Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

controlling the match sounds like an understatement. Maurice was now thirty: the prospect of football injury seriously threatening his cricket career was starting to be a consideration. He confided to his father-in-law’s neighbour that this would be his last season of football: his legs and also his back, could not stand the strain. He was dropped to play for the Reserves in the United Counties League, and only a strong display against Rushden caused his promotion for his last handful of first-team matches. Easter was on the third weekend of April in 1949, and was the ‘hottest for a century’. Easter Monday saw Kettering playing Leicester City; a 3-0 victory, a crowd of 2,643 and his first goal since Christmas made it a memorable match. At this stage of the season he had to juggle football matches and practice games for Leicestershire. He played football on two more Saturday afternoons for Kettering, ending with a match for the Reserves against the Market Harborough team, Symingtons, underwear manufacturers, whose scion was about to become Leicestershire’s controversial captain. If Maurice was in any doubt about his footballing career, the news in early May that Kettering president, W.B.Wright, was resigning ‘for health reasons’ would have clinched it. The health reasons also included his disagreement with management decisions made by the club. Maurice spent most of the following football season, 1949/50, coaching in South Africa, but he made a brief reappearance at Easter 1950, playing three matches in eight days. Kettering were in some disarray, and Maurice was one of several replacements brought in following a 5-0 humiliation by Hereford who at that stage were topping the Birmingham League. They picked up just one point from the three matches he played, and in the one mention he received in ‘The Friar’s’ match report he was described as a ‘non-stop trier’, though the gate of only £75 was described as disappointing for an Easter Monday. Evidence, if we should want it, that to the very end he was keen to give his best for his team, regardless of the situation, a professional sportsman in the best meaning of the word to the last. This time there was no fanfare and no publicity about his return; it was more a question of helping the team out, and getting some exercise after the sea voyage home. So Maurice’s professional football career ended with a 4-2 defeat by Wolverhampton Wanderers ‘A’ at their training ground in Dudley. His last ‘public’ appearances as a football player were, though, still a few years distant. These were in Pakistan in 1956, where he played for MCC, an unlikely name for a football team, in a couple of ‘friendly’ matches against teams that they had already beaten in their cricket matches. In one of these games, at Multan, there were over 20,000 spectators. He played in his favoured position of inside-right, with the enthusiastic Tony Lock as right-wing. Football winters 43