With little time to prepare a special guest for this week’s slot I got a young would be reporter to think up some questions to put to the old stager.
I actually thought they were a good selection for me to tackle, so here goes.
John, tell us of your first sporting memories as a boy?
Well I can remember kicking a tennis ball around the school yard at Ellenborough and getting my first laced up football boots for Xmas when I wasn’t very old.
I also had my first cricket bat around the same time and I remember my dad making some pads for me out of cardboard. There used to be a photo of me padded up with a bat in front of wickets in a field behind our home at Chagford Villas.
Cricket or football were always high on my list of things to do depending on the time of year.
The clearest memory I have of the first game I saw was in November 1953, the famous game at Wembley when Hungary beat England 6-3. It was on television in the afternoon and I was home from school to watch it. I was mesmerised. This was football as I hadn’t seen before – and wanted to see more of.
I have told many people since that I owe my love of football to the Hungarians. Quite coincidentally I have just bought a book called The Match of the Century by Matt Clough which is all about that famous game.
You have followed and reported on the Reds for a long time. How did that start?
Well like a lot of boys I went with my dad to Borough Park. I think it was probably soon after watching the Hungary game. My dad had gone from the very first League game in 1951 and it just seemed natural to go with him.
I suppose just like he had gone with his dad in 1934 to Lonsdale Park when Reds had played Preston North End in an FA Cup fourth round tie and just lost a thriller 2-1.
My grandad was from Accrington, born 100 yards from Peel Park home of Stanley, and had moved back to Cumberland, where his mother was born, when his father died of TB. He married a Maryport woman and that’s where both my dad and myself were born.
I continued to support the Reds on the terraces into my teens and after I started at the Cumberland Star in 1963 was given the job of writing about them four years later when a good pal Dan Richardson had to leave the paper. The rest as they say is history.
The one thing that I am quite chuffed about is that FIVE generations of our family have followed the Reds.
Did you always see yourself as a sports reporter?
No the only thing I ever wanted to do was play professionally at football and cricket, something which was done by quite a few players in those days.
My very first sporting hero was Denis Compton, really through his cricketing exploits, but he was also a prominent footballer with Arsenal.
But you reach a point, when you’ve given both sports a decent crack, and you realise you are nowhere near good enough. So reality sets in and you wonder what else there might be.
I don’t think I had a Eureka moment but I did decide that if I couldn’t play professionally I could write about it professionally and suddenly the idea of being a sports writer loomed large.
I wrote to the editor of the Cumberland Star as I was going into the Lower Sixth at Cockermouth Grammar School to see if there were any vacancies. I never had a reply.
About twelve months later I was about to go into the Upper Sixth, not having a clue what I was going to be aiming for, when I got a letter to go for an interview to the Star if I was still interested.
Apparently the new editor had found my letter in his desk drawer which had been put there by the previous editor, and there was now a vacancy. I have always put that down to sheer good luck.
Anyway I went for the interview with the editor Graham Atkinson and one of the directors Eric Firby, who was involved on the print side, and got the job – and that will be 60 years ago come September 30.
So how much sport did you play in your younger days?
At school I played for the school at rugby union and cricket, also representing the school at athletics.
One sports day when I was about 13 or 14 I got most points to be junior boy champion – won the 100, 220 and in the winning Harris House relay team as well as fourth in the long jump.
We were a rugby playing school with no football but I had moved to Cockermouth with my parents in 1961 and a group of us were always kicking a tennis ball around the garage doors at the school.
Eventually four of us Tom Allen, Brian Perkins, Andy Gillespie and myself started a team called Deer Orchard, so named because that’s where we used to kick about at the bottom of Castlegate where the Sports Centre has subsequently been built.
Thanks mainly to the help of a former referee and senior county official Jimmy Robinson the club was put on a firm footing and amazingly still survives to this day, which I feel must be some sort of record.
I played for Orchard until getting married and eventually we started a Cumberland Star side which operated successfully in the Workington Sunday League for a number of years.
My cricketing career started at Cockermouth, and after a number of years racing pigeons and playing Midweek cricket, I resumed Saturday cricket with Workington and then British Steel, which provided some of the most memorable and enjoyable moments of my sporting career.
I played my last football game at the age of 36 (although appearances were strictly limited over the last few years) and hung up my cricket boots when I was 47.
There is a postscript because I managed to play a game of cricket last year at the age of 75 when I somehow batted 12 overs for seven!
How hard have you found it writing regularly about Reds or Town because you’ve covered both?
From the outset you have to be prepared to tell it as it is, even though what you’re writing might not be what the club wants to read.
