The Twelfth Man 2013

14 The following obituary notice to long-standing WCLS member, Walter Pinder, was sadly omitted from the 2012 Twelfth Man magazine. Walter Pinder Walter Pinder, who has died in hospital after a short illness aged 88, was one of our stalwarts. He was always here over the last nine years, sitting alongside his friend, our Treasurer, Roy Foster, who has supplied me with these notes, and Roy represented the Society at Walter’s funeral. You remember how our founder Secretary, Jack Sokell, always said that he was born in the year of the General Strike? Walter was born three years before that! He worked successively as a miner at Dodworth Colliery, as a railway engine stoker and last for the Public Services Department in Barnsley until he retired in 1988. As a mature student he obtained GCSE and A-Level passes, and at the age of 72 he graduated with a BA (Hons) degree in Humanities, validated at Sheffield University. He loved local cricket, and was ever present at Shaw Lane for many years. He once told Roy that during a period of six years Barnsley First XI never won a home match! In his late 70s and early 80s he continued to accompany Roy to Headingley and Scarborough for Yorkshire’s Championship matches. Walter, as a 15-year-old, was at Headingley in 1938 for the Ashes Test, which Australia won and so ensured that even when England won at The Oval in the Hutton 364 Test they retained the Ashes. Walter remembered watching Don Bradman and Stan McCabe – it was the Test when Bradman insisted that Australia bat on in bad light to create the victory chance. Walter was a man of few words in our meetings – but when you sat with him one to one you realised how sharp his intellect was. Like so many of his peers, if he had been born two decades later he surely could have turned his hand and mind to any profession he chose. James Greenfield Don Wilson – 21 July 2012, aged 74 Don Wilson was chosen as our ‘Old Cricketer of the Year for 2012’, and when Brian and I drove up to his lovely cottage home in Helmsley, Don was in a really happy mood. His son prepared a fine lunch and we talked as we ate and after Don had no reservations about the way he looked upon ‘The Wombwell’ as a really great Society and regarded it as a privilege to be chosen to feature as a Player of the Year and later as a Patron. Although I sent him a copy of The Twelfth Man , he wasn’t to live very long afterwards and indeed, I took along copies to his Memorial Service: one for each of his wives. The attendance at St Chad’s Church was amazing such a gathering of Don’s friends, former colleagues, as well as long-time admirers like me. I don’t think it necessary to relate details of his career, except to note he was born at Settle in 1937, scored 5,788 runs and took 1,104 wickets in 18 seasons for the County he loved. Norman Hazell Harold Goddard – 10 May 2012 Harold was one of the regular ‘back-rowers’ at Wombwell when I first started attending meetings back in the late 1980s. Always keen to talk cricket or discuss his beloved Sheffield Wednesday, Harold offered a warm ‘hello’ to greet those that gathered around him in the back corner at Ardsley Oaks in the 1980s, 1990s, and less so unfortunately in recent years. His whimsical chuckle and sense of humour is much missed by the members who enjoyed his Obi tuaries Young cricketer, Charles Johnson, receives the Society’s Maurice Leyland award from Dickie Bird and Don Wilson in December 1979.