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.