[Devongone]

For SGB,

Well "he" did have a relationship with the school secretary and that kinda wrecked his marriage apparently (luckily for his wife in my opinion). I don't think he was related to Plymouth Argyle's current top scorer.

When we moved up to the new school we had our own swimming pool and specialist swimming instructor - Mr Batteson. Anyway we used to train after school twice a week for rugby ..... and delight of delights we witnessed Mr Not-Luke-Jephcott, wearing a rubber ring getting a swimming lesson. The PE Teacher who couldn't swim! Naturally we kept it quiet. Other delights he produced included demonstrating the use of a new "Trampette" to bounce over a vaulting horse, getting it wrong and being left sprawled over the horse groaning loudly and he also took on responsibility for delivering notices from societies etc after morning assembly and, being bastards, we quickly realised he was prone to stumble over difficult words ........... so we created a notice for him that Leonard Sachs of The Good Old Days would have loved - and the assembly was in total uproar as red-faced and furious he stumbled his way through. It was such a success that other societies took to introducing difficult words and phrases into every announcement too. The self-important gentleman soon passed the responsibility to someone with a reading age bigger than his shoe size. Shortly after I left we learned he had lost his honorary position with the Derbyshire FA ......... the reason being that he had fraudulently recommended himself for recognition in the honours list, and because he was an idiot, was caught.

He was the reason I played rugby. Our year was completely brilliant at football. I made the squad, but couldn't get in the eleven. The captain of Chesterfield Boys at primary school level didn't even make the squad! They only lost twice all the way through the age groups. But, as you know, once age-groups ended, there was 1st 2nd and 3rd XI. I was a cert for at least 2nd XI, but Gordon in his wisdom had decided to rule that no one who played football for the school could play in outside teams. And my dad ran a men's team and I wanted to sign on ..... and so I played rugby in which our lump of a PE master had no interest! Tales of GJ?! Oh yes, he was such a prick he thought it beneath a grammar school to play against local Secondary Mods and such, but with our year he entered the local Everest Cup because he knew they'd win ..... which they did 7-0 in the final. He knew for definite how superior they were, because Archie Moore (Latin master and Derby County fan) the previous year had arranged some fixtures for those who weren't in the top XI against local schools and his own old grammar school, Bemrose in Derby ......... and we won every time. So GJ basked in the glory of victory knowing they couldn't lose!

BOK was a good teacher. If I'd had him lower down school I might have learned the language as something to speak, rather than as a puzzle to decode. As it was when I reached the sixth form I had to come top in French Lit' to cover for my language inadequacies. BOK's wife wasn't the only one to call him Barney. I remember hearing Bruiser Andrews refer to him as Barney for one. Nevertheless if you'd been sent to the Head's study and opened the door to see Glister and BOK glaring at you you'd have had no alternative but to leg it. The Krays would have been a soft option!

I must also admit in BOK's favour that he turned out to watch us play rugby some Saturday mornings. The only rugby master had left the school and we were allowed to keep rugby going within the school ourselves ...... and looking back I think BOK may have been instrumental in that decision ....... because, had it been left to your favourite PE teacher, rugby would have folded. It also has to be said his unpredictability was also related to physical pain. Some days it was clear he was in more than discomfort. Did he ever talk about his war wound? We assumed there was one. I also have to admit he was a pretty magnificent-looking figure ...... but to use Anne Widdecombe's words, there was something of the dark about him too.

The St Helen's was down there. I ended my Sunday League career playing for them. They had the maddest team ever, run by mad men. By that time it had become, like many pubs in Chesterfield, quite tough. It was notorious for fights breaking out between women on Sunday nights!

You've left me half-wishing I'd have risked getting in more trouble with BOK so I'd have got to know him better. By the way, why didn't we start in form 1 BBA or 1 KSM instead of 2?

[Dancingwilldoit]

For both SGB and Dev, the St Helens is still there but it now has an Italian restaurant adjacent, modern times eh!
https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x4...KzfQ&hl=en

[Devongone]

As for Matt's worries about Halifax, Wrexham and Eastleigh sneaking past us I'm beginning seriously to wonder about Sutton. They seem to be adopting a policy of falling over the winning line.

