An interview with Walter Goodyear - Part one

There are many thrills that have come my way since starting this blog and the one that keeps on giving is the contact with club legends. I've interviewed a good few of them now and each has been a pleasure.

None more so than my interview with one such legend who never bowled nor hit a ball for the county, but was a major part of the cricketing landscape at first-class level for almost half a century.

Walter Goodyear was the groundsman's groundsman, a man who had forgotten more about his art than most ever know. From 1932, when he started work at Queens Park, Chesterfield, to 1982, when he retired, he prepared wickets specifically, as you will read in the coming weeks, for our rich array of seam bowlers.

They weren't so much Derbyshire wickets as “Walter wickets”. He knew what the club wanted and prepared them impeccably. Anyone winning the toss would fancy a bowl, the extra grass offering early help to any seam bowler worthy of the name and willing to bend his back. For much of his time we did very well, because the conveyor belt of quick bowling talent kept producing the goods...Copson, the Popes, Gladwin, Jackson, Rhodes, Jackson again, Ward, Hendrick...the list went on. Yet you could get runs on them too, because when the 'green' went off it, the wickets were simply good for cricket.

Walter Goodyear is 97 now but still as sharp as a tack. Old age doesn't come alone, as the saying goes, but he is philosophical about his lot, despite losing both his wife and son to accidents that perhaps could and should have been prevented. He is refreshingly honest and funny - wonderful company, in short. I asked for an hour of his time, thought it might take two and ended up with him for four. I could have stayed much longer, just listening to his tales and he even offered to share his lunch with me.

In the preparation for this piece I managed to speak to Steve Birks, now groundsman at Trent Bridge and one of the most respected in the game. He got a start as a groundsman under Walter Goodyear, spending twelve months with him at the County Ground from 1981 to 1982.

“He was the biggest single influence on my career, without a doubt” he said. “He was quite a fearsome character and a lot of people were frankly terrified of him. But he took me under his wing and I remember he would tell me to fetch my flask and we'd go out on the square and have our lunch, or a tea break. If you listened to him, you couldn't help but learn, because he knew it all.”

Steve joined the ground staff from a Youth Training Scheme, making such an impression as to being the one from that scheme that Walter still remembers with a great deal of fondness.

Did he have any particular memories?

“He was brilliant. I loved the guy to bits and he remains one of the greatest characters I have met in the game. The play that Peter Gibbs did a few years back, Arthur's Hallowed Ground, was Walter to the life. It was brilliantly done and captured him as he really was. The man is a legend in our circles and anything I have achieved in the game of cricket owes a great deal to Walter Goodyear.”

He is the last man standing. No one else survives from pre-war Derbyshire cricket and if they did, it is unlikely that their memory would be as acute as his. A groundsman at Chesterfield and Derby in his time, he is also a decorated war hero, fighting both at Anzio and in the North African desert. He is one of the legendary Desert Rats, living on your doorstep.

In the course of our chat I found out that his best friend during the war was my late uncle, my Dad's brother Bill. It was an extraordinary and unexpected coincidence, but then Walter Goodyear is, by any standards against which you care to judge, an extraordinary man.

Meeting him was and will remain a great pleasure. I hope that you enjoy hearing his story as much as I did.

Tell me about your early life - where were you born?

I was born at Chesterfield on February 1st, 1917 and brought up in Southwell at a doctor's house. My mum was a char lady and we were there until I was five, when I moved to Hasland, near Chesterfield with my Mum. My Dad was a farmer, then went on the railway. I had a sister, but she died when she was young, from peritonitis.

My father was very bad-tempered – you might even say vicious - and my three brothers and I got some rough treatment at times. I got the brunt of his anger and I was picked on, to be honest. All of us served in the forces in the war, but we all got through it.

You took a job as assistant at Chesterfield cricket ground at Queens Park in 1932 when you were just sixteen. How did that come about?

Well, I went on the park at 14, then went to the pit for a while, as so many did. I was then asked to go back to Chesterfield, specifically to help out on the cricket ground. I worked with Fred Pope, who was, of course, the father of our bowlers, George and Alf.

There was plenty of work on at that time. There was a first and second team, a Wednesday side and a Thursday police team. All those wickets needed preparation, but they were marvellous years. I should never have left, if I'm honest, as I enjoyed it much more than Derby. I was employed by the Chesterfield corporation and not by the cricket club.

I was 'King Dick' there. A friend of mine called me recently and told me that he had been listening to a piece on the local radio. It had said that I was apparently the most important person in Chesterfield in 1938. I used to wind the market hall clock, the parish church clock, help councillors and do various bits of charity work.

When I moved to Derby, I had to go into digs and if I am honest, I never settled there as much as at Chesterfield. I still love Queens Park.

To be continued...