Last Night When I Was Young: Sporting Favourites of Mine Paperback
by Geoffrey Littlefield (Author), Barry Briggs MBE (Contributor), Sir Michael Stoute (Contributor)
“Well worth a read. A superb part personal, part biographic nostalgia trip back to the days of Peter Alliss, Fred Winter and others” Phil Thomas, THE SUN ON SUNDAY
“A definite buy for me.” Taylor, FRANK TRUATT MORNING SHOW. NY and NJ’s no.1 Drive Time Morning Show
“Motor racing legend Mike Hawthorn and others immortalised in new sports book. Littlefield pays homage with a clever juxtaposition of history and fantasy.” Darren Burke, DARLINGTON FREE PRESS
Last night when I was young saw me riding thoroughbred racehorses as if I were Doug Smith and Fred Winter. In the same vein, I played football as Jimmy Greaves did for Chelsea and I was a Test Match batsman emulating the great PBH May. I hit the biggest serve as Mike Sangster in the Davis Cup, as well as bobbing and weaving in the boxing ring exactly like my favourite Dick Tiger, the world middleweight champion.
I was unstoppable behind the wheel of a racing car as Britain’s first world champion Mike Hawthorn but on the speedway track I rode with stylish aplomb interpreting my hero, Ronnie “Mirac” Moore. Swinging a mashie niblick as Peter Alliss was no handicap. Rugby Union at Twickenham when my body swerve was very sharp – Richard Sharp. When the Olympics came around, I ran the race of my life both over long distances and over one lap hurdles respectively as Gordon Pirie and the great David Hemery. With eyes open, I loved watching the upright Dorothy Hyman dip and throw herself over the line whilst I fell in love with Mary Rand hitch-kicking her way into Olympic history.
Fantasy is then mixed with fact. The jockeys’ journeys from completing exacting apprenticeships to becoming champions on the Flat and the National Hunt. Smith riding two-year-olds on the edge in the One Thousand Guineas and the Two Thousand Guineas. Whereas Winter was jumping off the edge of the world in The Grand National.
The trials and tribulations with the relative success of the 1960’s Chelsea football team from Drake’s ducklings morphing into Docherty’s uncut diamonds. A fourteen-year-old boy from New Zealand leaves home to become the first speedway superstar. The fight of the week from the USA brings us a Nigerian boxer who confounds convention and fights his way to the top of two weight divisions.
A classical English batsman, an amateur as such who set records as a captain and whose impact on Test cricket is second to one.
Birdies and bogeys abound, yet our golfing hero is a true British legend. 152 miles per hour as a world record was a cannonball service that belonged to a British no.1 tennis star that left us far too early. The first British world motor racing champion whose play-boy antics on and off the track caused his untimely death. A brief yet scintillating career as England’s fly-half sees a jaw-dropping piece of rugby played over and over – sixty years later.
The hackles on the neck rise again through an Olympic television commentary that almost matches the magnitude of the performance and the world record that was set.
All are sporting yesterday’s, worthy of repeat, a young boy’s memory listing every feat.
