Issue Number 9

November 2006

Sports

by 681459 (The last 81st number ) Willie Keays

No doubt there are sporting heroes of the 81st whose glittering careers started on the playing fields of Halton; not that I am one of them. However sporting activities are yet another strand of life at Halton which can revive happy memories of events and people.

I seem to remember that in the early days we were required to nominate a sport for Wednesday afternoons. Having absolutely no sporting inclinations I made a stab at hockey as I figured that as I had often watched little girls in gym slips playing it, it would not be too demanding. Wrong!

Apart from having to run around pretending to chase a small white and very hard ball, and avoiding having your shins hacked by the opposition, and sometimes even my own side, I couldn't get the hang of giving the ball a good clout when I was unlucky enough to have the perishing thing come anywhere near me. There's a very good reason for this as I found out when my side were continuously penalised because I was hitting the ball with the wrong face of the stick. You see although you can get left-handed golf clubs, there is no such thing as a left-handed hockey stick. So, you say, serve you right for being cack-handed. But I'm not. In every other walk of life I'm right-handed but just give me a cricket bat or a hockey stick and I'm left-handed. Must be something to do with a peculiarity in my brain.

Now there are operational difficulties for a left-handed hockey player. It's against the rules of the game to smite the ball with the back of the stick so the only way I could hit the ball with any force was to keep to the right hand side of the pitch because the one direction in which I could effectively hit the ball was with a stiff sweeping action towards the centre of the field. I also discovered that if I played half-back I was not expected to be up at the front with the heroes like Joe Lynch, whose great experience in the skilfull, and brutal, field of Irish hurling made him a formidable player. Neither was I expected to confront the leading heroes of the opposing team as they dashed past Wasn't that a job for the backs? A canny player was I!

After the reorganisation of the Apprentice Wings I found myself in No 1 Squadron No1 Wing . Our Squadron Commander was Sqn Ldr McChesney, a boxing fan. It was rumoured that if you boxed for the Wing you were almost certainly in the line to become a 'snag'. So I took up boxing.

Most people have heard of bantam-weight and fly-weight divisions in boxing. Fly-weight is 7½ to 8 stone. Bantam-weight is 8 to 8½. I was mosquito-weight, 7 to 7½ stone and then only just. (It's just as well I wasn't fly-weight as I would have been up against Nipper Fry!)

My first fight was against (John?) Fisher of the 82nd, who lived in the next bedspace to me in Room 2 of Block 10. I adopted a flail-like approach and won on a Technical Knock-out (TKO) as Fisher was completely overwhelmed by this unorthodoxy.

My next fight was against an Army Apprentice from Arborfield. But I was no longer fighting mosquito-weight. Sgt Harry Beanie, our coach, he of the many many children and a double-sized married quarter, decided that I could do better, one weight division down, in midge-weight.(!!) The night before our contest against the Army he dressed me up in a track-suit with a towel round my neck, a greatcoat and boots. Then he took me to Maitland Boiler House where I ran on the spot for a couple of hours. He then told me not to drink any water until after the weigh-in next morning.

Just after I stepped up to the scales in Burnett Gym and just before the judge had noted that I was just a smidgen over 7 stone, Harry dragged me off the scales and took me round the corner. 'Up against the wall and stand on your head for the next 10 minutes!' he ordered. I did so and when the 10 minutes were up, Harry rushed me back to the scales. I was recorded as 6 stone 13½ lbs. I still don't know how that worked. I won that fight on another TKO using the flailing approach.

I was then in the No1 S of TT boxing team at mosquito-weight. We travelled down to HMS Fisgard , a stone frigate just outside Devonport to do battle with those nice chaps in sailor-suits. I remember, as our train crossed the bridge over the River Dart, seeing the battleships HMS Howe and HMS Nelson tied up waiting disposal. Very sad.

Strange place, Fisgard. Junior sailor-suits had to double everywhere. To 'go ashore' they had to be inspected by the Officer of the Watch (I think it was a Rolex ) and then catch the 'Liberty Boat'. This turned out to be the double-decker bus to Devonport.

On the day of the contest the Navy took us to look over HMS Ark Royal. On board it had a couple of Seahawks and some Avengers. We were intrigued to see bombs being brought on board chalked with messages of endearment to Col Nasser. It was, of course, late summer 1956 and Operation Musketeer, the Suez Campaign, was in the course of preparation.

My immediate opponent however, was Artificer Apprentice Wilson. I once more flailed away but he put a stop to that with a couple of well-aimed and very hard body blows. Oh gosh! I reckon I would have won the Olympic Gold for Backwards Running if such a event existed. Wilson was as fit as a flea, or should it be as fit as a mosquito? It must have been all that doubling about the place these junior matelots had to do. I lost on points.

I was runner-up to to Boy Entrant Doherty of No 4 S of TT RAF Cosford in the RAF Championships. He had learned his skills in Spider Kelly's gym in Belfast and had been boxing since he was microbe-weight. No shame in losing to him, and receiving a beautiful black eye in the process.

I was then Reserve to Doherty in the RAF boxing team preparing for the Imperial Services Boxing Championship. Fortunately Doherty remained hale and hearty so all I had to do was fetch and carry under the beady eyes of the RAF coach Flt Sgt Sully ( or was it Scully? Nipper - do you remember?) Mind you after being taken out of training in preparation for the ISBC and being fed the best food I've ever eaten in the RAF, I was the fittest I have ever been. It's alll been downhill since then.

I didn't get my snag so all that for nothing!

On arrival at RAF Nicosia in 1958 I thought I would do a bit of boxing training. I still had my boxing boots and my No 1(A) Wing black shorts with the red stripe. I signed out a pair of gloves from the Sports Store and proceed to give a punch bag a hard time. A Cpl Muscle Mechanic sauntered up and watched me, admiringly I thought.

' Boxer, are you boyo?' He may have been Welsh..

Biff! Biff! I replied with an impressive exhalation of breath.

'What weight are you?'

Biff! Biff! ' Fly-weight', gasps I.

'That's really great, look you!' exclaimed Taffy, 'we're fighting the 2nd Battalion of the Paras tonight and we haven't got a fly-weight.'

It was then I remembered that one of my comrades had asked me to swap a 25-yard Range guard duty that evening so I had to turn Taffy down. What a shame!