You’re going to play at Wembley!

• Post By: Simon Sanders
• Date: June 1, 2015
• Category: Uncategorized
• Tags: Uncategorized

This is the letter I got to confirm I would play at Wembley.

I must have got a phone call first to tell me the news. I can’t imagine that they would have just written to me.

Thinking about it – that seems right. I think I was both amazed and thrilled to be told I had won a place in the LBC side, but yet not totally surprised because I knew I really had written a really good entry, and that surely I would hear from them. It’s only now writing about it, exactly 30 years on, that I can recall, getting a call sooner than I thought I would, possibly on the very closing date they had mentioned, so that once my mum told me that there was someone on the phone for me from LBC, I think I then knew that they must be calling me to tell me I had won.

The date on the letter is 26th May, which would have been a Friday. I would have got the letter to confirm the details then on the Saturday at the earliest – exactly one week before the match-day.

I remember during the week leading up to the match, being stopped in the corridor by Mr. Hornet, one of the sports teachers, but not one I had ever been taught by directly. I hadn’t really told the school about it, it never really crossed my mind to, but he told me that he had taken a call from someone (presumably from LBC). He said to me: “they wanted to know if you were any good at football”.

“What did you tell them?”, I asked, not too perturbed, as surely he wouldn’t have scuppered my chances by telling them I was rubbish? Especially since I was actually pretty good – having played for the school team throughout my time there in a total of around 100 matches at that point.

“I said you were rubbish”, he told me. “You didn’t!” I gasped, aghast. “No, you’re okay” he conceded, “I told them you were alright, that you could play a bit”.