THE year I was fortunate enough to spend at Repton College was the making of Chris Adams, as a professional sportsman and as a person. Even now, nearly 30 years later, I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to spend some time there. It was the happiest period of my pre-adult life.
I am in the fortunate position financially to have been able to have all three of my girls, Georgia, Sophie and Mollie, privately educated. When we got married and started thinking about having a family we made a conscious decision that, if it were financially possible, we would try and provide a private education for our children. If they didn’t like it then we’d have no problem if they switched into the mainstream state system. We just wanted to give them the opportunity to have the sort of chance I had been fortunate to receive.
Initially, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go to Repton. It was a conversation with my grandmother, Joan Jones, which persuaded me, ‘If you don’t try it you will always think what if I had. And if it doesn’t work out you can always go and join the YTS scheme at Chesterfield Football Club.’
I left Chesterfield Grammar School in the summer of 1986, having just celebrated my 16th birthday, with two O Level passes in English Language and Economics. I failed the other five subjects, including French. Not only was there little sport that interested me at CGS, particularly in the summer when the focus was mainly on athletics, academically it wasn’t an environment where I felt I was making any sort of progress. I wasn’t thick. I loved projects and course work in a range of subjects from natural history to science and I was very creative. I liked art and I enjoyed drawing. But when it came to studying and the actual exams themselves I struggled and back then whether you passed or failed depended pretty much entirely on how you did in the exam. You weren’t judged to any extent on how you had done during the year. I enjoyed trying to work things out but then I would spend so much time theorising on what to actually write on the exam paper that I would invariably run out of time.
During my final year at Chesterfield Grammar the teachers were regularly on strike. For weeks I remember the school shutting down at lunchtime and gangs of us roaming the streets of Chesterfield during the afternoon before it was time to go home. Even in class the teachers were working to rule so they spent most of the time marking course work and not actually imparting their knowledge. More often than not we would turn up for a class and the teacher had written on the blackboard the instructions on what to study and a few references from textbooks to help us. We would be left to get on with it. Basically, for most of my last year there we were effectively self-taught and I certainly didn’t have the discipline to study hard.
I couldn’t wait to leave. The subject that gave me particular nightmares was French. I loathed it but I was determined to try and pass the exam because I could not stand the teacher, Mr Staniforth, at all. Towards the end of my final term there he caught me daydreaming in class one day. I must have been staring out of the window watching some athletics on the sports field. I wasn’t that keen on running and jumping but at that moment I’d rather have been doing that than learning French verbs. He asked me a question that, of course, I hadn’t even heard so he made me come out and stand in front of the rest of the class. I was being made an example of. I was still quite shy back then and I hated those sorts of situations where I was being put on the spot. He asked me what I was going to do with my life. I told him I was going to be a professional sportsman. He just laughed and the others joined in. ‘I’ll make one prediction now,’ he said. ‘You’ll never pass your French O Level and you will never, ever, be a professional sportsman.’ I remember skulking back to my seat feeling about two feet tall.
My parents were both teachers and if they felt let down with my academic achievements they never let on. I remember Mum driving me to school to pick up my O Level results. She was trying to be positive but I knew deep down how poorly I’d done. To actually pass two subjects came as a pleasant surprise. To add to my humiliation, as the deputy headmaster passed me the envelope containing the grim news he couldn’t stop himself. ‘So I guess you won’t be coming back next year…’ Mum was sympathetic. ‘You did your best,’ she said, but she must have been disappointed. I was as well, but I knew it had been coming.
We talked about what I would do for the next few months. I was going to play cricket for my village team, Whitwell, another club side, Staveley, and the Derbyshire Under-17s and Under-19s. Then, in August, I would join Chesterfield FC on their YTS scheme where my weekly wage was going to be £25. Frank Barlow’s son Matt was also offered a place, but he declined so he could concentrate on a career in sports writing. A wise move as I’m reminded every time I read Matt’s football reports in the Daily Mail!
For now I could concentrate on my cricket. By then I was on the radar a bit, certainly in Derbyshire. That summer I played for Derbyshire Colts along with David, my elder brother, as an all-rounder normally batting in the lower-middle order where I would give it a whack and bowl respectable off spin.
