THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH. SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1947.
STANLEY MATTHEWS
The wizard of
INTENDED to start this
little life story in the sum ̈* mer of 1939, but when I Bought advice from my father he looked up from the nowa..
reading and re- paper he was plied: "Who do you think “you aro-Fanny Walden?"
And in case he had destroyed my boyish enthusiasm, he added:
"Wait a year or two. What folk
w bother to sit down and read the comings and goings of a lad of .247 When volu have really lived and have a atory that may bencilt the community, then by all means get down do the task of writing it."
accepted my father's advice.. The war has come and gone, and I have mellowed in the years bis tween. 1 am not old at 31
·
I could I have waited “. but I have set myself to the tank ot relating how it all began while my memory is stål green.
Football 'mad’
FROM
AROM my carllest childhood I was
"mad" about football
I am certain my ball-control can be traces back to a small rubber ball nod a garden wall. I found I could use a ball more or less how I liked.
One day my tricks enused trouble. I had been trying for weeks to litt two kitchen chales the bat aver which I had placed in the garden as imaginary opponents.
My next move was to dari between the chairs, trap the ball, and to spin round quickly and kick the ball into an imaginary goal.
At last I began to master the move, but my practice ended suddenly when I connected with the hall before turning round. and sent it crashing through the kitchen window into the stew mother was preparing
for dinner.
Strict father My father
seemed strict with me us a child, but as I grew okter I realised how much I owed to him. From my earliest days he Im- pressed cu me the importance of fitness. He never drank or smoked In his life, and I have followed his example.
When I was only len my father insisted I should join my brothers and himself in their morning exercises of deep breathing before an open window, fellowed by a spell with a chest expander.
Regularly at six I would wake us were pulled back. No the sheets matter how much I pleaded, I had to join in what I used to term the "'down torture." Today I wan for ever grateful.
.
dribble
Begins the story of his great football career
ground. We Burnley reserves on the Sloke won 2-1, and my big thrill was to make the pass for Joe Mawson to score the first goal.
When I was sixteen I played in team. I was still in amateur, and twenty-two games for our reserve
It was a generous gesture of the other Stoke players to give me two shillings each out of their £1 bonus whenever we won,
On my 17th birthday I signed as a professionni for Stoke City, and I think Tom Mother will bear me out that February 10, 1032, was one of the happiest days in his life.
Freak goal
FLAYED my first game in Stoke's · Lengue eleven soon afterwards ut Bury, and It was a hoppy debut because we won 1-0.
Is funny how things stick in the memory, but I recall this game beenuse of the winning freak goal arored by Maloney the left-winger,
Walter Bussy, the inside right, centred on the eighteen yards line, and Maloney cut into the centre. For some reason best known to himself the Bury goalkeeper came, out thead the boll away,
but Maloney nipped round him and scored.
is the only this I can recuil n goalkeeper attempting to save a shot with his hend.
Divielon
1
my chance and cutting in to take a Westwood pass, I crashed the bull past my pal, Roy John.
in our
TEN
minutes Inter Brook more than
ran
made up for this miss, heading In my spinning centro after round Allemandi Italy's leftback. The tough little Brook had a head of iron, and Coresall never saw the ball,
Neither did Italy's goalkeeper know what was happening soon afterwards when yet another free kick was awarded to England because one of our players had lile feet kicked from under him some yards outside the penalty area.
Brook took the klek. This time he left Ceresoll dumbfounded.
The Italians went crazy. It was then Hapgood's nose was broken. Monti, Italy's captain loft with an Injury to his foot. Our boys were rittled.
It was fortunate for England that Brook and Wilf Copping, the Ar- scoal left half. now trainer to. Southend United, were playing.
Eric and Will enjoyed themselves | that day as never before, after they themselves had been handled rough- ly, Brook, his shoulder strapped, and Copping, with many bruises. gave the Eyetles something to think about-not by foul tactles, but by really
honest-to-goodness English
shuilder-charging.
Ir ever It could be said two men won a match, it was Copping and Brook on this infamous occasion.
After Monti left with a splintered bone in hin foot, there was hardly any holding Italy.
*
Carried off
TED
D Drake, who came in as a late substitute for Fred Tilson at centre forward, was being "blooded" He had in his first International the satisfaction of scoring to give England' a 3-0 lead, but later had to be carried off,
I was too delighted to spare a thought for Roy. Later I repented
when Roy came a little dressing-room after the game, carry ing his Welsh Jersey over one arm
"Here you are, Stan," he said, When Meazza, Italy's centre for without the tre of a
trace
smile, ward, cracked in two goals in quick looked as though aly "Next me 1 open my big mouth succession and I waste my sympathy on the ilkes would at least save the game, or
will you? shut me up, you-just shut
perhaps win it.
