Follow-up

FURTHER to the letter describing how Stockton Heath played their home matches on a bleak, windswept and muddy field by the Bridgewater Canal (Peterborough), having played there I can expand on the players’ discomfort. There were no changing rooms: you wrapped your clothes and shoes in your raincoat and put them on the ground in a pile, rain or snow. The goals did not have nets so the rule was that if you scored, the goalkeeper had to retrieve the ball from the canal, but if you missed the goal, you had to fish out the ball using a long pole with a net at one end! I’ve still got my Division Two Champions and Heath Cup winners’ medals from the 1950-51 season. It was a special part of growing up.

B. wood, ramsgate, Kent.