Dad almost spotted a World Cup legend

WHEN I was a lad, I used to go with my father to watch our local football team, Stockton Heath. It was in a minor league and played its home games on a bleak windswept muddy field alongside the Bridgewater Canal in Cheshire. The team were doing particularly well at the time, and my father, a schoolmaster who fancied himself as an amateur talent scout, wrote a letter to the club he supported, Liverpool FC, suggesting they run the rule over Stockton Heath — in particular, the inside right, a lad called Bennett. A few weeks later, a letter arrived from the Liverpool chief scout thanking my father for his tip-off and stating he had, indeed, been to watch Stockton Heath play — and was impressed with the team’s performance. Though he thought my father’s pick was a good player, he was much more taken by the other inside forward — a lad by the name of Roger Hunt — who he had invited to Liverpool FC for a trial. The rest is history. Not only did Roger Hunt go on to become a legend at Liverpool FC in the Fifties and Sixties, but he was also a World Cup winner in 1966. My father kept that letter and used to claim proudly that, however indirectly, he had played a tiny part in the progress of Roger Hunt’s football career. David Cowlishaw,

Alton, hants.