The Collyweston team of the mid 1980's

There were no Playstations back in the 80s. Some of us were lucky enough to own some of the first personal computers of the day from the Acorn Electron or Sinclair Spectrum.

As a result the playing field offers boys growing up in the village one of the best forms of keeping out of mischief - football.

The playing field at Collyweston comprised of a much bigger pocket park (before the MUGA was added) and an area of mown grass with two 5 a side goals with an A frame backstand.

With such a small goal to shoot at and the prospect of having to collect your missed shot from either the houses behind or a trip into the pocket park long grass, nettles and brambles - you made sure your shots were always on target.

The goals were unforgiving scaffolding tubes with a thick welded A frame behind, all painted in a chalky thick paint.

We would play for hours until the sun went down.

Occasionally we would play against other villages in a friendly. Because Collyweston did not have enough players to form 11 a side we would get thrashed against some of the other villages.

A hastily put together team of Jamie Dunkley, Matthew Wright, Chris Close, Daniel Hague and Simon Close in Goal

The first match we played caused us near panic when we agreed to play Kings Cliffe at Collyweston. We had no kit, no lines on the pitch and the grass was too long to play football. 

Matthew mowed the field with his dads mower. Chris and Simon grabs some excess bright orange car paint from the garage and spent an entire afternoon painting the lines for the pitch. We played in white T Shirts and no official kit.

Even though Jamie scored the first goal of the game we eventually played for well over 2 hours and lost 20-10.

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The rematch in Kings Cliffe did not go much better with a score of 16-12.

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The last game I remember playing was a tournament at Casterton School. Noel Hague had sponsored a team with the Cavalier (now Slater) and we played 3-4 indoor games on behalf of Collyweston in a smart silver top, black shorts and black socks. It seemed to help as we won 2 out of the 5 games we played!