No External Speaker - Alan Arthur organised members to speak

First to speak was John Watson who told us a bit about Geoffrey Boycott starting with his beginnings as the son of a collier in Fitzwilliam. His father was injured in a colliery accident and never properly recovered. Boycott was also seriously injured when he was 8 years old as he fell on iron railings and impaled himself on then through the chest. He left school at 17 and became a clerk at the Ministry of Pensions. He played for a lot of local clubs but didn't get onto the Yorkshire county team until he was 22. John also gave us quite a lot of statistics relating to Boycotts career. He said that he had chosen to talk about Boycott because he was a true Yorkshire man - direct, blunt but honest if somewhat egocentric.

Next up was John Waterhouse who spoke about Herb Elliott an Australian runner who had had the greatest influence on John's young life. John felt he was the greatest middle-distance runner of his time using tactics to control a race such as running a very slow lap in 59 seconds and then doing the next lap in 50 seconds. He took 3 seconds off Derek Ibbetson's world record for the mile in 1958. This caused him to be offered $250,000 to go to the USA but he turned this down to stay in Australia and become an accountant. He ended up as the chairman of the third biggest mining company in the world.

Finally, Barry Smith spoke about James Edward Fryatt who was a Bradford Park Avenue Player. Barry explained that his father was an avid Park Avenue fan and had taken Barry to watch the reserves play until he was tall enough to see over the wall to watch the first team. This was something of a punishment rather than a pleasure as Park Avenue were eventually kicked out of the football league in 1970 and liquidated in 1974. Fryatt holds the record for the fastest goal in English league football where he is credited with scoring in 4 seconds against Tranmere in 1964. Barry said that he was at the match and he is positive that the goal took much longer to score than that. Fryatt was a journeyman type of player starting his career at Charlton Athletic and eventually played for a total of 14 different clubs including 2 in the USA. He is still alive but suffers from Alzheimer's Disease which Barry postulated could have been caused by heading so many old-fashioned heavy footballs.