[Devongone]

Great posts Theo and Snoots. Love Snoots as King of Junior School. That certainly does happen. A story I've told before - my year at Grammar was exceptionally good at football. Nearly every boy who could play football in Chesterfield passed 11+ that year. Anyway, I'd been at a little C of E Junior and our team had been crap. I'd been Centre Half and Captain, because I'd head the old case ball and didn't cry! We only won one game and that was when I had to go in goal and kept a clean sheet!

Anyway, Chesterfield Boys was a big thing back then. Their games even at U-11 would get reported in the Sheffield Star or Green Un. Their captain and centre half got regular mentions and was written up as the best young player in town! So, when I got to Grammar, I found he had too, as well as the captain and centre half for NE Derbyshire Boys ........ Anyway, our obnoxious PE Master, ten steps worse than Brian Glover in Kes, organised trials and he'd got 4 teams of good players to get a squad for the school. The result was the former NE Derbyshire captain was No 1 Centre Half, I was No 2, and the poor lad who'd been touted as the best young player in town the previous season didn't even make the squad of 22. So mid-May he'd been tops, by mid-September he couldn't even get considered for his school team. Now that is some fall from grace to take at just eleven years old.