Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

remember the shed with a certain fondness, but there were few similarities with the practice facilities enjoyed today. The wicket was formerly used as a conveyor belt at a colliery, and the wooden shed was heated by an open stove. It did however have as coaches, apart from Les and Maurice, Gerry Lester and George Geary. It would be impossible to combine this venture with anything more than a very compliant or close football club. A non-league team, such as Kettering, filled the bill admirably. It was therefore, on Thursday, 2 October, that Kettering Town club president, W.B.Wright, and secretary Frank Summerly travelled to Countesthorpe with the forms Maurice needed to sign to become a Kettering player. Maurice apparently joked before signing: ‘I’ve not had a Christmas at home for eight years. I’ll sign if you have no match on Christmas Day.’ Wright had been club president for just over a year, and was keen to move the club on and even be in contention for Football League status. The signature of a popular local sportsman was part of that process. Kettering certainly regarded his signature as a coup. It made headline news in the Evening Telegraph , even if it said ‘Tompkins signs for Poppies’, together with the announcement that he would be making his debut in the home match against Gloucester City reserve side on the following Saturday. It also stated that he was 24, and had scored ten goals for Huddersfield – rather than played ten games – so the newspaper was obviously part of the hype. The advert for the match (admission one shilling for adults, six pence for boys, with an additional shilling or sixpence for a seat in the stand) read: ‘Want to be happy? Want to be glad? Come and see Tompkin. Don’t you wish you had.’ Kettering Town, known as the Poppies, were playing in the Birmingham League; they were a club with a history going back to 1872, but had probably never played at the level that their support demanded. Northamptonshire is very much a county of smaller towns, with considerable local rivalry, particularly when it comes to football. The Birmingham League included the A teams of Aston Villa, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Walsall, and the reserve teams of other clubs such as Shrewsbury Town. Though things were not nearly so structured in those days, the Birmingham League was, in standard, just below the Midlands League or the Southern League. The Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph reporter, cloaked in mystery as ‘The Friar’, was always keen to point out that the Poppies had beaten a Midlands or Southern League team, when they did so in cup matches, and compare the standard. It was therefore on 11 October 1947 that Maurice Tompkin ran out on the Rockingham Road pitch for the match against Gloucester City Reserves. They lost 2-1, a game that in ‘The Friar’s’ opinion they should have won. His comments on Maurice’s debut are interesting: ‘Tompkin created a good impression with ball play and working up openings. I thought that he was an all-out 90-minute player, a little overanxious to do himself justice.’ Football winters 40