Distant Times

18th September 2024

I have recently spent a few days in the South East of England fulfilling various social engagements: catching up with friends, visiting family, and so on. During this period, I took the opportunity to visit two sporting venues that I had not been to for a long time, albeit not to watch any actual sport.

The first was for a reception hosted by Robert Gausden, to whom I referred in An Ordinary Spectator: 50 Years of Watching Sport as a work colleague in 1981 at what was then Queen Mary College in the University of London. We shared an office as research assistants in the Economics Department. Robert was – and is – a keen follower of sport and, in that year, we took the opportunity to take in many of the summer’s events, including cricket at Lord’s, tennis at Wimbledon and Ryder Cup golf at Walton Heath.

The reception was to mark Robert’s (quasi) retirement after 45 years in academia, principally as a university lecturer, and was attended by many of the students he had taught – including in Leeds, Newcastle and Portsmouth – ranging from recent graduates to those now in their late 50s. It was held in the President’s Suite at Lord’s.

The Suite is in the Grandstand and gives a commanding view of the stadium. It was a sunny afternoon and the groundstaff were preparing for Middlesex’s County Championship match with Gloucestershire, which started a couple of days later. I stood at the balcony for a few minutes and attempted to make the contrast between the imposing modern structure all around me and what I remembered as having been the view of the ground in 1976.

That had been the year of my first visit. With some friends, I watched one of the days of the England vs West Indies test match from the Mound Stand, when Mike Brearley had worn his rudimentary skull-cap as protection against the formidable opposition fast-bowling line-up that included Andy Roberts and Michael Holding. I recall that Bob Woolmer and David Steele batted bravely for some time, albeit with only the occasional troubling of the scorers. (The records show that Steele made 64 in 4½ hours. “Bazball” it was not).

It was also from the Mound Stand, from seats nearer the front, that I attended my last match at Lord’s when my father and I saw Yorkshire win the 55-over Benson and Hedges Cup in 1987. The final against Northamptonshire ended with the scores level and Yorkshire were judged the winners on the basis of having lost fewer wickets. The match-of-the-match was Jim Love, with whom I had played in the Leeds Schools Under 14 XI (which I had captained) and the Yorkshire Cricket Federation (Under 19) side. His innings of 75 not out was probably the most significant he played in a career of over a decade for the county.

The day after my Lord’s trip, I did the official visitors’ tour of Wembley Stadium. It was very good value at £18 (for me at the senior rate), our party of about 30 or so including visitors from Spain, Sweden, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Morocco.

The tour began in the small museum near the reception area, which I was amused to see included the cross-bar struck by the ball when Geoff Hurst scored his second goal in the World Cup final of 1966. It is arguably the most famous cross-bar in the history of the sport. This was followed by a visit to one of the upstairs bars, which contained a range of posters, photographs and videos and served as a reminder that, over the years, the stadium has hosted not only football, but also both codes of rugby, Gaelic football, American Football, greyhound racing, baseball, show-jumping et al as well as major non-sporting events, not least Live Aid and other major pop and rock concerts. (An aside. I saw the Rolling Stones perform there in 1982).

The tour guide was excellent: amusing and informative and with an obvious pride in the stadium in which he worked. We visited the spectator seats and the Royal Box and the media centre and, having seen the changing rooms, we were asked to form two lines so that we could walk out through the players’ tunnel on to the side of the pitch, at which point – a nice touch – the sound system played the roar of the crowd. (The pitch itself was strictly out of bounds, of course). Beforehand, after we had passed the drugs-testing room, the guide made one hilarious comment, which I am not at liberty to repeat here, but which, for some reason, the two Bulgarians in the group also found highly amusing.

Some of the points of detail were particularly interesting. I had previously not viewed the huge arch, which extends from one side of the stadium to the other, with any great affection, as, to me, it had echoes of triumphalism: a bit too Saddam Hussein if you like. The guide stated, however, if I have understood him correctly, that its purpose was principally functional, in ensuring the stability of the whole structure by locking the two sides together.

Other details were more quirky, if also still important. The guide mentioned that the stadium – which is not a “dome” because the roof does not extend over the whole arena – holds the world record for the largest number of toilets in a single building: 2,816 if I remember correctly, of which over 700 are for females.

On another point, he was adamant that, during his considerable experience of many years working on event days, there had been one particular set of events that had been by far the most enjoyable in terms of the friendliness of the crowd and the near-complete absence of any trouble whatsoever: the recent series of 8 Taylor Swift concerts that drew a total of over 750,000 fans. At this, one of the young women in our group clapped her hands in the (justifiable) reflected glory of having been one of that number.

As at Lord’s, I took the opportunity to cast my mind to my first visit to the stadium: a primary school day-trip from Leeds to watch the Rugby League Challenge Cup final of 1966 in which St Helens overwhelmed Wigan by 21 points to 2. On that day, we sat near the front on the rudimentary wooden benches provided for spectators near the old players’ tunnel at one end of the ground. I recalled in An Ordinary Spectator that “the far side of the ground looked a long way away – it was a long way away – and it was difficult to take in the obvious point that the distant spectators were about to watch the same match as I was”. From my seat in the Royal Box, I looked over to where I had been and closed my eyes and recreated that view from all those years ago.

My earliest – and, prior to last week, even my most recent – visits to Lord’s and Wembley were to the previous versions of the respective stadia. (In the latter’s case, the most recent was for the last of the Challenge Cup finals – Leeds Rhinos versus London Broncos – at the “old” Wembley in 1999). They were Distant Times. The world has moved on and the years have passed and I – we – have grown older.

Our reference points change. In former times, the walk from the Underground station to the stadium was down the concreted Wembley Way with the post-match journey back to the station usually involving a tortuous wait as the police shepherded groups of spectators on to the (occasional) departing trains. (I noted on the tour that one of the photographs showed Wembley Way being constructed by German prisoners-of-war, under the supervision of British engineers, in preparation for the 1948 Olympic Games). Since 2012, Wembley Way has been renamed Olympic Way and, today, it is a spacious and pleasant tree-lined boulevard containing cafes, a hotel and ethnic food retailers. (On the Sunday lunchtime that I was there, there was a vibrant atmosphere, even though no events were being held at the stadium). There are also several multi-storey apartment blocks in the vicinity (with one-bedroom flats currently on the market for around £450,000, according to one of the property sites I casually Googled).

Prior to attending Robert Gausden’s reception at Lord’s – and because I had arrived earlier than anticipated at St John’s Wood station – I took the short walk down one of the other streets to Abbey Road where, inevitably, I found myself taking a photograph of the zebra crossing made famous in the eponymous album cover in 1969. There were quite a few other people milling around, some of whom would have been to the nearby museum and others, like me, just interested – however vaguely – in the locality.

Distant Times. The passing years. Changing reference points. At the reception, in conversation with one of Robert’s recent students, I mentioned that I had taken the short detour to Abbey Road. She looked at me with a polite, but puzzled, expression.

“Abbey Road? What’s that?”.