Best Of

Crikey. Nick Freeman must be a very fast talker or you were in a very slow lift!

Anthony Stewart was a regular in ASDA after training, usually with his mate Charles Dunne. On one occasion, perhaps after Charles had suffered “a slight knock”, Anthony was pushing him round in a trolley. I didn’t dare ask. They were both very young at the time. Anthony must have remembered those days years later when he came and sat with me at a meeting in the Vere Suite. Lovely guy.

Back in my playing days (!) Luke O’Nien appeared, together with a young goalkeeper, at the entrance to the main sports hall at Handy Cross Sports Centre. We were playing table tennis and short tennis and Luke, who had his own table tennis table at home, asked if they could join in. I had to tell him that we were a 50+ group - I was 50 plus about 50% at the time, a “joke” which always fell flat when I paid at reception - and he was very disappointed not to be able to join us.

A couple of years later, I was chatting to Luke in the Woodland Lounge and he mentioned the Sports Centre “incident”. That was when he mentioned that he had a table tennis table at home and that was when I politely declined his challenge to take him on!

Finally, the most memorable occasion involving a Wycombe player was when we were driving along Mill End Road towards the West Wycombe Road about a dozen years ago and mrs micra said “isn’t that Sergio Torres at the bus stop?” It was and we picked him up. Mrs micra is renowned for her ability to glean personal information about people very quickly. In the family we call it the Spanish Inquisition.

I’m not kidding when I say that, before we reached the West Wycombe Road, she’d asked him if he had a girlfriend. Sergio shook his head with its ample mop of curly hair and in answer to the question “why” suggested that his hair might have been the reason. A magical quality of mrs micra’s approach is that, remarkably, she never seems to give offence. Very much an Irish characteristic, I think. When we reached Sergio’s digs - with a lovely Wycombe supporting family - he invited us in for a coffee. Nice thought, obviously, but not exactly appropriate. He was very young at the time.

I’d rather be local to Wycombe personally, Flint would be my preference there