Strathmore Cricket Union: the first 90 years a history 1928-2018

44 on to have a great career for Gordonians, Aberdeenshire and Scotland after the war). Youngson connected to swing the ball to leg. One run was completed easily, but then the Forfar men missed a chance of a run out and Gordonians scrambled home for a victory which was not undeserved, but which was remembered with venom in Forfar for many years after the war. As late as the mid-1960s was this game remembered and recounted vividly by Ernie Balfour, a veteran of the game. Many a tea interval or a stoppage for rain would be enlivened by Ernie, now a crusty but benign veteran playing happily for the 2nd XI, beginning a story with “I mind o the time, just afore the war…” But in the meantime, there was the war. The government soon relaxed most of its restrictions which had been imposed in such a peremptory and panic-stricken fashion. Schools re-opened, but it was too late to do anything about the completion of the Championship for the 1939 cricket season, and even the AGM of the Strathmore Union was postponed until March 1940. The first winter of the war was what came to be known as the “phoney war” in which nothing very much happened. Soldiers joined up or were conscripted and went away from tearful mothers, girlfriends and wives at railway stations, but often came back fairly soon for a spot of leave. Indeed the BEF, the British Expeditionary Force came to be known as Back Every Friday. It was a very snowy winter all over Europe, so military operations were unlikely, and many a cricketer must have secretly, or maybe openly, supported all the various organisations who were working for a possible peace deal before the real thing started. And indeed, cricket clubs still being in existence (admittedly without some of their players who were in the forces) and cricket grounds comparatively untouched as yet by the requirements of the military, the hope was beginning to be expressed that there could be some sort of a cricket season in 1940. Clubs however had to make special applications for petrol coupons to get to away games, and for sugar and other rationed items, so essential for the indispensable part of a cricket game, the tea! Indeed on 2nd March 1940, the AGM was held in Jarman’s Hotel, Forfar. We can imagine, can we not, our luminaries like Bob Sievwright and Bob Laing arriving at Forfar Station with their gas masks in a small cardboard