Title
'So be careful what you talk about in a pub': Joyce Thompson on the founding of Hamstreet Ladies Football Club.
Subject
Joyce Thompson
Description
An excerpt of an oral history recording with Joyce Thompson, in which she describes how she came to start and manage a women's football team in Hamstreet in the late 1960s, despite her lack of interest in football. (Transcript attached.)
Creator
Michael Romyn
Source
Joyce Thompson Oral History Recording
Publisher
Kent's Sporting Memories
Date
Interview recorded on 29 January, 2020
Contributor
Joyce Thompson; Michael Romyn
Rights
Kent's Sporting Memories
Relation
Joyce Thompson Oral History Recording
Format
MP3 (3:25); Microsoft Word Document
Language
English
Type
Sound recording; Typed Transcript
Identifier
Joyce Thompson
Transcription
Kent’s Sporting Memories Oral History Transcript (Excerpt)
Interviewee: Joyce Thompson
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 29 January, 2020
Location: Lydd-on-Sea, Kent.
Recording Time: 15:35 – 19:00
Joyce Thompson: I can’t think of the chap’s name, as I say, he was running five colts teams in Hamstreet, and he was seeing if I could help out, run the girls football team, and I said ‘I don’t like football’, ‘Oh, I thought you used to play football’, ‘No, cricket and tennis was my games’, and I suppose a few more beers and I went up to him and said ‘Okay, get them to meet me at the Hamstreet Pavilion’, and this is how it started. But I hadn’t a clue how to go about it, where there was another team to play, or what, and I don’t know what it was but something – at Rye, a lady or somebody from Rye said they got a football team, and I rung them and said they could play one game with me, with our team, but because we weren’t affiliated to the football association, and that’s how it started. They gave me all the particulars – where to write to, what to do, and then we got started. Then you find out that other teams are around, like Folkestone, Herne Bay, Margate, and Deal and all these places, so once you got involved with the Federation then you found out there’s a Kent League, and then once you got into the Kent League you’re in it, up to your eyeballs. So I eventually became chairman of the Kent League – there was eleven teams in Kent then, and was also made WFA representative of Kent, and then I was traveling then to Birmingham to meetings, London, and then I was vice chair of the discipline committee, and then you kind of organise your own club – it got quite heavy.
Michael Romyn: And all from a conversation in a pub…
JT: Yeah. So be careful what you talk about in a pub.
MR: But before that you didn’t have any interest in football?
JT: No.
MR: You never played?
JT: No. Didn’t interest me one bit. I used to like hockey, tennis and cricket.
--Ends--
Interviewee: Joyce Thompson
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 29 January, 2020
Location: Lydd-on-Sea, Kent.
Recording Time: 15:35 – 19:00
Joyce Thompson: I can’t think of the chap’s name, as I say, he was running five colts teams in Hamstreet, and he was seeing if I could help out, run the girls football team, and I said ‘I don’t like football’, ‘Oh, I thought you used to play football’, ‘No, cricket and tennis was my games’, and I suppose a few more beers and I went up to him and said ‘Okay, get them to meet me at the Hamstreet Pavilion’, and this is how it started. But I hadn’t a clue how to go about it, where there was another team to play, or what, and I don’t know what it was but something – at Rye, a lady or somebody from Rye said they got a football team, and I rung them and said they could play one game with me, with our team, but because we weren’t affiliated to the football association, and that’s how it started. They gave me all the particulars – where to write to, what to do, and then we got started. Then you find out that other teams are around, like Folkestone, Herne Bay, Margate, and Deal and all these places, so once you got involved with the Federation then you found out there’s a Kent League, and then once you got into the Kent League you’re in it, up to your eyeballs. So I eventually became chairman of the Kent League – there was eleven teams in Kent then, and was also made WFA representative of Kent, and then I was traveling then to Birmingham to meetings, London, and then I was vice chair of the discipline committee, and then you kind of organise your own club – it got quite heavy.
Michael Romyn: And all from a conversation in a pub…
JT: Yeah. So be careful what you talk about in a pub.
MR: But before that you didn’t have any interest in football?
JT: No.
MR: You never played?
JT: No. Didn’t interest me one bit. I used to like hockey, tennis and cricket.
--Ends--