I can remember winning the Chesterfield League and though it was only amateur football the same mentality applies. We got into a position where we knew it was ours to lose. Next game we talked about it we decided if we were defensively solid, our opponents would weren't going to live with us and we'd be nearly home and dry. What happened? All we were was defensively solid. We let inferior opponents dominate the game. Result 0-0 and that was a very rare score at our level. We thought next time out we'll win anyway. But we were dreadful and lost easily to a team we could have beaten any other day of the week. Next match our centre back was sent off after ten seconds. We played the hardest game ever at Storforth Lane, totally unlike ourselves, to scrape through 0-1. We won the title with a whimper not a bang. I reckon Sutton need to forget the league table and come out and play. If they win 7 and lose 4 they'll have 84 points. I doubt anyone can better that. Maybe Saturday's games will make them realise they need to reassess. Torquay beating Weymouth and closing to three points behind would surely be a wake-up call?

If we miss out it is our own fault. We've got games in hand. But whatever happens we've done wonderfully well even to reach this position.

[SaltergateBorn]

I did once ask about the 2BBA etc business, Dev. I think the answer was that many years ago – and I mean MANY years ago – there was a preparatory term that kids had to go through before they were allowed to join the school proper. That was deemed to be the first year, so when you actually started at the school you were a 2nd former. I may be wrong, but I think that was the answer.

I know BOK was a big rugby fan, particularly Irish rugby (obviously). I don`t ever remember him talking about a war wound, but some years after I left I bumped into an old mucker who`d seen him hobbling around town nearly bent double with what he assumed to be arthritis. He said how sad it was to see, compared with the ramrod-straight figure that we had both known. It may well have been a relic from his war days, but he never said anything about it to me.

God, I wish I`d been there to see Alf sprawled across the vaulting horse. I wish even more that I`d had a camera in my hand at the time so that I could have recorded it for posterity. It would have been framed and hanging on my wall for the past 50 years.

I remember Archie very well. I used to get on well with him until the day he put me in detention – the only one I had in 7 years at the place – for the most effing trivial thing you can imagine. (When I think of all the things I did that were 1,000 times worse and got away with! Karma, I suppose.) Even more annoying, he wasn`t actually supposed to be taking that lesson; he was only standing in for Bob Young because he was ill at the time. It still makes my blood boil when I think about it.

Bruiser (what a misnomer) was a lovely bloke. He was an ideal form master for looking after a bunch of innocent new entrants, of which I was one. He used to live up the top of Highfield Lane, near Newbold village, which was my home patch at the time, so I often used to walk past his house and see him in his garden. He always had time for a word, even when he was at home.

Strangely enough, the other one I always got on really well with was Charlie Bryars. BOK and Charlie; talk about polar opposites! I was in the school choir and Charlie roped me in for the Parish Church choir as well, as he did many. I remember he used to live with his mother on Newbold Road near Sheepbridge Sports Ground, which probably isn`t there any more. When she died (this was after I left) he apparently emigrated to South Africa and became choirmaster at Cape Town Cathedral; I read his obituary in the DT some years later. As it happens, I was in Cape Town 2 or 3 years ago and tried to find out where he was buried, so I could pay my respects. It turns out that there are 2 cathedrals in Cape Town, one Roman Catholic and one Anglican (Dumbo here hadn`t thought of that) and I had no idea which was the right one. I asked a few people in both but I couldn`t find anyone who remembered him. However, I`ve since found that there is a Charles Bryars Rhodes Scholarship in South Africa for those wanting to study organ playing, so he obviously made a mark there and is still remembered. That`s good to know.

Ah well; there you go. Thanks for the update on the St Helen`s, Dancing. I`m amazed I got the name right after all these years and even more amazed that the place still exists; the photos on the link you provided did look vaguely familiar.

I honestly don`t know whether Matt is being pessimistic or realistic about the teams we should be concerned with. If we can beat the teams below us and pick up points against those immediately around and above, we`ll make the play-offs comfortably. Bearing in mind where we`ve come from that will do for me, although I suspect JR`s ambitions go somewhat beyond that.

[spireitematt]

I am an optimist SGB and I'm not being pessimistic, I would love it absolutely love it if we got promotion. We can't rely on other results going in our favour though, we've got to win as many of the 13 remaining games as we can.

Considering what's happened in the last few years and how we started the season it does feel like a dream and part of you is like ok when is reality going to set in.

