This was my Tom Finney

Preston and Tom Finney have been inseparable all of my life. It was always impossible to live within the city (was town) without hearing of the football team Preston North End and their famous son Tom Finney. The North End clung to Tommy with vigour as he played for England and was regarded by many as our best player/striker/winger/ and a gentleman to boot. 
Not only that he played and stayed at Preston North End for the whole of his career which ironically did not give him the rewards that many thought he deserved.
 Therein lies the essence of the man and his loyalty to Preston the town Preston North End the football team and his beloved wife. These attributes adhered Tommy irrevocably to the folk lore of Preston and the two would be tied for ever more.

Tommy was a man of manners politeness and generous nature. His football record of never having being booked or sent off is a record many could aspire to. He suffered many injuries and was a "marked" man for many teams such was the threat he represented but he bore that as an occupational hazard of the times and just wanted to play football.

My dad died just 18 months before Tommy and was born about 9 months after him in a crowded 2 up 2 down in Hopwood Street as one of a family of 12. There was little to occupy one's time then and my dad and brothers played football continually on the streets with a tennis ball or rolled up paper or whatever could be used. Times were very hard and football was an "escape" from the poverty and hunger of the time.

My dad played as a schoolboy for St Ignatius team (Saint Igs) and was a lively striker with a good left foot and terrific header of the ball. His team journeyed to the finals at Deepdale on several occasions and he recalls playing Finney frequently including winning the LFA and Ord cups when he (Tommy) was in the opposition. Tommy progressed further with football eventually but in the meantime both pursued careers as plumbers.

Such was the man (Tom Finney) that he would often meet my dad again after a break of years and resume the easy conversation about plumbing jobs with a bit of football thrown in quite unaffected by the star status he had in the meantime gained. 

My dad especially liked that about him.

Looking Down the Years

From his sheltered spot on Clodgy bluff

He’d seen it calm and glint and rough

White horses raging lashing rocks

Or lapping softly past the docks

The night Welsh Trader perished near

Her decks awash with foam and fear

The rocks claimed lives and skin and bone

And the newly-widowed drew close at home

For the jubilee the pageant lasted days

The silver sea’s reflective ways

Highlighting polished hulls and bunting high

Atop masts reaching for the sky

Commercial glory too had its day

When the shoals of cod and haddock paid

With their lives to nourish our ill-fed ranks

All offered praise and grateful thanks

The dreadful spillage killed all that

The catches went from feast to flat

Sea birds all manner of life went down

In that insidious oily spreading gown

Time the healer refreshed and cleaned

But the delicate balance of nature seemed

Forever shifted from the accepted mean

And devoid of the life which once had teemed

The tourists come now in their hordes

With modern craft and chamfered boards

Swim, paddle or ski and ride

The phlegmatic sea takes it in its stride

With winter returns the solitary walker

Gazing out over the crashing water

No visitors now, no slick or screams

Just the old man of Clodgy wrapped up in his dreams