We would play various other counties and took part in a festival in Oxford. That summer I had a bit of a growth spurt and John Brown, who had been coaching the youth groups in Derbyshire for years, offered me some advice. As I started to shoot up I was struggling with my bowling. I couldn’t get my trajectory right and would bowl lots of full tosses. Before then I could give the ball a real rip. It wasn’t a case of the yips although it did feel like it. John told me to knuckle down and concentrate on my batting. He felt there was a bit more to my game than simply going in down the order and trying to hit the ball as hard as I could.
Mike Stones also saw some latent talent. He coached Derbyshire Under-17s at the time and I must have had a couple of good games. Mike was also in charge of cricket at Repton and contacted my parents. There were some assisted scholarships available at Repton and he enquired whether I would be interested in going to the sixth-form college. My immediate reaction was extremely hostile. I’d had enough of education. All I wanted to do was play cricket and then join the YTS at Chesterfield, but I eventually agreed to go to a testing day knowing full well that I had little chance of passing any sort of entrance examination. I turned up and there were 20 other kids there, all girls, the majority of whom had passed 10 or 11 O Levels with A or B grades. I sat the exam and quite enjoyed it but there was no chance of me getting accepted based on my academic record.
I’ll always be grateful that Mike persevered. Another option was a scholarship entirely funded by the J. Arthur Rank Foundation; a charity set up in 1953 by Joseph Arthur Rank, a man synonymous with the film industry. As well as promoting his Christian beliefs, the foundation helped gifted potential leaders. I’m not sure if he had me in mind as a future captain of industry but the bottom line was that my school fees for the year would be funded by the foundation. My parents would have to find money for uniform but it was a spectacular offer.
I would have to retake my O Levels and, all being well, I would then start an A Level syllabus. I wasn’t keen on going there to repeat a year. I remember the stigma attached to those in the remedial class at Chesterfield Grammar School and I thought that this could be a lot worse because I can’t imagine there were too many other pupils at Repton who were less academically gifted than me.
Mum and Dad were keen but it was only after that chat with my grandmother that I decided to give it a go. Frank Barlow told my Dad that if it didn’t work out the YTS scheme at Chesterfield would still be an option and they played football at Repton as well. I’d played representative cricket there a couple of times for Derbyshire and knew it was a stunning place. The school had been established in the 16th century and a lot of the magnificent buildings were strung along the village itself deep in the Derbyshire countryside. C.B. Fry, the former Sussex and England captain, was among its former pupils.
I remember my first day vividly. Fortunately, there was another cricketer in the sixth form whom I knew from Derbyshire Colts, Robin Williamson, and during the hour-long drive from Chesterfield I took comfort in the knowledge that I would know at least one of the hundreds of other pupils there. One of the first things that struck me was how mature I was compared to the rest of the sixth formers. I’d been on nights out in Chesterfield a few times with David, drinking underage of course. I knew when trouble was brewing and how to avoid it. Towards the end, life at Chesterfield Grammar became a daily routine of trying to stop yourself getting beaten up and avoiding scraps and scuffles.
This, of course, was a totally alien environment and for the first couple of weeks I struggled to adapt. I was put in Priory House and allocated into a ten-bed dormitory. We weren’t allowed to go home for the first four weeks and I was homesick. There were five of us in a study room of varying ages. I was second in age to a lad called Charlie Henry, who lived in the village and was a really big help to me in those first few weeks. When we were on a break or preparing in the evening for lessons the following day we’d be in the study. Eventually I settled into the routine. Lessons in the morning, sport in the afternoon and study in the evening.
I soon began to reap the benefits academically. For the first time I felt the teachers actually cared. They made me understand what a good education could do for me. Class sizes were smaller so you got more attention and specialist tuition and I started to make progress, although after six weeks I was told it would take longer than they had envisaged for me to pass my O Levels. The chances of me starting an A Level syllabus towards the end of my first year quickly receded.
The only thing I disliked about Repton was the ingrained hierarchy whereby the older boys would subject the younger pupils to a lot of misery through the system of fagging. It was basically a form of slavery and I hated seeing the young lads literally trembling with fear when this daily list of menial tasks would be posted up on the dormitory wall as punishment for often-ridiculous indiscretions. I know it has gone on for centuries at public schools like Repton and I’m sure if I’d been there from a young age I would have just had to accept it and fallen into line. But I was a bit more street-wise than a lot of my peers and when I started to stick up for some of the young lads they didn’t know how to take it.