It was solectors were apparently
then Brook, Copping, The
I was Frank Moss in goal, Hapgood, and my showing. I lived in a world of my own satisfied with Football League Male worked like heroes to give us
Cardiff Included in the
eleven that beat the Scottish League victory by 3--2 21 at Stamford Bridge the follow- ng October, and was picked for Eng was dropped from land again for that infamous match team. against Italy at Highbury on Novem
14, 1934
of
My form could not have been so hot, because I did not play in the first clever again that season. The following season, however, when was eighteen, 1 played in sixteen on the days preceding the matches for our League side, and as game. I would lie awake for hours Stoke City gained promotion to the while my imagination ran riot. First Division qualified for
Some nights I was streaking down Second
Championship the wing, beating four or five Welsh medal.
men, and finally cutting in to score the winning goal. my colleagues, carried shoulder-high But off the pitch, and given. tion of a hero on my return to reopenbout over that game, the roughest
in which I have ever taken part Other nights 1 scored "hat- Mussolin! had promised his foot tricks," and some nights 1 dribbled ballers bonuses if England were me the length of the field to bamboozle
beaten, and the Italians certainly months, and one the Welsh defence.
meant lo win-at any price. day during the off-season he called at the house and asked if I would like to join him on a golfing holiday in Girvan, Ayrshire.
Romance at golf
first met my wife when I was 18. Jimmy Vallance, our trainer, had been promising to teach. golt for many
For 12 months after this match I the England
1 might not have got back for years but for Ralph Birkett, the
I was mobbed 2 ber 1 have nothing to be pleased Middlesbrough right-winger, being
the
'Don't be seared'
BUT
what a coward I was on the day of the match, I went as far had not been picked
1
Eddle Hapgood was captain and was not treated lightly by the Ita- carried to the dressing-room with a Hans, for before half-timio he was broken nose.
injured, and I took his place and Germany. I did not have a good match.
me.
There were two good reasons why I failed. The first was Muenzen-
Germany's lett berg,
back, who was too quick and too experienced for The second, that I made the worst miss of my carcer quite carly in the game, when I had the ball at my toe several yards inside the penalty area.
I was certain I would score. I a great kick, but kicked the turf. The ball did not travel more than
Ave yards. It was the first time I really heard a 40,000 crowd groan ikke one gigantle voice.
touk
Dad was delighted when e: the age of six he discovered I was a useful runner. He timed and trained mc on Saturday mornings, and
His daughter, Betty Vallance, Join- eventually entered me for tir 100
as wishing cd us. yards in the Stoke-on-Trent sports,
The match blew up after England Betty and I saw much of each at all." I was terrified, and was in such
made a flying start." In the first a state before the race that dad other. A year later we became en-
In these moments of fear I shall minute we were awarded a penalty. We were married in the pulled me out and I cried all the gaged.
never forget Roy John's gesture. Erle Brock, usually a deadly shot, more, realising
disgraced club-house of the Bonnyton Moor Roy was goalkeeper for Wales. had I
He took the kick, which looked a certain Golf Club near Glasgow. myself.
came into our dressing-room long winner to me, but I had not bar- But more famous than the place before the game was due to start, gained for the agility of Ceresolt, the of our marriage, it will be recalled and saw me sitting nervously in a Italian goalkeeper, who made the that Rudolf Hess landed on__the... course in 1941 after his fantastic corner Roy put his arm-round my daring young man on the flying tradence might as well return to the shoulder and said kindly: "Don't peze look like an old man with rheu fight from Germany.
be scored. Stan."
malism with the ease in which ne We took Wales comfortably that dived across the goal to stop Eric's day." A minute after halftime I got, pile-driver.
I redeemed myself the following yeur when, as a seven-year-old, was given 10 yards start in the 100 yards race and won ny heals and the final-plus a gold watch. Dad was the proudest man in Stoke.
I cannot pass ол from Girvan without a word about Sam English, whom met there for the first time. Many readers will, of course, recall Sam was great centre forward
Rangers. Unfor
entered the 100 yards in these annual sports until was 14, and during that time won four arst prizes und a second. The great day was with when I won from scratch.
