Title
Playing Football Against Miners in the 1960s
Subject
Pat Lindsey
Description
In this excerpt, Pat Lindsey describes what it was like to play football against miners' teams from in and around Deal as a teenager; the limited football facilities on the Rype; and post-match routines.
Creator
Pat Lindsey; Michael Romyn
Source
Pat Lindsey Oral History Recording
Publisher
Kent's Sporting Memories
Date
1 March, 2019
Contributor
Pat Lindsey; Michael Romyn
Rights
Kent's Sporting Memories
Relation
Pat Lindsey: A True Lydder (collection)
Format
MP3
Language
English
Type
Audio File
Identifier
Pat Lindsey
Original Format
Audio File
Duration
3:02
Transcription
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.
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.