Knee high rugby boots and cowpat pitches

Littleham’s Reg Hill has just turned 100. In a series of articles he gives his memories of life in the village. David Beasley reports.

MULTI-million-pound television contracts, super-star status and images of sportsmen and women plastered over every newspaper - these things are synonymous with sport in the 21st century.

Even regional and local sporting leagues have afforded the participants a degree of notoriety in the local press, elevating them to something akin to celebrity status.

How times have changed. Littleham's centenarian Reg Hill was, 70-years ago, the 'fixer' of Littleham Rangers Football Club, and it was his task to organise fixtures and find a football 'pitch' each week.

"I had a real time just trying to find somewhere for the team to play every week," remembers Reg.

• GAMES AND MATCHES took place in farmers’ fields not on playing fields as we know them.

"We had no fixed ground and we had to go around cap in hand, begging farmers to let us use their fields. Once we had got one, we used to just stick poles in the ground at each end and that was it."

But, while many farmers duly obliged, Littleham Rangers’ difficulties didn't end there.

"Look, have you ever tried to play football on a slope? Many of the fields we used were practically hills and the ball would just keep rolling to one end - if it hadn't been for the molehills."

Molehills? "Yes, molehills. And cowpats, lumps in the grass, things like that. Trying to find somewhere flat to play on wasn't easy."

They weren't the only hurdles. There were numerous occasions when the fields were already occupied, as Reg describes a rather surreal image, even for Sunday League football.

"There were sometimes cows or sheep in the fields, just eating grass. They rarely bothered us, they just looked up occasionally.

"A few times the players had to play around them, but most of the time the animals just shuffled up to one end of the field and just stood there, behind the goal lines - but at least they added to the crowd."

Team selection was a relatively simple matter - rarely were there difficult decisions about who should play and who shouldn't and what position players should be in.

• Haymaking - but Reg can remember injured players being taken off the inaccessible pitches via horse and cart.

"Sometimes we were lucky to get a full team. We often played on Sunday mornings and some of the players were not always in the best of states.
"So, whoever happened to turn up that day got to play."

As a teenager Reg also played for Littleham Rugby Club in the second row.
"The strip we wore was far different to what players get today," explains Reg.

"We had these heavy, knee-high boots and, to keep them water proof, we used dubbin on them, and the leather ball.

"If we didn't do that the boots would get soaked in the rain and get heavier so it was like running around with weights tied to your feet."

But while dubbin ensured that the ball was waterproof, it created other problems. "It made the ball so slippery you just couldn't hold onto it, it was like trying to pick up a bar of soap you had just dropped in the bath."

Reg suggests that the lack of a full time coach may have adversely affected the players’ performances, although a gentleman called Bill Pascal helped out occasionally. "We were largely self taught," adds Reg. "And sometimes it showed."

He recalls after one particularly brutal game one player was injured with a suspected broken leg - but the only way to get from the ground was via an uneven dirt track.

"They transported him on this 'boneshaker' (horse and cart) and he was in so much pain. Every time it went over a rough bit of road he was in agony."

While Reg's exploits in football and rugby were not overly successful, he is incredibly proud of Littleham's Bagatelle team.

Bagatelle is pub game closely related to billiards, the major differences being that one end of the table is rounded instead of square and, instead of pockets around the edge, there are nine semi-circular holes at one end.

"We had an excellent team," Reg remembers. "There were a lot of teams, practically one in each pub and many more.

"The Rolle Street Church Hall team were good, and so were the teams from Withycombe and All Saints Church, but for a short while we were the best in the area."

One of the more heavily supported sports in the area in the 1930s and ’40s, says Reg, was speedway, every weekend at the County Ground, Exeter.

"Although it doesn't sound very good when I say it, people went for one reason only, to see the crashes.

"Bits of bike used to fly everywhere, and the announcers always made a point of telling us not to 'try it at home'. Inevitably any kid with a bike used to do just that."

Speedway races were held at the County Ground up until last year, 2005.