It was right of passage, if you played your teenage years at Lymm RFC, that you would be snapped up after the Lymm High School games had ended on Saturday and thrown into action later in the day for one of the clubs senior sides. Quite often it was John Spragues 5th team or with the ringers that regularly turned out for the then 4th team – Steve Fox, Steve Rule, Tony Wright etc. Then on the Sunday you played again often making it 3 games in the weekend.
I had known Keith Etherington, as he was a neighbour and refereed many of the games I played in as a youngster. He would employ me in summer holidays to mow his lawn and do gardening. It was a happy development then, that some years later he would court and ultimately marry my Mother, Peggy and between them they would enjoy the Rugby Club, its community and social scene for the rest of their lives. Those were the years that I played as an adult at Lymm having graduated from college and moved back to the area and are some of my favorite memories. It was the late 90’s, the era of Len Davies as Head Coach, supported by and then succeeded by Steve Rule. We were probably not the best side to represent Lymm ever but it was a great bunch of lads with a decent team spirit, great coaching and an abundance of characters.
Our front row had familiar names like, Fergusson, Maguire and Broadbent. Occasional appearances from Andy Yates and the force that was Dave Reed who achieved a notable hat trick against Bradford one year and it wasn’t scoring tries. Second row regulars were Simon Wright, Bobby Whittle, Tony Cottle, Rob Calderbank and Richard Cook and our back row had club legend Mark Sutton, accompanied occasionally by the likes of Guy Larkin, Simon Harrison or Sion Williams. During this period we were blessed with brilliant half backs including Chris Kinsey, Nick Harris, Nick Shaw and Simon Elliot. John Millachip, Robin Blackmore and Richard King all played centre with Martin Bower at full back it seemed like, every week. Wingers in that era included Andy Holloway, Keir Woods, Aiden Gunnar (Addi) and Paul Munn. This was roughly 1997 – 2000. I played center and wing in this period and it was easily my favorite time playing Rugby, having also played several years at Wolverhampton RFC and Old Albanians.
Unsurprisingly, having played at a few clubs as I moved around with work, Lymm was always the club where I felt most at home. I remember playing for Henders’ 4th team about 7 years ago, this after over a decade away from the North West. I looked around the changing room to see many of the people I had played with at school some 20 years earlier, old mates like Charlie Osborne, Martin Bower, Nick Shaw, Matt Lofthouse and of course the ageless Martin Henderson. Most I hadn’t seen much of in about a decade but even then as a bunch of old men it was so familiar, like putting on an old pair of slippers. Like I’d never been away. No ‘not seen you for ages Nick’ or ‘what’s been going on Nick?’ – someone just threw me a shirt and said ‘you’re playing centre’. I think that’s unusual for most people to comprehend, but if you’ve played at Lymm, you’ll get it. It’s a special place.
I live in California now and so the vision I had as a young man, that one day I’d be an Alickadoo (with the blazer), following Lymm around the North of England maybe, offering some youth coaching or administration support to the Club, is still ‘on hold’.