‘Drop ten, turn and face.’ Quilty’s Football Yarns 35

‘Drop ten, turn and face.’ 

Quilty’s Football Yarns 35

Castleford Challenge and Polling test

Starting at the University of Leeds School of Education in mid-1982 signalled the home run of my six year qualification journey. I suppose seeing it through to its conclusion was most satisfying, because it had involved a big element of swimming against life’s tide and current. The Post-Graduate Certificate involved both a Major in History and a Minor in Games. I would be qualified to teach Secondary school kids. The games element allowed me to teach the ‘non-specialist’ stuff which included Football, Rugby League and Union, Basketball and Tennis. We picked up coaching qualifications for all of these across the year. It excluded such specialities as Gymnastics and Trampoline. As you can imagine the course had elements of both teaching theory and practice. I must admit a lot of the Teaching theory seemed a bit pointless at the time, but that was me. What I really enjoyed was the practical element involving teaching practice where you went out to various schools. At that time, everyone spent their first two weeks at a local Primary school and I was allowed to do my fortnight at Gayhurst near London Fields. Two things I particularly remember about that posting. One was the first day where I was surrounded by a sea of little kids sitting cross legged at my feet. All went well until I asked someone to pass me a ball and I was immediately hit  by six or seven at once. Lesson one. Give clear and specific instructions! The other thing I remember was taking the Gayhurst school football team for a match on the Red ochre pitch in the middle of London Fields, near the Broadway. This experience told me that it was something I really enjoyed and to this day I still get a buzz out of organising school teams.

Returning north to Yorkshire I found out I was to go to Castleford for my teaching practice. This news raised a few eye-brows amongst my fellow trainee teachers. Castleford High School was about 16 miles from Headingley but a world away in reality. It was rough in a most basic way. Three of us were to be based in the area. At Pontefract, Wakefield and Castleford respectively. Fortunately, one of the group had a car which we pooled, sharing the expense. There are three things you’d need to know about where I was going. First, Coal-mining was king in the town. Second, playing Rugby League was the preferred alternative to working down the mine. Third and most important of all, everyone in the town hated Wakefield. The area had recently been involved in a series of mining strikes, whereby the union had split causing many families to fall out. I was unaware of this at the time, but tension was definitely apparent around Castleford itself. I was to teach History across a range of ages and groups. From what I remember I was given no guidance whatsoever. The teachers who I was replacing literally gave me the exercise books belonging to their classes and that was it. Fortunately, at 27 I was quite confident and had worked in a range of jobs and managed to swim rather than sink. A couple of the boys I actually had in my class, were at 16, virtually already contracted to local professional Rugby League clubs. One in particular, John, was proving to be particularly obstructive in class. He was a 6ft 3in second rower with muscles on his spit. As it turned out I took a risk and offered to go with outside with him to sort things out. I reasoned that escalating things in the class-room itself would be a bad move, so I avoided taking him on in front of his mates. Once outside the room we were standing pretty close. I didn’t actually know what I was going to say but the conversation went something like this. 

Me: “John, what do you know about me?”

Pause and silence. Me: “John, do you know me?”

John. “No Sir.”

Sir, well that was a relief, I was sure that after calling sir, he wasn’t going to actually belt me, not just yet.

Me: “John, I’ve heard some good things about you. You are a big brave League player but I doubt you’d be wanting to be fighting a short arse cockney like me”.

John. “No sir but I think you keep picking on me.

Silence. 

Me: “I want to do a deal with you. I know you are not interested in me talking about History but I need to talk to the rest of the class. Do you understand? I only need you to sit there quiet, that’s all”.

Five minutes had now passed since we had ducked out from the classroom. I could hear a quiet restlessness and scampering, as the class were trying to hear what we were saying.

I took a step back and offered my hand to the boy giant. After another pause he grasped and shook it energetically. We went back into the room. I never really spoke to him directly again but my teaching life improved 200% having John sit passively in the classroom. 

As a trainee teacher on prac you had a supervisor visit every few weeks to observe your lessons. Mine was a bloke named Dr Robert Unwin. He was a brilliantly innovative teacher of History at the forefront of all the evidence-based changes sweeping the profession. I had enjoyed his lectures immensely. Having Robert as a teaching observer, was something else though.  One day he came into the classroom and I realised I had left a pile of the kids writing books in the staffroom. All I said was “Robert, I’m just popping out for a couple of minutes to……..” I didn’t get to finish the sentence, because Robert had grasped the arm of my jacket and was mouthing words that were without sound. He was absolutely terrified of being left with a group of fifteen-year old’s! In the end I had to send a student to get the books. The fear in Robert’s eyes told me not to push it. As I found out later Dr Robert Unwin, like myself,  had also done a teaching prac once at Castleford High, not very successfully. It seems that once he got out of ‘face to face teaching’ he excelled in producing resources and teaching teachers what, rather than how, to teach!