Sam Glasgow tunately, he figured in one of Soc
I have always made a special point cer's greatest tragedies when John of concentrating on 20-yard sprints Thomson, the Celtic goalkeeper died because I maintain a footballer who as a result of an accident in which can outspeed the opposition over 20 Sam was involved. yards has nothing to fear over 100 It happened during
Leamio
SO
OWARDS
and the player who loses his con- This miss destroyed my confidence,
dressing-room.
Next Week: My Troubles At Stoke
THIS IS SOHO
fabulous windows opening-time, the
BY THE WAY by Beachcomber
THE Kulde-book which has Marginal note
refused advertising apacO
to the "music-hall type" of land- CCASIONALLY there breaks Into lady is making a big mistake. and enterprise which gives a pic the nows a story of initiative The music-hall type is by far turo of what the fature may hold the jolliest of them all.
for us. It is reported. that a len-1 It is she who keeps up a un year-old American film actress has ning fire of witty coinment wille started a business to supply cosme- the Vienna sink is being seived, fles to girls between the ages of instead of saying
severely "Mr four and twelve.
If this nowa FIBCOC
I must remind you that mus- makes you feel sick, I am ofrald doesn't
wow on trees. One you are out of touch with "the best spoonful per portion, please.*
contemporary thought.".
tard
again, she who strums the old songs on the piano in the evening, in- Another muddle stead of arguing about the smell on the second landing.
And it is A SAVING she who puts the male boarders in a
190,006% don't know.
an
of £000.000.00 Britain's annual food bill was: good humour by winking at them, expected to result from a scheme vý Instead of quarrelling with them proved by the Government.
gets were to be produced in fargo about their laundry.
and quanties in Kenya, understood that indgots were nutri- tious berries, ground into a paste. THE International or World Gal- But it transpired at question time lup Poll will probably be more that ladgets were the hard knobs fun than the national one. Far on the hoofs of the dirtibeests, and more people, particularly the Es-
Es- quite inedible. Mr Bowl naked the klmos and the
Papuan midgola, Minister how the mistake came to won't know. And the onlcini who be made, and wis told that a: asks the Dyaks whether they like White-paper was being prepared, their eggs soft or hard bolted will Mrs Cowfer: What is the good of probably get a blow in the face that? instead of an answer.
Cries of "Oh."
The atom bomb VC is organising
ΕΠ
a retreat from civilisations
·E wears a business suit, unobtrusively immaculate; his voico is quiet, his hands, as they emphasise a point, are eloquent. He says:
"I want to make it possible for anyone who can do
a job of work and who wants to get out to the Empire, to do 80.
Disperse or
"It is essential that people should emigrate. First, because there is overcrowding in Britain and excessive intricacy of civili- sation.
perish'
"Second, if there's another war, all indications are thut the atom bomb or something even more devastating will be used
up a four-figure salary for the job, and I believe the Empire will be took up residence as organiser of nerve training for VIPs who will presont- to the Dominions and ly emigrate
on the land there.
of young large percentage
overseas," want
Training
compelled to have its centre outside Britain.
Aftor Nagasaki
GEOFFREY
LEONARD CHE SHIRE will be 30 in September. Before the war he was reading law at Oxford In Bomber Command he rose to the rank of Group Captain. He won the DFC, the DSO and two bars, the Victoria Cross.
He took part with the Americans in the atom bomb raid on Naga- saki.
an
After that there could be no more Oxford for Cheshire, He abandoned law nudies for the pursuit of ideal which he explains this way:
"I was forced to think that if we could docentralise our civilisation inlo little groups-entirely autono mous and yet part of a central ar- gamisation, then we should have gone a long way towards solving the problem of life."
They used gratuities
people
Cheshire
says. "Therefore I am catablishing a Formation Unit. Many young people Inck the qualifications for becoming settlers
overseas. We are undertaking that I am fying to British Columbin to get a concession on a plece of land."
"I shall then sent details back to the training unit at Lise, and together they will be able to go! teams of colonisers.
"The plan of action will be decid- ed at this end. Everyone will be, tested in a six-month course on his
tries to be colonist."
But how to get the ploncers out ahor- in these days of transport tage."
