White Chalk and Green Grass

The year is 1997 and David Grant, a retired Games teacher, is watching a rugby league match between two of his local schools, Eastfield High and Thornes Lane Comprehensive, in the West Yorkshire city of Calderton. In the previous matches he'd watched between the two schools the Thornes Lane teams had always been too good…but not on this occasion. In September Eastfield High had had an intake of excellent rugby players from its three main feeder schools and this game is far too close to call. One boy in particular catches Dave's eye…the Eastfield scrumhalf. Everything about him reminds Dave of a player called Michael Black, or Chimney as he'd been known to his mates because of his tall stature and mop of jet black hair, who had played such a prominent role in Dave's 1962 team when it won The Three Counties Cup. The boy is a brilliant rugby player. He leads by example, expecting his team mates to follow, and expresses annoyance when they don't. And, dare I say, he shows an arrogance way beyond his years, if indeed such a word is appropriate when referring to a schoolboy. He is even tall in stature and also has a mop of jet black hair. In fact the similarities between the two players are uncanny. The Eastfield High team goes on to win, and at the end of the game the young scrumhalf is joined by a man with already greying hair who has also been watching, but from the opposite touchline. As both cross the pitch and approach Dave, he finds the man's features strangely familiar. The greying man is in fact Chimney Black himself, who reveals that he is the young boy's grandfather. Dave cannot help but allow his mind to drift back those thirty-five years to the year 1962, allowing him to re-live those glorious two terms that culminated in his team winning The Three Counties Cup, with a certain lad called Chimney Black playing a 'blinder' of a game.