Charlie Henry would sit down at the start of the week with the younger boys in our study and give them their orders. I don’t think Charlie felt that comfortable with fagging either but that was how things were done. The youngest member of our study was a gifted young Chinese boy called Kenneth Wong. He was unbelievably talented in a whole range of subjects but possessed limited social skills and struggled to interact with the other pupils in that environment. I know things are totally different at schools like Repton now judging by the feedback I get from my kids but back in 1986 it could easily have still been 1886 and just like Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
Anyway, Charlie’s instruction to Kenneth was that after morning lessons he had five minutes to get from his own class, get in the queue for the toaster and have a couple of rounds of nicely buttered toast on the table ready for when Charlie and I got back to the study. One of my strongest memories of Repton is young Kenneth sprinting past me one morning to make sure he was first in the queue for the toaster. In fairness to Charlie, if the toast wasn’t sitting there when he got back he wasn’t too bothered but some of his peers treated the young lads like slaves. I didn’t see any physical violence so I guess things had moved on a bit from the Victorian era but in its own way it was a fairly brutal regime. Boys were routinely picked on and I ended up becoming something of a champion of the oppressed boys of Repton.
Most of the boys in the sixth form and upper sixth didn’t know what to make of me, especially when I started telling a few of them that they couldn’t go on treating the younger lads like they did. But it was a tradition as old as Repton itself and they had all been subjected to it when they had arrived. For some it was payback time and who cared about the psychological damage it was undoubtedly causing. One night things came to a head. A couple of the young lads in our dorm started mucking around in the corridor after lights-out, a punishable offence. I quickly sorted things out in front of one of the house prefects who had arrived to see what was happening but next day their names were on the fagging list. So was mine. I took umbrage, grabbed the prefect by the scruff of his neck and put him straight on the matter. After that none of the boys in our dormitory found themselves running errands, tidying up or cleaning shoes.
I went to the football trials and was a bit disappointed to find when the selections for the opening game went up that I was in the second XI. Our first match was against a men’s team who had travelled into school and we beat them 3-0 with C.J. Adams scoring a hat-trick. The third goal was still being talked about months later. I got possession in our box – I was playing centre-half – and ran the length of the pitch before hitting a shot from outside their box into the top-right corner. That day the first team centre-half got injured and the following week I was in and stayed there and was awarded my colours within the first few weeks. The English Public Schools’ team selectors came to watch me play and I was keen to impress. But on the day of the match I felt really tired and struggling for energy and although we didn’t lose the game I played pretty averagely. A couple of days later I came out in a rash. I’d contracted chicken pox and with it went my chance to be selected for the team.
I really enjoyed the football though. Our captain was a lad called Des Anderson and on one infamous trip to Charterhouse, Winston Churchill’s alma mater down in Surrey, Des decided that on the evening before the game we’d wander down to the local pub for a spot of team bonding. That environment wasn’t a new experience for me but for the other lads this was something else. We marched in, bold as brass, and all ordered a pint. The landlord didn’t bat an eyelid. I guess a lot of his passing trade came from groups of spotty teenage schoolboys experiencing pub culture for the first time. We didn’t go overboard. We had about four pints then made our way back. The next day we played the game, won 2-0 and headed back on the bus to Repton. No harm done, or so we thought. When we got back the deputy head was forming a one-man welcoming party on the steps of the school entrance and we were told to report to the headmaster David Jewell straight away.
Unbeknown to the rest of us, a very talented young winger called Anthony Jordan had not handled his four pints as well as the rest of us and had been sick in his bed. But instead of cleaning up, he’d rolled his bedclothes in a pile and left it for the cleaner to discover. By the time we’d got back to Repton the six drinkers had already been identified. Apparently, the landlord at the pub had been on the phone to Charterhouse while we’d been sitting in his snug discussing tactics for the following day’s game. Mr Jewell addressed us all together and gave us five minutes to get our stories straight before he would start to interview us individually. I thought we were all going to be expelled and my first thought was what my parents would think of me. I was petrified. As we sat there, fearing the worst, Des said he was going to take the rap. We would all tell the head that it had been his idea and we’d been coerced against our will. I knew what the head’s reaction would be, ‘Is that the best you could come up with?’ So before he even began talking to me I spoke out that we all knew what we were doing and that if we’d known that Anthony Jordan had made a mess we would have cleaned it up. He was quite sympathetic and gave us a suspended punishment, the nature of which escapes me three decades later. Des lost his prefect and head of house status so in a way he did take the rap, but he was allowed to captain the first XI cricket team next summer and ended up with 56 wickets.
