Milford and Maples

Milford and Maples: Reflections on Marlborough Hockey

December 2021, on the stunning blue hybrid Astroturf pitch known as Milford, Marlborough Girls’ 1st XI beat Malvern College 4-0 in England Hockey’s Tier 1 School Championships. David Walsh (C1 1960-65) looks back at what led to this moment.

February 1961, on Level Broadleaze’s grass hockey pitch, David Milford (CR 1928-65), 56 years old, his shorts down to his knees, still using the long English head stick and playing for the Common Room, slots a goal against the 1st XI. Sixty years of evolution, not only in Marlborough as an institution but in the game of hockey and Marlborough’s place within it. David Walsh (C1 1960-65) looks back at the huge successes of Marlborough on the hockey field. David Milford epitomised an era of outstanding amateur schoolmasters, a sporting legend during 35 years of teaching at Marlborough from 1928-65. He held the world rackets title for 10 years and won the amateur doubles 10 times with John Thompson (CR 1946-88), his Marlborough colleague. In hockey, he won three Blues for Oxford and became an automatic choice for England and Great Britain in the 1930s as a goal-scoring forward. To add to his credentials, he also played both cricket and tennis for Wiltshire. At Marlborough, he was a shy, reticent figure, teaching Latin and Geography to the lower sets, and, like many great games’ players, was more interested in his own game than coaching lesser folk. In the 1960s, he could occasionally be seen surreptitiously opening a copy of Sporting Life in the classroom, marking his winners for the afternoon trip to Newbury races. Marlborough hockey has always been strong right through to the present day,

but it enjoyed a dominance in the development of the 20th-century game, which would now be impossible to replicate. The first ever varsity match between Oxford and Cambridge in 1890 had nine Marlburians playing in it, a pattern followed for the next 70 years or so; even the 1948 Oxford team included six Marlburians. The 1963 and 1964 contests at Hurlingham matched David McCammon (PR 1955-60) in goal for Oxford with Mike Griffith (C3 1957-62) and Rupert McGuigan (B2 1955-60) in the Cambridge forward line, the last two going on to international honours. By then over 50 Marlburians had become internationals, including Bill Griffiths (B2 1936-40) who won a silver medal for Great Britain at the 1948 London Olympics. Here he unsuccessfully tried to persuade his team to play with the short, rounded head sticks used by India, rather than the long English head sticks. India won 4-0 to take the gold medal and to generate a revolution in stick technology. Over the last 40 years hockey has evolved more than any other school team sport, largely through the change in surface on which it is played and fundamental changes to the rules. Hockey was first played on the Common in 1874, the earliest College history telling us that ‘the badness of the grounds explains the tendency to reckless hitting… and nothing but a severe blow would move both the ball and the tussock of grass behind which it might be nestling’. The best grass pitches, including Level Broadleaze, were excellent surfaces, but conditions on Wedgwood and Sloping Broadleaze in February were akin to the 1874 Common, with more mud than grass underfoot while the keen north wind and snow flurries sliced through our house ‘swipes’ and paralysed our frozen hands. In the Lent Term of the big freeze in 1963, we did not make it on to grass at all until mid-March, condemned to endless games on the parade ground or in the yard at Preshute, with the snow and ice swept back, or trudging off on gruelling house sweats. Hockey on grass was more of a game of chance in which you had to watch the ball right on to your stick or look foolish, with wingers like myself often struggling to do as well as the Ancient Mariner, who ‘stoppeth one of three’. In the 1960s, we still had what now seem quaint rules, couched in politically incorrect language such as the ‘bully-off’ to re-start the game, the sticks rule to penalise any lifting of the stick above the shoulder, the roll-in with the hand from the touchline, and a three-man offside rule. We had to hit the ball as hard as we could rather than rely on the push or drag flick, while goalkeeper was a dangerously unprotected position.

‘Marlborough hockey has always been strong right through to the present day, but it enjoyed a dominance in the development of the 20th-century game.’

David McCammon, who captained Marlborough in 1960 and won three Oxford Blues as a goalkeeper, recalls, ‘I only wore a cap on my head, borrowed some cricket pads with kickers on my feet, found some gardening gloves to protect my hands, and a cricket box. Looking back, goalkeeper was clearly an idiotic position to choose!’

