I suppose you could say my embryonic sports writing career started on December 19, 1959 at 13 years of age!
Mind at the time I was still dreaming of following my first sporting hero Denis Compton by playing professionally at football and cricket.
It would be a few years after that I finally realised that I wasn’t going to be good enough to do that, and second best might be writing about the sports.
However back in 1959 I was watching the Reds and in the match programme for the game with Millwall was an invitation for kids to send in a report of the match and the winner would receive a Topical Times football annual.
My dad suggested I should try so I sat down that night and put my first match report together.
I think it helped that we had beaten Millwall by an impressive margin, 4-0 so it was a lot easier to write than if we hadn’t won.
Although Ken Booth and Peter Harburn both scored a brace the highlight of the game was a super display by Joe Wilson.
Joe, from nearby Northside, had played all his football before then at right back where he was a hard tackling defender later to earn a big money move to Notts Forest.
But as well as being a tenacious tackler he was also very quick and against Millwall manager Joe Harvey decided to play him as a right winger.
Joe was sensational that afternoon and Millwall (who ended the season just out of the promotion picture in fifth) just couldn’t handle him.
He made two of the goals and continually tormented the Lions’ defence with his quick, direct running down the flank.
I finished my report, posted it to Borough Park and was delighted to find out in a subsequent programme that I had won the competition – even though the Topical Times annual was just a little late for Christmas.
It was presented to me before a game by secretary Bert Horsley, whom I got to know well later when I took over from Dan Richardson writing about the club.
I have to admit that when I went for my interview at the Cumberland Star some four years later I did drop in about my first report being a winner.
Although, to be fair, I never did find out how many entries they had received for that particular competition. They certainly never repeated it.
