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On ...
Rugby League
I didn't have any choice in the matter.
For the first eight years of my life we lived just a few minutes walk from the famous Headingley ground of Leeds RLFC - "just over the bridge, down the hill", any supporter of the (now) Leeds Rhinos will recognise those directions as being the rows of terrace houses known as the Lumley's.
We lived in a tiny back-to-back terrace house on Lumley Road for a few years until Ned was born and we "went posh" and moved a few streets down to a semi-detached house on Beechwood Crescent.
Not only were we posh for having a semi-detached house, but we had a brand new company car - an Austin A40 no less, red with a black roof - all this at a time when most of the cobbled streets were devoid of cars, those that had them in the Lumleys had old post war black Austins or black Ford Populars - big cars with high roofs and running boards that chugged along at 30 mph using 1920's technology - people came from streets around to look at our dad's A40, state of the art motor, it could do 60mph down Burley Road with a good tail wind - my god were we posh back then.
Living so close to the ground we were used to the Saturday afternoon ritual when cars and coaches would park down Beechwood Crescent and men wearing their team colours would snake up the hill towards the bridge and the sacred Headingley ground beyond.
As Beechwood Crescent was (and still is) the unofficial parking area for visiting supporters buses we would see men wearing different colours for every match - Ned and I quickly learned that the blue and amber colours were Leeds supporters and would stand in our garden (we had a garden too - told you we were posh) and boo anyone wearing different colours - a five year old and a three year old harangueing the opponents, our dad must have been proud.
The First Game
Around my 7th or 8th birthday I was taken to a Friday night match by my Uncle Arthur - well actually he was my cousins Uncle Arthur but things like that don't count when you are 7 or 8 years old, I had hundreds of uncles at that age. Night matches were unusual at that time but Headingley had floodlights installed for the recently introduced BBC2 floodlight rugby league trophy, and they liked to show them off.
Uncle Arthur owned a Lambretta scooter and wore one of those strange white leather helmets - the sort that would offer no protection at all to your head in an accident and only served to make you look silly on your scooter. It was arranged that Uncle Arthur would call at our house on his way to the ground and so it was that in the dusk of an early autumn evening me and our mum stood outside on the pavement, me well wrapped up in a winter coat and wearing a borrowed Leeds scarf (we were always well wrapped up, even on summer days we wore several layers of clothing, except when on holiday at Cayton Bay - then we had to run around almost naked in the biting North East wind).
After several minutes we heard the sound of Uncle Arthurs scooter rumbling over the cobblestones - it is impossible nowadays to appreciate the noise of tyres on cobblestones, and to appreciate how much damage cobblestones did to vehicles - suffice to say that we could hear Uncle Arthur's approach from three streets away.
As he approached I sensed the first doubts from my mother, she hadn't realised until now that we would actually be going ON the scooter, and to make things worse Uncle Arther had picked up my cousin Alan on the way - he was now sat on the pillion seat wearing the silly white helmet, clinging on Arther as if his life depended on it - as it probably did.
A long debate then followed with Arthur lifting first me then my cousin onto the pillion, trying to fit both of us onto one seat, each time either he or my mother would shake their head and try something else - it was becoming obvious that Lambrettas were not built for three, even if two of them were juveniles.
Suddenly (and with the kick-off looming closer) Arthur had a blinding moment of genius, plonking Alan and helmet on the pillion, he jumped on the drivers seat, grabbed me and stood me up in front of him. With both his hands on the handlebars his arms protected me from falling off and all he had to do was crick his neck to one side to see where we were going - brilliant !
"I'm not having him riding on that thing standing up" cried my mother, agast at the thought that her angel wouldn't last ten yards before falling off, or putting his foot on the brake - or accelerator "and what about a helmet ?"
"He'll be alright Joyce" shouted Arthur above the racket of an unsilenced two stroke Lambretta engine "He can wear my goggles", thus saying he put his ex-RAF goggles over my head and off we wobbled over the cobbles, me grasping the handlebar, leaning forward into the wind like Kate Winslet on the Titanic.
After the most exciting two minutes of my short life so far we arrived at the railway bridge behind the ground and threading our way through the crowd Arthur leaned the scooter against the south stand car park wall, we dashed to the turnstiles and I was lifted over the gate - we'd just made the kick-off.
I remember lots of things about that first game, Uncle Arthur trying to explain the rules, the over powering smell of wintergreen linament every time the players came near to where we were standing, the constant shouting and barracking from the crowd, that smell that only a crowd of men can make (very few women at a rugby ground in those days), a sort of tobacco, beer, and engine oil smell, the rust that fell onto our heads every time the ball was kicked onto the south stand roof, and players with strange names such as Wrigglesworth and Shoebottom, a bald player with a girls name (Bev Risman) and another one called Barry Seabourne who dislocated his shoulder every ten minutes and had it put back right there on the field in front of you, and a pair of Tweedledum/Tweedledee twins Kenny and Albert Eyre who walked from scrum to scrum.
I left the ground hooked and have been ever since. A few short years later with Leed Utd reaching their peak under Don Revie I asked my dad if he'd take me to Elland Road to watch a football match - fortunately for me the late 1960's also saw the introduction of the football hooligan and there was no way that my dad would take me there, so he bought me a junior season ticket to Headingley instead.
We would be there at every home game, me and my 11 year old mates, sitting on the staircase railings at the back of the south stand in our knitted blue and amber scarves, bottle of pop and some wine gums at half time then either wait outside the north stand bar for a lift home from my dad, or a walk up St Michaels Lane for the number 33 bus home.
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