Uncanny Tales – (038) The St Michaels Terracers

 

Much of my childhood was spent playing football, and whenever possible the whole year round, in all weathers and for as many hours as my parents would allow.

I wasn’t fussy who I played with either or where for that matter, and we would play with any size ball and use jumpers for goal posts and we would play for hours.

Now having said that I would play anywhere and with anyone I still had a favorite venue and a favorite bunch of fellow footie fanatics.

The venue in question was the park bordering St Michaels Terrace in north London in the shadow of Alexandra palace.

The park had roads bordering on three sides and the railway line on the fourth.

The top road was St Michaels Terrace with the Starting Gate pub at the main road end a small parade of local shops and a row of terraced houses.

To the left was the main Wood Green to Muswell Hill road so the pitches stopped well short of that side and the bottom road led to Bounds Green and to the right was a wooded area which separated the park from the railway.

 

The park had at its center a manmade semicircular hill, with a small round hill at its center, adorned by a weather worn totem pole and around this center piece were our three improvised pitches which we rotated depending on the weather conditions and the pitches were arranged as follows

A, the top pitch which ran parallel to St Michaels Terrace and was as the name suggests the highest of the three and subsequently the most used.

B, the bottom pitch, which ran parallel to the first pitch and again as the name suggests was the lowest and least used although was a favorite summer pitch due to the shade from the trees on three sides.

C, the third pitch ran from top to bottom parallel to the railway and was referred to by the grownups as the safe pitch, as even the most wayward shot had little chance of reaching a road.

The most hardened footballers amongst us played all year round regardless of the weather with the exception of a two or three week period in the summer when we had to bow to pressure from the less committed participants who wanted to have a cricket season.

The hard core of the St Michaels Terracers, apart from myself were The Neal brothers Dave, Ken and Michael, Brian Gallagher who was also a distance runner, Louis Deeks, who lived on Palace Gates Road, Richard and Clifford Morgan’s, Mick, whose surname escapes me, who was a Chelsea supporter and Colin, whose surname also eludes me, was our best goalie until his untimely transfer to Diss.

On Sunday afternoons we were normally joined by some of the parents the most regular oldies being Mr. Neal and Mr. Morgan and you would have expected a rise in good behavior and a reduction of bad language but normally the reverse was true.

We also had an almost endless list of transient players who used to turn up periodically.

It broke my heart when we moved away from North London, the five years I spent with the Terracers have never been bested.