The second term at Repton was pretty boring from a sporting perspective. Hockey was played and it wasn’t a game I enjoyed so I spent most of the time learning a new sport on the Fives court. I knuckled down and concentrated on my academic work, especially French. After the Charterhouse incident I stayed out of trouble, was ‘upgraded’ to a study of four and felt I had fully come to terms with the environment. I also won a Texaco Cricket Scholarship after being nominated by Derbyshire, an award which went to 78 of the country’s most promising young cricketers. We spent a week at Lilleshall in Shropshire learning the game from a quartet of hoary old pros comprising Alan Oakman of Sussex, Nottinghamshire’s Mike Bore, Maurice Hallam of Leicestershire, and Lancashire’s John Stanworth. Back at Repton we had the odd indoor net during the winter term before cricket began in earnest in April 1987.
On the first day Mike Stones brought us together and promised any player who scored a hundred that he would buy them a new bat. Another Mike – Mike Kettle, who was also Repton’s groundsman – assisted him. Mike produced some wonderful pitches and that, allied to the fact that it was a pretty dry summer, were perfect for me. Sure enough, in our first game when I opened I scored a hundred. Mike kept his word and on the Monday afternoon we drove to the sports shop in Derby where I picked out a top of the range Gunn and Moore before eagerly showing it off to the rest of the team. The following Saturday I scored another hundred against Oundle School but sadly Mike’s offer was only for one bat. I would have cost him a fortune otherwise because in my first four games I scored three centuries and 80-odd not out in the other match. I reached 1,000 runs before the end of June – one of only six schoolboys to achieve that during the summer of 1987.
We won six of our 12 games and I finished with 1,242 runs with a highest score of 158 and an average of 73.05 from 19 innings. I broke the school record that had been held by Richard Hutton, grandson of the Yorkshire and England legend Len, since the 1950s and which, I’m proud to say, still stands to this day. I also got selected for a couple of representative matches, firstly for the North Schools against the Midlands at Bowdon near Manchester. The captain was Mike Atherton, who batted at number nine – one place below me. David was also in the side along with Peter Martin, who played for England and Lancashire, and David Leatherdale, who had a terrific career at Worcestershire. Then in July, once we’d finished school, I took part in the Oxford Festival, playing for The Rest against a Southern Schools team that included a future England team-mate, Alistair Brown. I opened and top-scored with 65 and put on a few with Nick Knight, who went on to play for Essex, Warwickshire and England.
At the end of term we went on tour to Barbados which was memorable for two things. In one of the games – a semi-final I think – we ran into a left-hander called Brian Lara, who scored a spectacular century against us, and I got my exam results. I’d passed them all and the person who gave me this good news in his hotel room in Bridgetown was Mike Stones, quite appropriate really because without his help and guidance I wouldn’t have gone to Repton and I certainly wouldn’t have left with a handful of O Levels. I even passed French. If I’d been at school that day rather than Barbados I would have run all the way back to Chesterfield Grammar School and waved the sheet of paper in front of Mr Staniforth. Not only had he been proved wrong about my ability to master the French language, young Adams was about to become a professional sportsman as well.
Back at Repton, my housemaster Barry Downing collared me one afternoon. He was an intimidating character when you first met him, as most schoolteachers tended to be, but once you got to know him he was a lovely bloke. I’m still in touch with him 30 years later. As we walked to his office I was trying to think of the indiscretion that had necessitated this meeting. Outside his door he turned to me and said, ‘There are two guys here from Derbyshire Cricket Club, the chairman Guy Willett and the captain Kim Barnett, who want to talk to you.’
I knew about Kim of course. He had been appointed Derbyshire captain in 1983 and although I always preferred playing I used to watch him and the county when they played at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield. I can remember several occasions at Chesterfield Grammar when David would appear at the classroom door and I would be dragged out of class on the pretence of visiting an elderly relative who was at death’s door and unlikely to make it through the rest of the day. Once out of the gates we’d head up to Queen’s Park instead to watch Derbyshire play. I can vividly remember a game there early in my last year at Chesterfield Grammar when Ian Botham, then playing for Somerset, and Viv Richards had their own spectacular hitting contest. Botham scored 61 off 50 balls – which was some going back then – before going off injured. For someone who liked to hit the ball as hard as he could it was wonderful to watch.