"Some Dutch members of VIP,” Cheshire explains "are shipbuilders from Groningen.. We hope they will provide a ship. We may buy a few Halifaxes and fly people over- ccas,"
FTER demobilisation, Cheshire Agot to work, on his theory. He
England doomed? founded something called the Vade
*HESHIRE In Pacem Association (the initials,
himself draws no and you will observe, are VIP)
money from VIP. Ho holds started to get up autonomous come that if he did so he could not ap- munities, one in the Midlands, one peal for funds, so he lives on his In Hampshire.
pension and what he earns from There, men and women, mostly writing, broadcasting and similar ex-Service, began the experiment activities. financed themselves with gratuities at is something directed pure- exercising the loosest possible con- ly against the save the tale....Hazlitt, Sir Joshua Reynolds
with the may be expected to haunt his suc-
There are a few plates to tell the
at that homely bend where above-board liquors brandy at ressors, the Hairdressers Journal. yards. is the speed off the mark match between Rangers and Celtic
the shallows of Dean-street at £6, and a-pernod,
£12, a vermouth at £4, a chasis that is so important,
at Ibrox Park on September 5, 1931. flow into the old fishing-hole at mark, a simple pernod for £8 the the great Wedgwood, selling pottery Sam was through and had a chance to score whe
when the fearless young Shaftesbury-avenue, there bottle! Thomson dived at the Rangers cen- walked a man with a hat made
(
To
Greatest thrill
this
of ostrich feathers.
was green and of the kind com-
rackets; do
where someone now sells tennis Here you
Quincey craving a lodging can have your palm at 61, Greek-street, which is now-a read, your hair cut, your hand held, It should be-the Assistance Board. There was little In his appearance your teeth pulled and your pocket hat, unless it were his coat, which than a chorus boy's consiitutional. periods. You cannot go to the Turk's to excite attention apart from the picked, all within a beat no longer Well, you can take your pick of It is changed, of course. It was Head in Gerrard-street for Johnson's monly worn by footmen in ducal never as good as it used to be. The Literary Club, but you can still wan houses, or his. tle of figured slik, or brave days are gone of Gertie Millar der round the lunatic fringe of the his riding breeches loose over bare taking an electric brougham arts at the Fitzroy, go to Victor's and Kettner's, of Lily Elais herself at see the Frenchmen, go to the Swiss the chance of seeing Dylan Thomas, move to the City of London and soo Professor Max, the World's Wonderfullest Photographer.
Icgs..
By JAMES CAMERON
to
on
ALL the time I was running, my tre forward's feet,. and sustained
heart was really in football and tractured skull my greatest thrill came when I was Poor Thomson was carried off and chosen to represent Wellington-road taken to hospital, where he died the School, at the age of 11. I usually same ovening. played centra half, and one after- Sam was not to blame in any way,
1 scored eight goals out of 13 and was completely cleared by from position. For this I receiv- sheriff's jury verdict of Accidental ed sixpence from Me Terry, the Death, but he never really got over headmaster. So it might be claimed I was tho
med this tragedy. youngest ever professional played my first game for Eng- footballer!
lond when I was 19. There had It wwns Mr. Stack, another master, boon some rumours in Stoke that who suggested I should try my the English_selectors might give hand at outside sight. The same "young Matthewa" a chance against year I was chosen to play for the Wales at Cardiff on September 20.
Archer-street, the bandsman's market You can make your way in through North against the South in a school- 1934. boys' trini.
I first heard the rumour that I regarded the fantastic curiously and And even then Soho could cast through the crowd of busily anxious Later I played for the English had been chosen while in my father's said: "Something queer about that its cosmopolitan mind back to the ment, each one with the pallid, lamplit boys against the Rest at Kettering, shop, I dashed down the streat to chap." Then, to make himself clear; days before the Greeks came to
One black, one Greek-street
a C-melody saxophone, and a few months later for England the paper boy, and, tossing half a 500 his shoca?
und Hollywood to brown." against Wales at Bournemouth, crown, snatched a paper.
Wardour-when Soho-square, for Although I lived for football. I had a boyish amblilon to become a builder. It is one of my proud boasts that I could earn
a living pointing houses.
For England
The idling watchers returned to a chequered table-cloth, of "know- their reflections. Except one, who ing a little restaurant.“
not say it always does, but it can, London.
two
look
of ons who shares his living with
Or watch the so-casual encounters
If you like, and listen to two stout
In Soho, that happens. I will example, was the best address in outside the Wind-follow them in, and it did. There are many ways Take Scho-square of today, which gentlemen, heads together, discussing “Yes, Indeed, a of making a living between Oxford- our native genius for forlorn and a gross of nylons or a case of Scotch, was there! heading In large black type, street, and the Palace corner, and pointless building has turned into unmindful of the Bath of Aphrodite "Matthews chosen for England." But, while I was dreaming of
wearing an ostrich hat may be as an architectural rag-bag......that, so delicately exposed above. building, my father, as always, was and such an impression did it make
I read the paper a dozen times, good a way as any,
ago, was the cautious.
