I was a victim of the Garden Walk wipeout
A look back at a rather humbling encounter between school teams
IN Edition 1565 of The Bugle, dated August 24 this year, I was interested to read the letter from my friend, Bryn Williams, who I have known for nearly seventy years.
Bryn recalled the days of the Gornal Carnival which was staged at the Garden Walk Stadium.
I also have fond memories of that stadium. In the 1950s there was an annual football competition organised by the Brierley Hill Schools Association in conjunction with the club, then known as Lower Gornal Athletic.
The competition was for boys under fourteen years of age and may well have continued for years beyond the 1950s, although I am unable to verify that.
I cannot remember the name of the competition although I would hazard a guess that it was The Lower Gornal Athletic Competition.
What I do know was that it was limited to eight schools and all of the games were played at Garden Walk Stadium within the same week in the evening.
In 1956 I represented Brierley Hill Grammar School and after defeating Audnam School in the semi-final we were to meet the mighty Park Lane from Tipton in the final, which tradition had that the game was played on the Saturday morning.
I was tucked away from the action on the right wing and before I touched the ball we were already losing 5-0. The final score was 14-0 and I wonder if this may qualify for entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the worst defeat ever recorded? On turning up at school on the following Monday one of the older lads in the school told me that he had seen a report in the Saturday evening edition of the Sporting Star with the headline “Fourteen goals scored in Schools Cup Final”. His immediate thought was “the lads must have done well,” before reading on and realising the awful truth! As Bryn said at the conclusion of his letter “Tempus doh arf fugit!”
Does this qualify for the worst defeat ever recorded?