[SaltergateBorn]

I take your point entirely Matt, but I prefer to turn that on its head. I look on the last couple of years as the dream - nightmare, more like - and believe that things are at last returning to some sort of normality. As I heard JR say in an interview, the idea of a club with our fanbase and structure being where we were - seriously contemplating relegation to level 6 football - was `scandalous`. He was right. We`re now making progress towards reality;getting back to where we should be.

I`m sure Stockport and Torquay fans are thinking exactly the same thing.

[Devongone]

I liked Charlie Bryars with his braying voice and outsize Tolkien trousers. I was in the choir until my voice completely broke sometime in the fourth form. I remember the audition in class. Each boy stood up and sang. Some had the word, "Down," brayed at them after two notes and had to sit down. Others, including me, quickly heard the word, "Wall," and had to stand by the wall. Those sitting down were consigned to musical darkness, those by the wall found they were in the choir whether they liked it or not. I liked it!

I wish I'd known you SGB to consult about BOK when I was at school! I'm sure I could have been miles better at French language but I always felt inferior. I know why too! In our first lesson ever, we were asked who'd done French at Junior school and about three quarters of my form had. My mate sitting next to me had two years start! From then on I always felt I was playing catch up and was conscious of getting stuff wrong and sounding wrong! My two A level subjects were English and History, French was very much a makeweight third ........ but I loved French Literature and was seriously good at it. I was never anything other than top in French Lit', to the extent that I was 10% clear of lads who were going off to do degrees in French and Spanish at good unis. If I could just have said to BOK, old SGB says I should come and talk to you about this sir, I think my whole life might have been different. (My mate through school, because we alphabetically got seated next to one another at the start, liked BOK, despite being so often in trouble that he was on regular report to him.) At school, after school, outside of school, I never met anyone who liked Alf! My dad ran the works football teams on Sheepbridge Sports Ground. Alf was a qualified ref'. My dad, who liked almost everyone, and was himself liked and admired, genuinely disliked Alf, so you aren't alone.

I do, however, think it is time to forgive and forget Archie Moore's detention. He was a nice guy and would not have had any intention of making you so resentful. After all you've lived 365 x 24 x 70 something hours and the detention was just one of them. If you want injustice, Alf banned me from football for weeks for being in a changing room that the rugby and hockey players plastered with thrown mud. Nothing happened to them, because there was no school hockey or rugby team of that age group. Indeed, when I think about it, the only time I ever got sent off at football was for being nutted in the face by a 5-foot midget, who it turned out was a martial arts expert. He lost it completely over some small incident, and I ended up holding him on the floor and calling for the ref's help! And he sent us both off, in a tournament in which the rules said that meant our teams played one short throughout ............ so the whole team got punished for me being nutted by a midget! Now that's injustice. Archie was just a hiccup in the alcopop of life.

By the way, I still think JR is aiming to win at least 12 of the next 13 games and set Sutton or anyone else a difficult target. King's Lynn may well demonstrate how unrealistic that actually is, but it seems to me JR is all about searching for ways to win and that certainly isn't true of the majority of other managers, much though they imagine it is.

[spireitematt]

I take your point entirely Matt, but I prefer to turn that on its head. I look on the last couple of years as the dream - nightmare, more like - and believe that things are at last returning to some sort of normality. As I heard JR say in an interview, the idea of a club with our fanbase and structure being where we were - seriously contemplating relegation to level 6 football - was `scandalous`. He was right. We`re now making progress towards reality;getting back to where we should be.

I`m sure Stockport and Torquay fans are thinking exactly the same thing.

I agree the last 6 years were a nightmare and I hope we have turned a corner, a lot of clubs and fans believe that Stockport, Wrexham, Hartlepool, ourselves etc should be in the Football League and not stuck in the National League.

[Devongone]

Jeez, not only do we win games now, but we also sign the opposition's best player before the game, Kairo Mitchell.

When does reality start?

[SaltergateBorn]

Well, I suppose if you`re going to sign a team`s star player it makes sense to do it just before you play them rather than just after.

I watched the game on live stream yesterday, as I have the last few, and it`s struck me how Asante seems to have gone off the boil. He seems to be completely lacking in self-confidence at the moment and is a shadow of the player he was a few weeks ago. I`m wondering if JR is thinking the same thing. (Hopefully he`ll score at least a couple on Tuesday now I`ve said that.) I also can`t help wondering what Yussuf actually brings to the party; without wanting to be unkind to the bloke, not a lot it seems to me.

My third wondering is where the hell the money keeps coming from; apparently we paid a fee for Mitchell.