Castleford High was as rough as they come. One day I was on duty at recess. All the doors were locked with the students outside until, on the bell, they were let back in again. My job was to stand in the corridor to maintain an orderly re-entry. Unfortunately, I arrived a few seconds late and the kids had already forced the door open. Not just that, two were actually rolling on the floor, fighting! Instinctively I pushed through the crowd and pulled them to their feet. Then after a second, shocked, I realised that it was actually two girls who were fighting. Even worse, in my shock I released them both and one girl punched the other on the nose, before sprinting off. Within seconds the crowd had swirled past me and I was left alone with a very resentful, bloody nosed, young student. 

In spite of the lively nature of that school, I was getting on well. So well that the Headmaster asked me directly if I minded coming back to do another prac rather than going somewhere else. Somewhat flattered, I agreed and he said he’d sort it with the Leeds School of Education. As the weeks went by they entrusted me with the U 13 football team. No one else seemed particularly interested in football, they were all League nuts. Where the other staff did take notice was when we played Wakefield High. Those bastards had to be beaten in any sport. Taking the team actually involved going to Castleford on a Saturday morning but I didn’t mind. Having a winning team in any sport always lifts people. At this time I was particularly fit and offered to take all the running group up into the hills for a seven mile run. The PE Staff were quite happy to let me do it, even though the weather did look a bit iffy. There I was in my warm track jacket and New Balance running shoes. The kids were in vests and shorts. Off we all ran, away from the school and up into the surrounding hills. Ominously, a steady drizzle started and made it difficult to see. By the time we reached the high point it was now sleet. Visibility was falling and I could barely see the town down below. Then, gradually but progressively the kids to started to slow down to a walk. I was worried. I could just picture the Newspaper headlines. ‘Cockney trainee teacher loses twenty students to frost-bite, on Castleford Fell Run.’ Several of the runners were now sheltering behind an old brick wall. The situation was getting dire. My immediate reaction was to physically remove those cowering behind the brickwork and eventually I got them all running again. The downhill run to the school gave me time to think up my excuses. I shouldn’t have bothered. The PE Staff just laughed and said they wondered what took us so long. I’m sure I learned plenty of lessons at Castleford High but most would not fit into any educational theory or practice. 

By the March 1983 much of my PGCE was done with only a couple of loose ends to tie up. I actually persuaded my tutors to let me finish early.  It was a surprise to most though, that I had decided to stand at the upcoming UK General Election, as an Independent Labour Candidate. The country was in industrial turmoil and Maggie Thatcher oversaw some seismic shifts in people’s attitudes and allegiance’s. For me it involved taking on the both the major ‘Party machines’ and in this case a bloke named Brian Sedgemore. He was a typical career politician being installed in a ‘safe seat’ that he’d barely stepped foot in. In this case Hackney South & Shoreditch.

I garnered a lot of local support. Terrie, my family and lots of friends and their parents. Eileen Bass and Emmy Dorking were the campaign secretaries organising 22,000 leaflets and posters. We had newspaper coverage as well as a video feature on the 6 o’clock News Night show. Hackney South & Shoreditch, my manor, was undoubtedly a socio-economically deprived area. Someone once aptly called it the ‘Dustbin of Europe’. Nevertheless, it was our dustbin. Taking part in an election was brilliant. I genuinely believe that many of our supporters would never have got involved directly in such a thing before or since. On election night they were all there at the count at Hackney Town Hall. I even had nominate a ‘spotter’ who went forward as my representative to oversee decisions on doubtful votes. In all there were nine candidates. On election day on the 9th June 1983, the voter turnout was very low. Unlike in Australia, voting in the UK, is not compulsory. Brain Sedgemore picked up his reward of a safe seat. In the end I came fifth of nine, beating the Communists, National Front and various loonies polling 704 votes. Not a winner but having done very well in the local area I was later approached by both Labour and Conservatives to run on the local council. Unconvinced, I set about doing my probationary year as a Secondary school teacher in London. Actually, as it turned out, the first to undertake their probationary year as a ‘supply teacher’ and to that I will now turn.

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