Hard Balls
Congratulations to Ed Balls, the UK Government's new Schools Secretary, for promising to tackle the fear of law suits that has led to playground bans against games such as marbles and tag.
I played in the FT football team with Ed who was centre forward and probably our best player after centre half Alan Harper, a much missed photographer who in 1991 was killed in Kuwait with David Thomas, another fine FT journalist.
As school secretary, Ed has his work cut out if he is to reverse the trend towards ever more sanitised playgrounds. I blame mothers who want to wrap their kiddies in cotton wool as much as I blame the so-called "compensation culture."
Pirates
This trend started years ago. I remember playing "pirates" in the school gym when you could swing from ropes and jump over all the gym equipment until some official banned it as too dangerous. It was a great game, of course.
I was less enthusiastic about British Bulldogs where you had to run from one side of a field to the other while some in the middle tried to pick you off your feet. I couldn't run very well so was useless as a chaser and was easily caught when chased.
There was another game - "finger, thumb or dumb" we called it in the Scouts - where three of you crouched in a line against a wall and others would leap on your backs. That one was a bit rough too.
My old school, Carlton Road Junior School in Dewsbury, was typical of its type with asphalt playgrounds, one for the juniors and an adjoining one for the infants. A new headmaster called Gordon Hirst came to the school intent on improving our cricket performances. We didn't even have a school team.
Canon balls
He introduced a "corky" ball in to the play ground. These balls were hard and black with a brown cork outer. They whizzed up off the asphalt like cannon balls. It wouldn't have been so bad except that we didn't wear pads in the playground. You can imagine that those brave enough to bat became good at hitting the ball pretty quickly. There was no choice.
Sometimes a ball would be cracked over in to the infants' playground, flooring some poor tot who had been playing ring-a-ring of roses, fell down, then didn't get up.
The upshot was that we won the Dewsbury junior schools cricket cup for two years running. At the same time we cleaned up on the swimming trophies too. My cousin Andrew and I were good swimmers and I have already mentioned Melvin Holmes, the third member of our swimming team, here.
Should we go back to the old days? It never did me much harm. A much greater evil in playgrounds is bullying and sometimes the rough games worked against the bullies where they were exposed, away from their little gangs. It's remarkable what you can get away within an organised game - an elbow here, a set of studs there. There would be retribution later but sometimes it was worth it.
I played in the FT football team with Ed who was centre forward and probably our best player after centre half Alan Harper, a much missed photographer who in 1991 was killed in Kuwait with David Thomas, another fine FT journalist.
As school secretary, Ed has his work cut out if he is to reverse the trend towards ever more sanitised playgrounds. I blame mothers who want to wrap their kiddies in cotton wool as much as I blame the so-called "compensation culture."
Pirates
This trend started years ago. I remember playing "pirates" in the school gym when you could swing from ropes and jump over all the gym equipment until some official banned it as too dangerous. It was a great game, of course.
I was less enthusiastic about British Bulldogs where you had to run from one side of a field to the other while some in the middle tried to pick you off your feet. I couldn't run very well so was useless as a chaser and was easily caught when chased.
There was another game - "finger, thumb or dumb" we called it in the Scouts - where three of you crouched in a line against a wall and others would leap on your backs. That one was a bit rough too.
My old school, Carlton Road Junior School in Dewsbury, was typical of its type with asphalt playgrounds, one for the juniors and an adjoining one for the infants. A new headmaster called Gordon Hirst came to the school intent on improving our cricket performances. We didn't even have a school team.
Canon balls
He introduced a "corky" ball in to the play ground. These balls were hard and black with a brown cork outer. They whizzed up off the asphalt like cannon balls. It wouldn't have been so bad except that we didn't wear pads in the playground. You can imagine that those brave enough to bat became good at hitting the ball pretty quickly. There was no choice.
Sometimes a ball would be cracked over in to the infants' playground, flooring some poor tot who had been playing ring-a-ring of roses, fell down, then didn't get up.
The upshot was that we won the Dewsbury junior schools cricket cup for two years running. At the same time we cleaned up on the swimming trophies too. My cousin Andrew and I were good swimmers and I have already mentioned Melvin Holmes, the third member of our swimming team, here.
Should we go back to the old days? It never did me much harm. A much greater evil in playgrounds is bullying and sometimes the rough games worked against the bullies where they were exposed, away from their little gangs. It's remarkable what you can get away within an organised game - an elbow here, a set of studs there. There would be retribution later but sometimes it was worth it.
Labels: Alan Harper, bullying, Carlton Road Junior School, corky ball, David Thomas, Dewsbury, Ed Balls, FT, Gordon Hirst, Kuwait, Melvin Holmes
posted by Richard Donkin at
8:18 AM
4 Comments:
My personal favourite playground games of the 80's were 'stinger' and 'germ'
'Stinger' was much like British Bulldog, but with a tennis ball being fizzed at you at 100 miles an hour as you sprinted between the 2 ends of the playground. I recall that a tennis ball to the ear was particularly painful!
'Germ' was a free for all, where you started off with 20 or 30 kids inside the painted centre circle on the playground and everyone had to get everyone else pushed or thrown outside until there was one 'last man standing' - being something of an overdeveloped neanderthal at 11 years of age I tended to win this one regularly!
Kids these days are wrapped in cotton wall. I don't recall any broken limbs or split heads, and these games taught us skills such as co-ordination, strength, speed, throwing accuracy and so on.
Germ - that sounds like Sumo for kids.
Teachers were caught in a no-win situation, from the point that some Parents were given the overwhelming prerogative to complain and/or claim little john/Jane, had been 'forced to do, to eat, to have to do something they don't like' etc, etc, etc Ditto the Scouts, Youth Clubs and anything to do with outward bounds.(Helped along by a media trying to fill 8,760hours per year with 'News'.
The litigation culture has done nothing to provide a healthy balance, neither has the sudden crop of young single Mothers many of whom have no male partner with whom they can discuss their children's issues.
We seem to have now a wealth of 'experts' who contradict all the known laws of nature by making daily pronouncements with regards to child safety, child abuse, child protection, parental heavy-handedness and round all these 'opinions' off with a good dose of daily Health & Safety mandates.
Kid's couldn't play competitive sports, they might get hurt, they might lose. The latter problem was easily dealt with by having no races, no elitism, de facto no need for playing fields!
Sell the playing fields for building development and raise much needed funds for the Local Authority and the School.
Then, let the kids decide what to eat, provide a toxic diet of the things 'they love to eat', give them no exercise and then we can all sit back and wonder why we have an obesity problem!
The problem is a lot of parents/politicians and social workers don't know what apathy is, and frankly they don't care!
I was just searching google for any reference to Carlton Road Junior & Infants School and it listed your blog. I went to that school 1963 - 1969 and I remember Gordon Hirst really well and also that our cricket team was excellent, I remember Gordon being a very fast bowler and them corky balls really hurt when they hit you. I also remember he had a bluey green Morris traveller with the wood on the sides. I liked playing marbles at break times and once we went on a school holiday to Staithes for a week. When I left there we moved to Batley and I ended up at Batley High School For Boys.
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