Keeper

[MikeSB]

As a point of interest Mike I was 7 in 1953 went to my first match. I admit I don’t remember much from my early matches. The spurs match stands out as someone threw my school cap up when Crewe scored their first goal, haven’t seen it since. I went to school in Crewe and was coached (yes coached) on the George’s by Stan Kerrey who had six or seven years at the Alex. Could you see Spurs or indeed any premier league club putting 13 past us today? The fourth division of yore as you describe it bears no comparison to todays division two, modern players are fitter, faster and more skill full.

Interesting, thank you. L2 or the fourth division does not compare with the old days. The players now are fitter, the pitches are better, generally. But whether they are more skilful today is debatable. Nobody could head the ball like Frank Lord who you will have seen back then. We had some players who scored over 30 goals in a season we signed from Peterboro I think it was. The game was slower but it could be my youth but far more enjoyable as the game was based more on attack with 5 forwards and the players were more spread out on the pitch. Now we can have almost 20 players stuck together in one small area, especially on corners etc, much so that I do feel sorry for the GK's these days as they cannot see the ball lots of time. I'm not certain Bobby Charlton could have scored the goaks he did from distance with todays set up. I can say having watched us from them days to today's game. I don't enjoy them now but that could be just age related and the exhuberence of youth that we all had in the great era of the 60's..

You say you were coached by Stan Keery who was a pretty good half back at the time and he retired to live in Crewe later on as Eric Barnes did. I'm not saying kids and players were not 'coached' if that is the right word but all kids and players trained in the evening and weekdays as we all did as kids. Did you make the grade and did you play for any local teams where we may just have met at the time?

I was 16 when we played Spurs in front of 20,000 at Gresty Road and they played 11 internationals at the time. Nowadays the PL put out academy players until the much later rounds. Nobody was as skilful as Jimmy Greaves. Then or now imo of course.

[out0lunch]

Would help if you told us who you played for?