Dear me, the things they Bay Grosvenor-square
Gro Centuries
of the day, the "No, Stan," he said, "we'll spend on my mind that I can rattle off the!
That carnest hard ambassadorial centre, the home of 's for aspagheitl and Y's for about Sohot
course you eat in Soho, You go another twelve months building you names of the England and Wales working, somewhat drably-feverish Sir Roger de Coverley, the seat of up. Health and Biness come firat, team for that match without con- place, working all night and most the Duke of Monmouth who went lobster and Z's because John Gielgud
Bolting my scrapbook. and building work will kill you?
of the day to turn an honest penny, into the Battle of Sedgemoor, poor once went there. They are all much It was while hanging around the They were
England Hibbs (Birmingham); there are as many murders in Sur- ing-cry.
as near honest as possible. Why, creature, with "Sohol" as his rally, the same; the maximum-price law has 'house that, the late Mr Arthur
ralnad every bill about 60 percent. Sherwin, then chairman of Stoke Cooper (Derby County), Hapgood titon as Soho--or should be, right (Everyone knows that Soho got When the lights go on, you can City, and Tom Mather, the manager, (Arsenal); Brition (Everton), Bar were done.
Its name from So Hol the hunting pick your way past the
the pastoshops, mado frequent "social" calls to see ker (Derby County), Bray
That sombre,
sinister - Man in call when the wildfowl flew down past the gaping bomb wounds in chester City); Matthews (Stoke my father.
Bowden (Arsenal). Fils Black now, darting into the shadows from the moorland of Marylebone, street (what used to be there? *Pro." at 17 (Manchester City),
Westwood (Box of Drawer-shroot...he might be a but nobody is really sure about it Rugletti's, wasn't itt. Or was it that
dope pedlar, a
white slaver, an Irgun Certainly the Dog and Ducic is as barber's... No one remembers now.) From a dozen backrooms and base- OM was quite undaunted by the terr. Brook (Manches-emissary making for a rendezvous, rustical a pub as they come, but “
menia comisa tho Ruandau UNSCA if he were not a decent. fim dis- so are half the publ in London.)
естере
of John (Preston North tributor making for a pint. That
the three-ploce band in Joe's Club, calculating Oriental with the bulg-
on. Jake's Place the Figlear or the
Cily).
ton
Lawrence
flat refusals he received when-Walte: -
becoming a member of Stoke City's Jones (Leicester City);
(Man-
or
tho
-ever he broached the subject of my End): Tum (Swansea nying pocket is only carrying home the COHO In the 18th century was a Stage Door, This is the wido-bóys! |
star. But he eventually succeeded. (West Bromwich Albion), Griffiths rations to his little wife, who comes,
in winning over my father, and (Middlesbro
(Middlesbrough), Richards (Wol- from Streatham
signed · amateur · forms ›at
received £1 a week to work in the
verhampton Wanderord): Philips
O'Callampton Wanderers);}
place to baseca In In HURLEY, the i
the kitchen country, the Mes Gerrard-street, lived Dryden;" the
country You can spond your onvallor and Cutters lives there now. andher or merely your time watching His vraighbour 87 was Edmund "the bland and anged of non-committal windows Even now it fultala itself. The Frith-atreet, you could have batwon the cracks and the copper. ever in my memory is of my plays (Leleoster City), Evans W. (Totten- shops with the ravioli and the roll- found a precocious youth of eight And so homes to me frpa-dron; of Ingat my first match against tam Hotspur i
mopt, the garlic and geolie-fish, whose name was Mozart, and who corduroy trousers in the dot know wh
{office/d"
(Tottenham Hotspur
A: A pleture CAAAaremaid for Williams (Newcastle United), «Mi RUT-Jet's face it, the place, lives. Burke, and round" the corner; •at · glances through the milk-bar y
the
As he talks of his schemes the of communal life. They largely
bomb keeps on cropping up, and savings; behind them, but
centralisation. of trol, was the VIP Benevolent Fund modern times," he says.
"Therefore, I think English stock, from which, it is planned, various communities will be able which I consider the most valuable to borrow.
in the world, should disperse, should Then at Lisa In Hampshire,
enigrate. Against a country where the VIPs have a large, rather sessing the atom bomb England is house on a big doomed to defeat in any way as ugly
country agricultural estate. Cheshire's things stand now." scheme, which ultimately envisages
Dos-
But for himself he proposes to stay
a world-wide chain of communities, in Britain. went one stage further.
A business man who had given
JOHN CLARKE
DAVID LANGDON CARTOON
T