Short Shorts at Fenny's Own Mystery Marathon (6 August 1976)
Women are fond of saying that men remain boys at heart, however old we become. I think that is true of most of us. What other explanation can there be for our continued interest in sport long after we ourselves have ceased to take an active part? After all, there is no real importance in, say, being able to knock a ball into a hole in fewer hits than the next man. Indeed, we can all be world champions, if we wish. All we have to do is invent a little game, however absurd, and we are sure to be the first world champion at it, if there is never another. The Guiness Book of Records need never know.
These odd observations are prompted by the interest shown in my recent articles on Charlie Constable, the Olympic runner, and on Ernie Matthews, whom I nominated as the area’s best all-rounder to date.
Mr W H Burnham, of Tavistock Street, Bletchley, has taken me up on the latter point and in a letter to me has put forward the claims of Dick Goodman, the cyclist who died so tragically in an accident last year. Mr Burnham, who used to be Dick’s partner in tandem races, quite rightly points out that Dick was such an all-round performer from short track sprints to the North Road 24-hour race that he could be likened to David Jenkins winning the marathon.
Perhaps I did not make myself clear that I did not mean an all-rounder within one branch of sport, such as cycling or cricket, but one who shone in several branches, as Ernie did by reaching county level in the athletic branch, the soccer branch and the bowls branch alike. Had I meant an all-rounder in one branch I would probably have nominated Dick myself, though, as with Ernie Matthews, I knew him only in his veteran days.
After giving a formidable list of Dick’s cycling achievements Mr Burnham also mentions that he knew Ernie very well. He says that at one time both Dick and Ernie lived in Railway Terrace, Bletchley (now demolished) and that he himself worked for Ernie in his haulage business at the age of 15. He also adds: “He (Ernie) also acted as my pusher-off at many track races.”
So there we have yet another example of Ernie’s multifarious sporting interests! I am greatly obliged to Mr Burnham for a letter packed with information and am only too sorry that his nomination of Dick Goodman does not quite fit my bill.
I have also received an interesting photograph from Mr Leon Higgs, of Russell Street, Woburn Sands, who spent the first 20 years of his life in Fenny. His foster parents were Mr and Mrs Sam Dawson, “who used to be at the High Street cinema.”
The photograph, thought to have been taken in 1908, shows about 50 competitors and spectators strung across the Watling Street at the Fenny crossroad before the start of a marathon race. Standing tall among the competitors is Ernie Matthews, wearing a cloth cap, a cricket shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and “shorts” that come below the knee. Several of the competitors are similarly garbed.
There is no information about the distance involved not(sic) about who won. It makes me wonder how long it is since there was so little traffic on the trunk road that so many people could safely be massed across it for the purpose of having a photograph taken! The postcard-size photograph was taken by the old Walford Studio, Fenny.
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