rype going, we kept it ourselves for a couple of years – we was paying two hundred and fifty I think – but then we just didn’t think it was worth paying the two hundred and fifty. We’ve got a pitch out there that the third team use, second team use this one with the first team, and the third team play out there. All these kits!
MR: And it’s Lindsey field?
PL: Yeah.
MR: What’s the story behind that?
PL: Well they named it after our family, I think, that’s the committee, not me, I didn’t really want it. I’m not one of them people that likes glory.
MR: But it sounds like it’s deserved – you’ve been at the club since you were seven?
PL: I’ve come, yeah, I’ve watched my brothers from seven. Seventy-two now. Don’t think I’ve missed many Saturdays in them times, very rarely. I’ve missed a load lately, not a load lately, a few lately because I’ve been grounded. Got grounded by the wife!
MR: have you missed many away matches?
PL: I always go to first team every week, not reserves, I go first team. I’ve missed a couple this year only because of being down here, I had to come down here to meet, because I’m going for another, trying to do this, I’m trying to put another building out there, free indoor area – our treasurer just died, our treasurer’s just died, and I’m, Robert Flisher, and I’m doing it, building it in his name like, you know, so that’s what we’re in the middle of at the moment, so we’re just trying to get the funding together at the moment.
MR: And he was associated with the club for a long time?
PL: He was associated from ten to sixty-six, until he was sixty-six, he died at sixty-six, this Christmas he died. He’s been the treasurer, he’s been here since we’ve been here – he used to come every week out there, but see when we built this he come down and took over on the committee and then got the treasurers job. Good old boy.
MR: Looking back at your time at the club, what are your fondest memories?
PL: My fondest memories. I would say, that I’m happy every time I come down here, every week, when I see the people enjoying themselves. Probably my fondest memories is with the, all of them boys when we played, when we won the league, the first time [1969/70 season]. Probably the most fondest is that bloke holding that cup up there, you see that, a black boy holding the cup, that was when we probably arrived on the scene really and started beating all these teams, for four years we didn’t lose many games, not many games, we got a good side. Not me personally but it was good players. I done what I had to do but I wasn’t the best footballer – there was some good footballers there.
MR: What position did you play?
PL: Midfield.
MR: What were the four years in which you dominated?
PL: I don’t know now, I’ll have to look it up…would be the seventies. Yeah, we dominated, when we really dominated I think we won the Kent Amateur League five years on the trot. I wasn’t playing then, I think I was the manager then, but I can’t be sure of that even.
MR: But when you won the first time that was all your friends from childhood?
PL: Yeah, most of them were my friends.
MR: That must have been great…
PL: Yeah, it was. I think the best was when you played as minors when you was fifteen, and they did hit you, and then when you can hit them back at eighteen, I think that was the best part of it all! When you was grown up. And we was always looking for Lydd boys to come into that side, from the reserves, or anybody that we could see that’s gonna make it. You wanted them in there to be part of it, you know, and that was good.
MR: Did most of your teammates from those days stay interested in the club and keep watching?
PL: Those boys did. They come now and it’s quite nice because we have, not reunions, but a lot come and watch, and it’s always having a pint of beer and having a good, talking of memories really, which is the good bit.

--ENDS--