My exploits for Repton had been noted. In those days schoolboy cricket was reported quite extensively in the broadsheet papers and there were always scouts and coaches from county clubs watching our matches. I remember chatting to a Lancashire scout when we played Manchester Grammar – Atherton’s school – and someone from Worcestershire when we visited King’s School. Hard to believe now, but back then if you wanted to offer a trial to someone from another county you had to seek permission first. Derbyshire knew they had to act quickly to stop me slipping through the net and within a few minutes of the meeting Guy Willett had produced a three-year contract they wanted me to sign. I could sign it there and then and join Derbyshire in the spring of 1988 or I could defer it for a year so I could complete sixth form at Repton.
Derbyshire hadn’t even spoken to my parents. They had hoped that the presence of the club captain at our meeting would swing it and they were correct. I didn’t sign there and then but I knew it would only be a matter of time. A part of me still wanted to stay at Repton and do A Levels but Mike nudged me in the right direction. He told me I would struggle to have a better year than the one that was just about to end and that I would need two more years to complete my A Levels. After years of underachievement at Chesterfield Grammar I had certainly caught up academically but I was still behind my peers. The course work involved lots more essays and less problem-solving. My parents were thrilled, of course, that I had achieved my ambition although Dad later admitted that he had been furious that Derbyshire had made contact with me without talking to them first. All that remained was to contact Mr Staniforth. I wrote him a letter with my news, not in a ‘told you so’ tone but actually thanking him for teaching me a valuable lesson about not wasting the opportunities you had and working hard to prove people wrong.
He responded with a lovely letter and when I bumped into him at Queen’s Park when I was playing for Derbyshire a couple of years later he told me he could not have been more proud.
The rest of that summer was spent playing as much as I could, whether it be for Staveley or Derbyshire’s age group teams. Some weeks I played five or six times. I was full of confidence and I could feel I was improving steadily. By now I’d more or less stopped bowling the off spin. I would bowl some medium pace if necessary but my priority was my batting. John Brown and Mike Stones continued to coach me and I was more and more involved with Derbyshire, acting as 12th man for the second XI. David played three games for the seconds that year and I was just glad to be part of the scene, working on my game and trying to glean as much information as I could.
Towards the end of the season I was sitting at home one afternoon thinking about how I might earn a few quid during the winter when Phil Russell, the Derbyshire coach, rang.
He said that the second XI was playing Hampshire at Southampton in the final of the Bain Dawes one-day competition. My heart missed a beat. I thought he was going to call me up. Instead, he explained that the first team were committed to playing in something called the Asda Challenge at Scarborough, a one-day competition which didn’t carry first-class status involving Yorkshire, Hampshire and Lancashire. Because they wanted to field a strong side in the seconds’ match Frank Griffith and I were required at Scarborough for 12th man duties. Phil picked us up in his green Mercedes, stuck his jazz cassette on and we trundled up to Scarborough, Frank and I sitting in the back seat scared to say a word.
We got to the hotel and the first shock was that because there weren’t enough rooms I would have to share with the coach. The other three teams were staying there as well and when we made our way down to the bar a party was already in full swing. The place was buzzing but any thoughts I had of joining in were tempered by the realisation that I was sharing a room with the coach and how it wouldn’t look very professional if on my first trip I was up until the small hours carousing around Scarborough.
It was then that I encountered John Morris for the first time. I’d seen ‘Animal’ play of course and we’d probably said hello at the County Ground a couple of times but here he was in front of me, looking to a wet-behind-the-ears 17-year-old from Chesterfield like something off a Hollywood movie set. Trendy suit, slicked-back hair and smelling like a million dollars. He shook my hand and then turned to Phil, who’d just ordered a half of lager. ‘Phil, Chris and Frankie are coming out with me. Is that okay?’ It wasn’t a request, more an instruction. Phil smiled and we went and joined the throng. Phil had explained on the journey up that the scorer would give us our expenses the following day but that was no good to me now. I only had a couple of quid in my pocket. ‘No worries,’ said Animal. ‘We’ll look after you.’ We ended up in a nightclub until very late with 40-plus other professional cricketers letting their hair down at the end of the season.
