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March 2020
TALENTED SHOW Ex-footballer Windass discovers his audience in Halifax are in fine voice
YUGC’s sad farewell to Hardman FORMER Yorkshire Union of Golf Clubs President Neil Hardman, above has died, aged 84. Neil served as President in 2008 having been elected to the Yorkshire executive in 1997 and was President of York Union of Golf Clubs in 1996 when they won the Inter District Championship. He was a very active member of Kirkbymoorside Golf Club as a past chairman, captain and treasurer, and was directly involved with the acquisition of land that enabled the club to extend from 9 holes to 18, an actuality recalled with a great deal of pride at his funeral. He also ran schools golf in Yorkshire before handing over to current YUGC secretary Jonathan Plaxton two years ago.
West End’s musical talents on display FORMER Hull City, Middlesbrough, Bradford City and Sheffield United footballer Dean Windass was used to hearing a crowd singing loudly and lustily during his playing career. But he will have been taken aback by the noise created by fellow diners when he was guest speaker at Halifax West End Golf Club’s presentation night. For West End have a tradition of singing for their supper – or rather during it – with song books distributed at all tables, including the top one on which Windass was sat. The members might have needed a prompt for some of the songs, such as Tom Jones’s Delilah or Bring Me Sunshine, made famous by Morecambe and Wise. But none needed any help to give three hearty renditions of the club’s anthem, The Road to Mandalay. Gerald Smith, the MC for the night, did some digging at Yorkshire Golfer’s request to see if he could find the origins for this rather unusual format to presentation night, which at some clubs has been known to
Dean Windass, fourth left back row, at the Halifax West End presentation dinner be stuffy and formal. Mike Berry, a member who joined West End in 1965, told Gerald that he remembers going to his first dinners in the 1970s, and that singing took place at that time. But his father recalled the tradition decades earlier. “Mike’s father, Frank, joined in October 1942 and
became Captain in 1964 and was elected a Life Member at the AGM in 2009,” said Gerald. “When Mike spoke to his father about the singing, he said he remembered singing at dinners in the late 1940s, early 1950s, and that The Road To Mandalay was the club’s signature song at that time, obviously to do with the end of the
Second World war, I should imagine. “In September 1969 Brian R Thomas joined the club. Brian was a singer, and enjoyed singing. He was Captain in 1978, and became Hon. Secretary of the club, some time probably in the 1970s, early 1980s, which meant he eventually took on the duties of
MC at the club dinners, of which there were two – the men’s and the Rabbits’ – and were both filled to a capacity 120. Brian brought a certain amount of gusto to the singing and in particular The Road to Mandalay, which I hope I was able to emulate to some degree at the recent dinner. “The pianist who used to play when I first attended the Rabbits’ Dinner was a gentleman named Roger Ray, I believe, who just sat there and played all evening without any music. When he passed away, Brian asked me what we could do about a replacement. I remember quite clearly saying to Brian that I didn’t really know, surely he was more of an expert than me, and he said, ‘I think I might know someone’, and we came up with John Wilson, who had been voted Pub Pianist of the Year previously in the Halifax Courier. “John has been playing for us ever since 2005 apart from a couple of years when he was not available for personal reasons.”