You are not writing for the directors or the players. You are writing for the supporters telling them as much as you can about what’s happening at their club.
Sometimes, of course, it will not be what the fans want to hear or what the directors want published but as a sports writer you have to push that to the back of your mind when you are trying to put the facts into your articles.
There has to be a trust, too, between you and the manager/coach. Many has been the time when a new arrival in the Reds/Town hot seat would, perhaps, treat you with suspicion and trust has to be built between you.
I should add here that there has been many a time when the manager/coach is coming to the end of their tenure that they confide in you, trust won and keen to tell it as it is.
Match reports, too, have to be balanced. You don’t go over the top every time as some do which makes it virtually impossible to lay on the plaudits when they do perform very well – and vice versa when it’s not been so good.
Enjoying a good, honest working relationship with the clubs – particularly in a local newspaper – is the aim. A sports reporter is not there to suck up to or deliberately knock the club, simply to tell it as it is.
More and more as clubs take to their own social media platforms to promote news it’s only what they want the supporters to hear – and to be fair, the fans aren’t daft. They know they will be left in the dark, usually when it comes to financial matters or players wanting to leave.
Who are some of the most interesting sports personalities you’ve interviewed over the years?
The one who stands out for me was Lynn Davies the Olympic long jump champion. Lynn the Leap appeared at a Super Stars event put on by the late Kevin Harkins at Borough Park.
He was an absolute gentleman, no edge, time for everybody and impressed me with his thoughtful comments when interviewed. That was some time ago now but he was one of those guys you are pleased there was an opportunity to meet and talk with him.
Another in the gentleman class was Henry Cooper the boxer. Just a nice, down to earth bloke who was prepared to make time for anyone who wanted a word.
I’m not biased here but I got an audio recording with Mike Summerbee when he was speaking in Workington and we met beforehand. Now I don’t know whether it was because of being a Man City fan but we got on like a house on fire.
It was an audio recording I put out on a website I ran and it went down really well but I guess it has long disappeared into the ether.
I also had the pleasure of interviewing Colin Cowdrey when he was watching Cumberland v Kent at Carlisle in 2000 as President of the visiting first class county. Again a pleasant and willing subject for an interview who sadly died of a heart attack later that year.
Finally I wouldn’t say it was an interview but certainly an enjoyable conversation with Jack Charlton, the England World Cup hero.
I met him at Blyth where he was President for a while, during a Workington match and struck up a conversation with him in the director’s refreshment room. It was good stuff – so good that we missed the start of the second-half.
You’ve also had a career on local radio, how did that come about?
I started doing commentaries for BBC Radio Cumbria on Workington Town matches while I was still working for the Times and Star.
Graham Moss, a former colleague at the Workington office had moved to Border and then to Radio Cumbria and he got me involved.
Another former journalist pal Keith Richardson was covering the Reds for Radio Cumbria but then when I had the chance to go freelance in 1999 I found myself with the chance to cover Town and Reds for Radio, whilst doing reports for the papers as well.
I also got an early chance to commentate from Lords when Cumberland got there in the annual Trophy competition. BBC Radio Cumbria sent four of us down and that was the most enjoyable sporting event I’ve covered.
To be actually sitting in seats normally occupied by the Test Match special team and to be doing a ball-by-ball commentary on your own county in a major final was just awesome.
I’ve also enjoyed doing speedway commentaries for Radio Cumbria working alongside James Phillips and hopefully will get the chance to do some more now that the sport is being re-launched at Northside.
You’ve said you are 76. How long do you expect to keep on working?
That will be to when I feel that I’m not up to it or I’m letting people down with my writing or commentating. I feel sure that I will know when it’s time to ride off into the sunset.
But at the moment I enjoy both disciplines and as long as I’m healthy enough to do it I will continue. I have had a couple of health scares in the last two years but they haven’t delivered a knock out blow.
I can honestly say I have loved my job over all these years and still enjoy collating stories and reports. Reporting on sport still gets the adrenalin going and I know how much different sports mean to so many people.
If you had the chance would you do it all again?
What journalism? It’s certainly changed a lot from when I started in 1963 and local newspapers are certainly not what they were back then – and probably you can include national papers in there as well.
It’s a different kind of journalism now after the digital revolution and print journalism seems to be very much on the decline.
I have no regrets over my time in the profession. In 60 years I only applied for one job, and that at a time when everyone seemed to be leaving the Star.
I got an interview for the sports editor’s job at the Kent Messenger, covering Gillingham. I travelled to Chatham but didn’t get the job and I’ve never looked for another.
Perhaps the only change I would make if starting over again would be to try and break into radio a bit earlier than when I did.