Our hockey coaches in the 1960s included Graeme Walker (CR 1959-73) and Jeremy Procter (CR 1960-66), along with the redoubtable Jake Seamer (CR 1955-73), Oxford Blue in hockey and cricket. Others included Colin Goldsmith (CR 1955-91), Christopher Joseph (CR 1967-2000) and the enigmatic Tommy Hunter (1947-71), school doctor, who enjoyed his umpiring. Both Rupert McGuigan and Mike Griffith remembered how good a coach Graeme Walker was, tirelessly enthusiastic, and looking so absurdly young that Rupert had difficulty calling him ‘Sir’. He produced a string of successful Marlborough teams in the 1960s, before leaving for a distinguished career in state education, and was succeeded by another fine OM player and coach in James Flecker (C1 1952-58, CR 1967-80). The fixture list in the 1960s saw few games lost against schools like Dean Close, Charterhouse and Rugby, as well as more testing contests against adult teams like the Hockey Association, full of internationals, and the Oxford and Cambridge teams on their post-Varsity Match tours. There was also the annual Public Schools Hockey Festival at Oxford where, in 1965, we had five wins over schools as diverse as Strathallan, St Lawrence, Tonbridge, Gordonstoun and Salem from Germany. The 1970s marked the beginning of significant change for Marlborough hockey. Stephen Bishop (PR 1969-73), who won two Oxford Blues in the late 1970s, remembers the opening of the first artificial pitch in 1973, a Redgra surface named after John Maples (PR 1927-32, CR 1936-58), an OM who played many times for England while teaching at Marlborough, and who died suddenly in July 1958 while batting on the Eleven. It was followed by the first Astro pitch in 1984, also known as Maples, and then the second Astro, Milford, in 1988. The move away from grass hockey brought revolutionary changes in the rules, such as abolishing offside, allowing turning on the ball, and sticks made from composite materials instead of wood, all of them bringing a faster game. The quality of coaching staff was preserved and even enhanced. David Whitaker (CR 1971-85), with over 100 international caps, taught at Marlborough from 1971-85 and coached the Great Britain team at the same time. He crowned his coaching career by winning the gold medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He was followed as hockey coach by Jon Copp (CR 1981-2019), who spent the best part of 40 years at the College as Director of PE and later Director of Development. The flow of England internationals may have dried up, but Jon helped bring to Marlborough German boys in the Sixth Form, at least four of whom went on to international honours, including Christoph Eimer (CO 1993-94) who was capped many times for his country, while Jon himself took leave of absence to coach GB at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics. Jon has the best overview of hockey’s transition from amateur game to the betterfunded professional structure it has today. He reflects that Marlborough’s traditional dominance has been diluted by the growth of junior hockey as an all-year-round game in schools and clubs, putting any school playing only in the worst winter months of the Lent Term at a significant disadvantage. The growing popularity of football as a Marlborough sport was a further challenge, while friendly matches have been supplemented by formal cup and league hockey competitions. As the academic screws tightened, fewer Marlburian games players went to Oxbridge, whose hockey anyway declined in significance and was no longer a favoured route to international honours. Perhaps the biggest change was the gender shift. The increasingly high standard of girls’ hockey has been helped by playing their fixtures in the more benign months of the Michaelmas Term, with the best players moving to club teams after Christmas. For nearly 100 years, Marlborough hockey remained at the pinnacle of an amateur sport, dominated by public schools and Oxbridge, and whose playing conditions and rules had changed very little. We greatly enjoyed that grass hockey era, but we would certainly acknowledge that the revolution in surfaces and rules, which followed from the 1980s, has produced a more flowing and certainly more watchable sport. The names Maples and Milford conjure up for present Marlburians the perfect artificial surfaces that they now enjoy for hockey. For us, they evoke memories of schoolmasters who played the game at the highest level and passed on to new generations not only a sport which Marlborough played exceedingly well, but a gateway to all the friendships we made and still embrace from the school and adult game.

‘For nearly 100 years, Marlborough hockey remained at the pinnacle of an amateur sport, dominated by public schools and Oxbridge, and whose playing conditions and rules had changed very little.’

Stasi Knight (CO 2015-17) made her debut for Wales U16 in 2016 and played various test series and tournaments for the Welsh U18 side, which she captained in 2017. She was picked for the senior Welsh indoor team in 2016 for the Europeans in France. She has had club appearances for Reading and Durham and was Captain of Marlborough College 1st XI in 2017. Sophie Spink (MO 2009-14) represented Wessex Leopards at U15 and U17 Futures Cup for three years while playing for Marlborough XI. After captaining the XI in her final year, she went on to represent Oxford University in two Blues Varsity matches, securing two victories against Cambridge. After university she played for Valley Hockey 1st XI in Hong Kong.