Blues Online

[DerekPedder]

This is probably of no interest to anyone other than me. There was an article in this week's Post about the match on 3-1-1952 between West Ham United of the second division and first division Blackpool. The writer said that his dad took him to see the great Stanley Matthews and so did mine.I was aged 8 then and had only recently started actively supporting Barking. I was at the front near a corner flag and memory tells me that I was close enough to have touched Matthews as he took corners but that might be an exageration. West Ham have always been my other team and I used to go whenever their games did not clash with ours including a cup final - we used to get quite a few tickets then and the committee were allowed to ballot to be allowed to buy them as a reward for our voluntary service. I have seen most of the greats eg Ernie Gregory, Johnny Bond, Noel Cantwell, Bobby Moore , whom I remember scoring from a free kick from about 40 yards and just turning and walking calmly back to the centre spot, Vic Keeble,Ken Brown, Patsy Holland plus many others of course. My other West Ham related experience is that I kissed Alan Sealey's wife under the mistletoe at a civic centre Christmas party in the early 1960s. She was still Janice Gilbert then ,worked as a telephonist at the CC and was the reigning beauty queen of Dagenham.Its hard to believe that it was nearly 50 years ago.