Were you a fan of any sports teams as a child?

The world was a very different place then.The two sports that were being played at a professional level were football, or soccer, and cricket. My interest in football was in the local team, Woverhampton Wanderers, or the Wolves as they are more usually known. They played in the top division, Division One, as it was then ( rather unimaginatively) known. In the 1950s they were a very good side with exceptional players Billy Wright was the captain and an outstanding footballer playing for England on over 100 occasions.

He was the first player ever to do that and that is when his opportunities to play were reduced by about 7 years during World War 2. Who knows how many more appearances he would have achieved? I didn't go to many of the games because it was a zoo with only a few seats in the grandstand for the rich. The rest of us had to stand on terraces with railings to lean on - if you were lucky.

As the attendance was often in excess of twenty to thirty thousand it was not a particularly enjoyable experience. On several occasions I did have seats in the grandstand as guest of my dad's friend, Laurie Jones, who had seasons tickets,and on one memorable occasion in the Directors' Box as the guest of my great uncle, Arthur Oakley, who was the Chairman of the Board. My big thrill was in 1949 when the Wolves won the FA Cup and the team had a parade of honour through the town.

I remember my father taking me and we stood in Queen Square as the players and the cup went by. Bear in mind that there was no TV then, if you couldn't go to the game then you had to listen to the radio coverage - that is if your team was being covered that week. As far as cricket was concerned it was a very different game than it is today. The teams that one supported were County sides such as Warwickshire.

Yorkshire or Hampshire. My preferred team was Worcestershire and of course England when they played international, or Test, Matches. An odd fact is that there were very few professional cricketers in the 1950s, most of the players were theoretically amateurs or Gentlemen as they were known. There was a regular match played "Gentlemen versus Players" and If I remember rightly the cricket grounds had separate entrances for the Players and for the Gentlemen, thankfully reason eventually prevailed and the distinction was abolished in the early 1960s.