After a lifetime in sport, I long for it to return

My earliest memories as a small boy are of kicking a football against a wall in the cobbled courtyard at the back of our house in Kirkstall, a suburb of Leeds. The house was attached to a sweet shop, which was managed by an aunt and was where my mother worked. Those were wonderful days.

The courtyard backed on to the Abbey cinema and a joiners. My father, who was a big football fan and worked as an engineer at Kirkstall forge, would come home from work, take off his overalls and have a kickaround with my brother and me.

There was an old stable door in the courtyard from when the sweet shop had been a hardware store. The horse and cart had been kept in there. We used to open the top half and chip the ball through. At weekends we would go into the grounds of Kirkstall Abbey and play football on the grass. They are some of the happiest memories of my youth, those games of football. Or drawing stumps on the back wall and playing courtyard cricket.

Sport has shaped my entire life. It has allowed me to do things I could never have dreamed of when I was growing up; travelling around the world, playing rugby for Scotland and the British and Irish Lions, coaching teams at home and abroad. I think this is the first time I have ever been separated from it. No sport to watch on TV, no chance of playing cricket or football in the garden with my grandchildren. I realise that in a way I have always taken it for granted. Sport has always just been there.

As a boy, I was never without a ball. I used to keep a tennis ball in my pocket throughout my childhood so we could play street games.

Going to Elland Road with my father in the late 1950s. The thrill of watching that great Leeds team of George Meek, Eric Kerfoot, Ray Iggleden, John Charles, Jack Charlton, Archie Gibson et al. Those were the days when you could stand anywhere. Someone would buy pork pies and sausage rolls and tea and bring them all back in a cardboard box. I would sit on a bit of support fencing with three or four other kids. Heaven.

Rugby did not actually feature all that much in my early childhood.

I was more into football and cricket.

I attended Kirkstall St Stephens on Kirkstall Lane, about 500 metres from Headingley Stadium, and, as soon as school finished, we would head to the ground, especially if there was a Test on. It was free entry from 4pm.

At all the key moments of my life I received brilliant advice and support. I only joined Yorkshire CC because a maths teacher at my secondary modern, Ken Dalby, had been manager of Leeds RL and knew Bill Bowes, the England fast bowler who played in the Bodyline series in the 1930s. Bowes came to watch me. He passed my name to Arthur Mitchell, the coach at Yorkshire. And he in turn got me into Yorkshire Grammar Schools cricket, where I opened the bowling with Chris Old.

Rugby gradually took over. Ken Dalby told a group of us boys we should try out for the best club in Yorkshire – Headingley. So we did. We played for the colts and in my second season I made my debut in the first team. Suddenly I was playing school rugby in the mornings, and turning out for Headingley in the afternoons.

But it was not cricket, or football, or even rugby, that made the biggest impact on my life. It was badminton. An after-school club at the comprehensive to which I moved for sixth form. She was 16, I was 17. Sixty years later Judy and I are still together.

I hope this sporting hiatus is short-lived. Of course it does not matter greatly in the grand scheme of things when people are losing their lives. But I also know what impact it can have on people’s lives. What joy and happiness it can give.

I am sure of one thing: I cannot wait to be back playing cricket with my grandchildren in the garden.