Shining a light on the lives of King’s legends
DON’T you just love old school team reunions? Or are you still too young? Thirty, forty, even fifty years on you gather at a suitable watering hole, dig out your old pictures and cuttings and perhaps even your lovingly preserved official tour bag from the Canada trip in 1975 and kick back with old mates, some of whom you won’t have seen in a quarter of a century.
The last one I attended was a Reigate GS gathering in 2015 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of said Canada tour and it is quite remarkable how you immediately regress to your former school dynamic. I was one of three fifth formers to make the school First XV that season – coltish ‘youngs uns’ learning at the feet of sporting gods from the sixth and even seventh form – and even 40 years on we automatically adopted that status.
Myself, Nick Torlot and Chris Thomas – how’s it going lads? – sat at one end of the communal table and were again the “young uns”, the butt of goodnatured jokes; wet behind the ears young pups chasing up the next round of drinks when glasses emptied and sorting things out when somebody got the wrong main course.
After the second or third drink you all enter a strange time machine. A team once again with the old hierarchy fully in place. Coach/master in charge, captain, senior pros, a couple of golden bollox, the jokers and pranksters and the steady eddies. Those with hollow legs and those who get garrulous on a couple of shandies. You relive old battles together almost in real time and recount dodgy escapades on tour. Bloody marvellous.
And then you wake up the next morning and through the haze reflect on a great night of brilliant company and endless goodwill; there is a flurry of round robin emails to that effect and that we must all do it again soon. But of course we are all busy, distracted, far flung people and nothing happens until perhaps the 50th anniversary or, alas, until
people start popping off and there are funerals to attend.
I’m guessing that it’s the same around the country. Other than my particular year group mates or those I spent two hours a day on the bus travelling to and from school the sad truth is I know almost nothing about the guys I spent three very happy seasons playing and training with five or six days a week in a notably successful team full of big characters and huge talents, sporting and otherwise.
We were close, no harsh words or angst that I can remember, but totally ignorant of what made each other tick. It simply didn’t matter back then but as you get older it does.
I don’t know where my teammates came from, what struggles and tragedies they and their families endured before and during their time at school and what drove them on as individuals. At Reigate we were all hungry ambitious 11+ lads from very diverse backgrounds, some very poor. Although you quickly cover the basics over pre-dinner drinks at reunions – marriage, kids, divorce, job, etc – you frankly haven’t got a clue what your mates experienced then and during the past 40 years. They remain a mystery.
All of this came to mind this
week when a shiny new book dropped through the letterbox – A Golden Age, the King’s Canterbury Rugby XV of 1963-64 – with a foreword by Sir Michael Morpurgo who was a King’s player just prior to that era and knew many of those involved.
Now readers might recall I featured King’s in our school of the week series and I was immediately struck then with what a talented and unusual golden era they clearly possessed in the late 50s and early 60s culminating in their unbeaten season of 1963-64 and triumphant march to the 1964 Rosslyn Park Sevens. My old mate Geoff Dodds, whose ghost probably still patrols the touchlines at Park, insisted King’s were the best schoolboy seven he had ever seen and that’s good enough for me.
I had no idea that they had a book planned to chronicle those days but frankly it doesn’t surprise me. There was acres of material, reports and pictures to celebrate an exceptional bunch of schoolboy rugby players who seemed to excel at almost any other sport or activity they turned their hands to. Which almost defines golden eras by the way.
But here’s the clever bit. John Norwood, the team member who has masterminded the project, then asked all
15 starters and the three regular reserves – or their surviving partners – to tell their life stories in 18 separate chapters, illustrated liberally with family and sporting pictures. Space was no object, some are short but some run to 3-4,000 words but you read them at a canter. Anybody who loves biography and pen pics will love this book.
It’s a wonderful snapshot of the English middle class in the 1960s and how the youth from that era fared. Many of the King’s lads came from Colonial families in Burma, India, Malaysia, Fiji, East Africa, Sudan, Barbados and other centres of the Empire. One of the team learned to swim like fish in the tropics and appeared as
Tarzan’s son in a Hollywood film.
Most of them were either born and lived their early lives abroad or their families had recently returned to
‘blighty’ while Dad continued to work around the globe.
The families were hard working and comfortable, not minted, sending their kids to boarding school a major sacrifice. Many had lantern-jawed modest war hero fathers but not all, skipper Seb Barker was progeny of famously bohemian writers George Barker and Elizabeth Smart.
After leaving school theirs was a riotous cavalcade of life and occupations. More than one did the very 60s $99 ticket for 99 days Greyhound bus tour of the States as a rite of passage. Then they became respected lawyers and publishers, you would expect that – but what about becoming a highly trained pilot specialising in flying below 100 feet or dropping off SAS troops at various clandestine venues?
Acclaimed poets and academics, the poet went native and did up an old house in the Western Peloponnese like another famous King’s old boy Paddy Leigh Fermor; successful entrepreneurs, bankrupt businessmen; some became ill and died before their time, some lucky in love and enjoyed long marriages, others unlucky in love and divorce but there were also bloom romances and happy remarriages. There are battalions of much loved children and grandchildren, some, whisper it quietly, even better sportsmen and women and more accomplished scholars than they were. All human life.
What happened next is a question that intrigues those of a curious disposition and this book covers that splendidly. In fact I rather fancy it’s a template for other schools’ teams and golden eras who feel inclined get to know each other a little better as they
approach their dotage. Why not get your own team’s book written before the next big celebration? Then you will view your old muckers with renewed respect and perhaps understand better why you gelled so spectacularly as a team in your golden youth!
If you would like a copy of A Golden Age by way of inspiration email Norwood.johna@gmail.com The cost is £20 with any profits going to the school.