I crept back to the hotel room at about 2am, trying desperately not to wake Phil. After getting undressed and slipping under the covers I lay stock still for a few seconds before finally relaxing. I thought I’d got away with it when the bedside lamp came on and Phil turned round, ‘Night Grizz!’
Next morning I felt fine and Phil, Frank and I set off for the Scarborough ground. It must have been early because the gates weren’t even open, although we were somewhat surprised to see a Derbyshire CCC sponsored car in the car park. When the gates opened we went over to investigate. As we got closer we could see that the windows were down and loud music was playing on the stereo. We looked inside and discovered one of our players, slumped over the driver’s seat, shivering and shaking, a half-drunk bottle of wine in his lap. He had been out all night and had decided to cut out the hotel bit and head straight to the ground.
He wasn’t the only one in a dishevelled state. While I pleaded unsuccessfully with the coach for a net he stood by the door conducting a roll call as the other lads arrived and got stuck into the tea and toast Frankie and I had prepared. Just before Kim Barnett went out for the toss, and with only nine other players in the dressing room, Phil told us we had to play. It was a strong Lancashire side too, although judging by some of the bowling their lads had enjoyed the previous night as much as ours. Kim got a big hundred as the others slept off their hangovers in the dressing room and I came in at number eight and made ten runs in my first professional innings before I gave John Abrahams the charge in search of quick runs and was stumped by Warren Hegg. It started raining just after Lancashire began their reply and in those pre-Duckworth/Lewis days Kim and his opposite number David Hughes stood under an umbrella and tossed a coin to see who got to the final. We lost and headed home that night. Twenty-four hours in Scarborough – my introduction to professional cricket.
With the season over I needed to pay my way for the winter. A friend of the family fixed me up with some labouring at Staveley Works, a chemical plant in the village. I turned up on a chilly Monday morning in October and was pointed in the direction of the foreman. We went outside and there were 40-odd metal pipes that needed coating in bitumen. I lasted one day. As we drove home that night I told Mum I would find something else. By then I’d become friendly with Samantha although we weren’t going out as such. But her stepfather Michael had a small logging business in a local forest and I worked there for a few weeks, using the cash to pay for driving lessons, pass my test and take ownership of my first car, a blue Vauxhall Chevette.
David had gone off to New Zealand to coach at a club in Auckland called Takapuna. We spoke on the phone and he told me that if I could get myself over there I could sleep in the spare room in the accommodation he was using that was owned by a lovely couple called Bill and Sue Kapea. Dad paid for the ticket and gave me £150 spending money so I headed off to New Zealand in the first week of 1988. Because Takapuna were only allowed to play one overseas player I had to play in the second XI but they were a social bunch and I enjoyed myself straight away. On the first full day I was there we spent the evening with the Takapuna players in the hotel opposite the ground that also sponsored the team. I’m not sure how much I had to drink but I was sober enough to drive us home in David’s sponsored car. A few yards down the road a police car pulled up behind me, lights flashing. Shit. All sorts of thoughts crossed my mind as the policeman got me out of the car and went to find his breathalyser equipment. I then became aware of a queue of vehicles behind the police car, the occupants sounding their horns wildly. It turned out that the policeman was one of the Takapuna players and it was all an elaborate wind-up.
I had nine weeks out there and it was a fantastic experience. I ended up becoming the hotel handyman, a job that involved nothing more strenuous than cleaning up bottles and glasses, changing light bulbs, cleaning the pool and hoovering up leaves. For that I was paid $250 a week in cash, way more than David and the other English pros out there were earning. Bill and Sue and their two kids were a fantastic family and looked after us as if we were their own. We explored the countryside, although David made a tactical error the night he started chatting up some local girls in a remote bar in the Bay of Islands. A few moments later the place was full of the local chapter of the Maori Mongols, a sort of Kiwi version of the Hell’s Angels looking for a scrap scenting English blood. We beat a very hasty retreat in David’s sponsored car as they gave chase on their motorbikes.
When I got back to England I couldn’t wait to get started at Derbyshire. There was a letter from Phil waiting for me informing me that pre-season training would start on 4 April, two weeks before the first game which was against Cambridge University at Fenner’s. I was one of 24 professionals on the staff expected to report for duty. Except I didn’t.