Irene Oldall
Irene talks about athletics at Sheerwater

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On Sheerwater, do you remember the opening of the athletics track?

Oh yeah, we all took part in that. ’Cause first of all, Bill was driving past the Wheatsheaf with Jan and Sue and they saw some kiddies running on there so they joined in with them and then they started saying about doing one down here and first of all, it was just, it wasn’t a track like that, it was just old tinder, like coke sort of thing, it was rough, it was rough you know, and they ran on that. And the high jump then, you didn’t have these lovely big beds to jump on, you had a little pit of sand you jumped over on and my daughters were high jumpers - you landed on this little bit of sand. And then they got the dressing rooms in there and my husband and all them, they all, ’cause they had like a Supporters Club, which we used to do, and Mrs. Vinall, her two girls came here too, she lived just round the corner here. She was the girls’ captain round the Athletic Club, she trained them and done them and she was a tartar she was, she was lovely and she got, she made ’em sort dressing rooms so the girls and the boys could be separate.

Oh yeah, we all took part in that. ’Cause first of all, Bill was driving past the Wheatsheaf with Jan and Sue and they saw some kiddies running on there so they joined in with them and then they started saying about doing one down here and first of all, it was just, it wasn’t a track like that, it was just old tinder, like coke sort of thing, it was rough, it was rough you know, and they ran on that. And the high jump then, you didn’t have these lovely big beds to jump on, you had a little pit of sand you jumped over on and my daughters were high jumpers - you landed on this little bit of sand. And then they got the dressing rooms in there and my husband and all them, they all, ’cause they had like a Supporters Club, which we used to do, and Mrs. Vinall, her two girls came here too, she lived just round the corner here. She was the girls’ captain round the Athletic Club, she trained them and done them and she was a tartar she was, she was lovely and she got, she made ’em sort dressing rooms so the girls and the boys could be separate.

We had a little tea room there. Then we all clubbed together and finally we got lights put up. We got all them lights ’cause we had a bit of a to do with the footballers because once we were going to put lights up, the footballers wanted to use it and we said, ‘If you want to use it, you help us with it and you can only use it on the nights that we’re not doing training.’ Tuesday and Thursday was training night, from six till eight and Saturday was usually a match all over the country and Sunday was training. It still is now.