Lives in Cricket No 52 - Schooled in Cricket (2nd edition)

164 Chapter Twenty A coach and those he influenced Johnny’s coaching school became a focus for so many players in more than one generation. Johnny coached cricket at a formal level for over forty years – from the opening of the school at Rothwell in 1946, through its rebuilding into a two-lane net during 1960 and 1961, to the move to Toulston near Tadcaster in 1976 and the opening of the new school, Lordswood in 1980 till his death in 1988. Robin Lawrence has detailed to me his knowledge of the 1960-61 rebuilding. “This building [which replaced the old greenhouse] was built with mainly recycled materials. Window frames made by Dad from recycled wood and the glass to go in them came out of the Leeds trams which stopped running in about 1959-60 [Actually they had all stopped running by the end of 1959]. The roof was made of reject Bison concrete beams which were obtained from the firm which used to be based in Stourton [a nearby now suburb of Leeds], as Sam Lawrence was by this time working for Bison’s. The walls were built out of recycled stone which Dad had acquired over the years. The floor was made out of reclaimed oak wooden blocks which came out of the Lewis’s store in Leeds.” Dinah has told me those wooden blocks were ‘parquet flooring’ and this illustrates that there was an artistic as well as a functional element to Johnny’s hard work. Johnny further extended his house next to the school and built squash courts as well. This was with the help of his friend Geoff Pears who played for Bolton Percy as well as Sam, Miles and Robin. Later the house was sold and Johnny built a new home for the family on the land still available. As for the coaching, consider – if the average player is only