There were are two centres of sports excellence in the UK during the 1960’s – Loughborough College and Carnegie College in Leeds, both of them generated all of the sporting athletes of the era and spawned hundreds if not thousands of sports teachers to be distributed to school the length and breadth of this fair isle.
Being as our school was the closest high school to Carnegie we got all the right bastards.
Take our head of sports Jasper Simpson for instance, and we’d have given you a kings ransom to take him anywhere but where, as spotty little 11 year olds, we stood shivering on the staircase outside gym changing room in our first week.
Always clad immaculately in grey flannel trousers, white shirt, Carnegie tie and a blue Carnegie blazer with its regulation Carnegie badge he strode briskly everywhere, indeed he marched briskly everywhere, always clutching a clipboard and stopwatch in one hand while the other arm swung as if he were on guard duty, always in a hurry to somewhere, barking orders at mere first formers like we were, he marched in double time down the stairs where we queued, to unlock the subterraneum gym changing room and barked an order for us to change into gym whites – white shorts, white gym vest, white plimpsols, 30 seconds to be ready and standing to attention in his specially chilled gymnasium, specially chilled by leaving all the windows open every night, what a bastard.
And he was a right bastard all the way through our high school career, most of the masters mellowed as you grew older, Jasper didn’t, he only had two settings, “Bastard” and “Off” and he only used the “Off” setting when he went home, or maybe not.
The gym was Jasper’s home turf, but when it came to outside sports then other Carnegie Masters were introduced – Colin Tyrer for instance, one of the few masters who’s nickname was actually his real name so not really a nickname at all, Tyrer was a well spoken young chap who took us for rugby, all very lar-de-dah and in the spirit of the hoo-rahs whom we associated with rugby union, it must have hurt him so to have to tutor a whole gang of rugby league fanatics but he tried his best to make us ruck and maul rather than simply stand up and play-the-ball – it was a bit like having an older and much posher brother trying to teach you good manners at the dinner table, we listened and then ignored.
It was Colin Tyrer who made the worst refereeing decision that I have ever seen on a field of rugby, one afternoon during the inter-house end of term play-offs, partway through the second half and I’d touched the ball maybe three times and all the play was up our end of the field when Tyrer blew the whistle to stop the game and in a scene reminiscent of the bit in “Kes” where Brian Glover spots Casper swinging from the goalposts at the opposite end of the field, Tyrer spotted our opposition fullback Glyn Jones clinging hold of the rugby posts at the opposite end of the field to where all the action was.
He bellowed down the field for Jones to join the rest of us, you don’t have goalkeepers in rugby and for all the world it looked like thats what Glyn Jones was trying to be – he shouted something back up the pitch which was lost to us, so Tyrer set off jogging all the way downfield – and we all followed.
The reason for Glyn Jones clinging to the goal post as a drowning man clings to a liferaft became apparent when we arrived there – he was in much pain – we could see he was in pain, it was bleedin obvious to all except Tyrer who insisted that the leg that was giving so much pain was just a dead leg and that Jones should let go of the goalpost and (I quote) “walk it off boy”.
A scream of agony ensued and the goalpost was grabbed again along with pleas of “he’s broken his leg sir”
“Nonsense” insisted Tyrer and grabbing Jones by the arm he walked him back and forth for a couple of minutes during which our eardrums were assaulted by agonising screams and yells for mercy, eventually even Tyrer got the message that this was not an injury to be “walked off” and insisted that Jones go and sit on the touchline until his dead-leg regained conciousness.
He was still sitting there when the game finished half an hour later, but after we had showerd and changed he wasn’t sitting there any longer – he was sitting in the back of an ambulance with Tyrer still trying to explain to the medics that it was just a dead leg and he’d be able to walk it off in due course – a couple of days later when Jones appeared with his broken leg in plaster we all still insisted that he should have been allowed to walk it off rather than trouble the hospital so. Tyrer never did referee our rugby games again.
what other people have said