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Ron Tindall-Footie Cricket & More RIP 1935-2012

Crispin Thomas

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 way back in the day
pre-season often meant your side
could be caught like flashing balls in waiting slips
playing cricket friendlies..
long lost times spent on summer days
longing always longing for the new season

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 hot afternoons knees grazed
from tennis ball games v the big kids
on Ifield’s Road’s daunting concrete playground…
going into the old newsagent opposite the ground
for lemonade and lollies to ask
“‘Scuse me mister- is the new fixture list for next season out yet ?

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 “Not yet son” they’d say.. but but often there’d be a poster :
Charity Cricket Match-Erith & Belvedere X1 v Chelsea FC X1
Sunday 11.30am

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 so come a few select July days season on season
autograph book in hand and with nothing between you
the cucumber sandwiches and your favourite stars
but a thin boundary rope on the grass
you’d be were with big Ron Tindall and the rest of the team
Blunstone, Brabrook the Silletts and all…
in out of the city places
that were were only ever tube names to you before

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 but for big Ron cricket was as much a part of his life as football
and like the Comptons before him
he could swing a bat out there and in the nets
just as well as he could nod and blast balls into proverbial ones

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 sometimes when I think back on
a cheap day at the Oval watching Ron
or to bleak Chelsea childhood afternoons
fog rain soaking wet…losing again …scoring 5 letting in 6
standing with Kev, Philip and Les in a half empty shed-end
late fifties early sixties
I think of Tindall ever the perfect companion
for our hero Greavesie
upfront puffing and battling away..
plying his trade for the old un-predictables
in that high scoring high conceding funny old team..
Drake’s Ducklings..the Pensioners
brilliant but un-flattering player characatures by Roy Ullyett
in the Express…
way back…back in the day
when we were just ‘good old Chelsea’
before money before celebrity before credit cards
before mobiles before seats before merchandise
before it all.. we were there ..you were there
rave on Big Ron ..rave on …

© CT12

Notes

Ron Tindall 1935-2012

Really sad to learn of the death of Ron Tindall, the centre-forward who acted as foil to Jimmy Greaves in the late 1950s and early 1960s, scoring 69 goals in 174 appearances. Watched him play many many times at fotball and cricket. He died yesterday aged 76 in Australia, the country that became his home after he took up a coaching role there in the mid-1970s, following a spell in management at Portsmouth. Tindall also played for Portsmouth, West Ham and Reading but it was at Chelsea where he first became a professional.
As a professional cricketer with Surrey, he was given special dispensation to miss Chelsea matches in the spring and autumn. He hit 1,000 runs in one season.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/ron-tindall-footie-cricket-more-rip-1935-2012/