An interview with Walter Goodyear part 4

There were some real characters in the side of the 1930s. I'd like to throw some names at you.

Stan Worthington

He was a lovely man and I saw him a lot. Before the war, he asked me to go to Clipstone and take over as groundsman at the football ground there, where his Dad was a manager. I didn't fancy leaving home and so turned him down, but there were no hard feelings.

After the war, when Stan came out of the army, one of the first things he did was to come down to the ground and help me strip down the motorised roller. He was an electrician and a first-class mechanic and we got it cleaned up and it ran beautifully. It saved Will Taylor a lot of money for a new one, so he was pleased with that!

He was the coach at Lancashire for ten years and he coached in India for a while. I asked him not to go there, because of his health and he was a bag of bones when he got back home. It did him no favours from that perspective.

When he was at Lancashire he turned up for a game one day in his car with three of their committeemen and the gate man wouldn't let them in – the county coach! I told him bluntly not to be so silly – or words to that effect - and told Stan where to park. He'd played for us all those years and wasn't recognised. Unbelievable!

The gatemen were often pretty strict, I remember that from my youth

That was because most of them didn't use their brains. The best was Percy Fendall, who worked for years on the Nottingham Road gate. One time he gave me a shout and said there were Derby County footballers wanted to get in and wanted to know what to do. I went over and there were twenty-odd of them!

I was a regular at the Baseball Ground and knew them all, but there was a bloke from Spondon with them who I knew wasn't. He'd also nicked my new shovel when I was working at Quarndon one time, so I made sure that he paid and the rest got in for free.

Les Townsend?

Les was a terrific cricketer and was good to watch, but he kept to himself. He didn't mix that much with other people, but we're all different from that perspective.

Harry Elliott?

He was a top bloke Harry and a marvellous wicket-keeper. He didn't miss much and he was a good coach too. He was another who called a spade a spade and didn't miss anyone who messed him about, but I liked him.

He was older than Derbyshire ever knew, you know. When he signed for the county after the First World War, he told them he was born in 1895, when in fact it was 1891. He reckoned they'd not have given him a chance at that age, but he went on to play up to the Second World War. They made him coach in 1947 and he came back and played a few games that year at the age of 56, as it turned out.

You know, nobody knew about his real age until a reunion of the championship side in 1967. He kept it quiet all those years...

George and Alf Pope

They were from Brimington, near Chesterfield. Their Dad, as I've said, was a groundsman and all the brothers played the game. They even had a net in the back garden when they were growing up!

Alf was a lovely fella. I lodged with him for a few years when I first came to Derby and we got on very well. He was good company and his house on Nottingham Road was really handy for the cricket ground.

When George was ruled out for most of the championship summer in 1936, Arthur Richardson told Alf that it would mean he had to do a lot more bowling as stock bowler. Alf's reply was the kind that Les Jackson would have later made - “I like bowling, skipper.”

George was harder, very competitive. He used to play quick bowlers like Brian Close did in later years. If they bounced him, he used to take it on the chest and glare down the wicket at them as if to say 'Is that the best you've got'.

With the ball he was very aggressive and always had something to say. He mellowed as time went on but he always enjoyed bowling on my green tops. Being a middle-order player, he often got in when the early colour had gone and he scored a lot of runs too, whereas Alf was basically a bowler, pure and simple.

Their brother Harold was a decent cricketer too, but never got established as a county bowler with his leg spin.

Tommy Mitchell

Tommy was perhaps the most colourful character of them all. He could be very abrupt with some people and I don't think he had much time for me, because I prepared wickets for seam bowlers rather than him.I was a young lad at the time and he didn't think I knew better than him, an older, experienced professional. Maybe he was right. But he was a fine bowler and probably turned it more on an unhelpful wicket than any of his contemporaries. An odd one might go astray, but when he got it right, he was lethal

He was quite the joker but wasn't so keen when the joke was played on him. He was also very aware of his value and turned down a return to the county after the war because he could make more money at the pit.

Will Taylor offered to make the money up for him, but Tommy said it was a matter of principle and went into the leagues to get extra money.

There's a lot of stories about Tommy and not all of them are printable. There was one time when at the end of a county season, he was offered a short-term engagement to go as professional to Blackpool for a few games, where he was a great success.

Sometime that October, his wife contacted Will Taylor to ask when Tom's engagement there was going to finish. Mr Taylor didn't know what to say, as the season had finished several weeks earlier.

Bill Copson

He was a fine bowler, a very good bowler, but Bill didn't have much to do with me. I was a young groundsman and he was a top bowler who had played for England.

Later in life we got on better, when he became a first-class umpire, but in his playing days our paths rarely crossed.

To be continued...