Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

had so often wielded the cane at Usk Grammar School. ‘Well done, Albert!’ wrote A.D.Pollock. ‘I am delighted to have seen your first century in first-class cricket. May you build a mighty successful career on today’s great innings.’ There was one more match, against Nottinghamshire at Ebbw Vale, which brought Allan 35 runs, enabling him to boost his average to 20.37, sixth in the county list, before football finally claimed him for the winter. Had he left a week earlier, he would have been walking away into an uncertain world, but now he knew there would be a job awaiting him when he returned to Glamorgan in the spring. As Allan looks back on his time in professional football, he makes clear that it brought him none of the pleasure and camaraderie of his years in first-class cricket. “No comparison,” he says emphatically. “Cricketers, you live with them and you might have had your arguments with them; but that would only be an argument. With soccer players it was nasty.” Most of Allan’s time at Plymouth was spent in the reserves, and he still vents his frustration that, notwithstanding the threat of relegation, the first team was a closed shop. “The bloody players were picking the side, not the manager,” he says. Allan had a supporter in Arthur Gorman, who was in charge of the reserves. “He went and said, A Foothold in County Cricket 29 Allan scores against Swansea Town, his only goal for Plymouth Argyle.