14 and 15
14 was a pretty big year for me. Not just in sport but in
other ways too.
In sport I won the North Eastern counties Hammer, Discus
and shot putt titles, I was first in the Durham Schools champs, won the north
eastern indoor shot putt title and set a few records at Sunderland Harriers.
Winning the Durham Schools meant I had qualified to
compete at the English schools championships. This was a big deal. In terms of
athlete numbers it is second only to the Olympic games for the number of
athletes competing in track and field at one meeting. Its massive. The Durham
team only has around 35 athletes so is not one of the larger teams. We
travelled down to Wigan together on the Thursday night and the way this thing
is organised, athletes are roomed with local families over 2 nights, with
competition taking place on the Friday and Saturday. Myself and Steve Dolan
were roomed with a nice family who’s two kids were bloody annoying. We had to
sleep in bunk beds that were blatantly too small for hammer throwers but such
is life. One thing that sticks in my mind about that weekend was that we had
torrential rain the whole time. Constantly cold and wet which wasn’t the best
conditions for hammer throwing. Normally they will have a couple of pool
competitions to qualify for the final, but because of the conditions they made
it a straight final. I wasn’t having a great competition but from nowhere I
managed to pull out a new personal best of 46.26metres in the third round. That
was an improvement of over 4 metres on my previous best and I finished 6th.
I was as happy as the proverbial pig in shit. My first really big competition
and I had given a good account of myself. I made some good friends on that trip
and we all had a great laugh. I met a guy there from Manchester called Chris
Edgar. One of the funniest blokes I’ve ever met. He was an amazing hammer
thrower, two years older than me and about a foot shorter. He was seriously
only around 5ft tall but Christ he was fast. Sadly I have no idea where he is
today or what he is up to. He stopped throwing about 6 years after the first
time I met him and kind of disappeared off the radar. I hope he is well. The
guy who won the competition that year in my age group was a lad named Mark
Tully from Stoke. He had a very relaxed almost lazy looking technique but it
was effective. I became pretty good friends with him. It was funny that his
middle name was Ross (my brothers’ name) he had a brother called Scott and a
dog called Kim (my sister is called Kimberley). I found this amusing. I also
remember that dad hired a car so the rest of the clan could travel down to
watch. It was a Nissan Bluebird. Brand spanking new at the time. We didn’t
actually own a car then.
I was training maybe 4 times a week at this point and was
in pretty good shape. The other spare time thing I was doing at this time was
that I was a member of the Army Cadets. The branch I was in was the Artillery.
We had some good laughs going away on weekends and playing war games, heading
off to the artillery ranges at Otterburn in Northumberland and firing the 105mm
field guns. The shells were a ton weight and there was a big stink of ammonia
from the Cordite charges. It was hard work too, setting up the gun, carrying
and loading the shells and packing away at the end of the day. On the night
time in camp or barracks it was always a bit of a scary time. You never knew
what dirty tricks someone had up their sleeves. Whether it was emptying a full
can of Ralgex into your pants while you were in the shower, or putting
toothpaste on your eyelids while you slept so you would rub it in when you
woke. (this stings like hell by the way so don’t try it). I think the worst one
was spooning. Now Im not talking about the nice type of spooning where you get
to cuddle in behind someone special in bed. What I’m talking about was pure
evil. Basically it involved being held down while someone heated up a spoon
with a lighter then they repeatedly and quite hard tapped it against one of
your nipples. Now each hit on its own wasn’t much to write home about but after
about 40 or 50 hits it is absolute purgatory. Pain I can’t describe. But these
were all accepted things and getting to shoot real guns and the banter with the
lads far outweighed them. I vaguely recall at one annual camp we were on the
shooting range and some numpty had failed to discharge his weapon and as he was
climbing out of one of the pits you stood in to shoot from his weapon went off,
and off went 3 of his toes with it. Nice!! An instant lesson in doing things
right, from someone who got hurt doing things wrong.
Outside of the sporting arena or the firing range,
another event I remember from around this time was my baby Brother Ross sitting
in dads Minibus pretending to drive it. I remember standing in the kitchen
getting a glass of water while mam was making tea. All of a sudden the bus
started to roll down the street with Ross smiling and waving. I just stood
there shocked. Mam shouted for dad and he took off out the front door hurdled
the wall and flew down the street. He managed to catch up with the bus, open
the door and grab the frame and stop it. How he managed that is beyond me as it
had a fair bit of momentum by the time he caught up with it. That was the last
time Ross was allowed to pretend to be a bus-driver. Its interesting that in
those days there really weren’t many cars in our street. Not many people owned
cars round our way then. The one guy a couple of doors down who did was
strangely out for the day (he never usually went anywhere). If he had been at
home, his car would have been history. Thankfully he was out and no harm was
done.
The other monumental thing that happened when I was 14
was that I lost my virginity. At 14 I had stopped growing. I was a shade under
6ft 1 tall and I was shaving 3 or 4 times a week. I guess I was pretty
developed. The girl in question was much older than me (32), in fact she was
married. I didn’t know this at the time but found it out later. Had I known, I
most likely wouldn’t have gotten involved. But I was young and daft so maybe I
still would. I won’t go into too many details about this except to say that it
wasn’t a shit first time like so many people seem to experience. She taught me
a lot. Yes I can hear people say its child abuse or she was some kind of sexual
predator. That would be absolute horseshit. It wasn’t like that at all. For a
start she believed I was older than I was. I did nothing to convince her
otherwise. I knew exactly what was going on and I was more than happy to be
involved. It only lasted a few months. But it’s something I don’t regret nor
would choose to change if I had the option. I did a lot of growing up during
this time, particularly regarding my outlook on things. I’m not going to say it
made me a man of the world but I certainly gained new perspective.
So moving on to my 15th year. I moved up an
age-group in athletics terms I was now a 1st year youth. This meant
moving up to using a 5kg hammer. I have to admit I struggled with the change.
You wouldn’t think that an increase of only 1kg would make much difference but
I found it hard. This season Steve Dolan caught me and it was a case of trading
1st and 2nd with him all season. I was 2nd in
the North Easterns behind a guy called Phil Donnelly from Middlesbrough &
Cleveland Harriers. This was a lad my sister had a huge crush on. He was a
pretty good thrower until he was struck with Glandular fever and lost about
30kilos in weight and was never the same thrower after that. I finished 3rd
in the North of England champs, won the Durham Schools and got another trip to
the English Schools this time in Derby. I had an appalling performance in that
schools which was won by a lad called Malcolm Croad. He was a great thrower,
fast, smooth, technically very good. Apart from that, all I really remember was
the weather. By complete contrast to Wigan the year before, it was absolutely
scorching all weekend. Every day it was well over 100F with no breeze. It was
uncomfortably hot. Once again the Thompson clan had made the trip to watch but
this time I remember feeling that I had disappointed them. I know that’s not
the case and I had only really disappointed myself but I didn’t like how that
felt.
I competed in the Scottish champs for the first time this
year and that is where I met one of my best friends. Iain Park. We were sat in
the warm-up area and just got talking. Iain started the conversation off asking
how far I was throwing in training, what my personal best was etc etc. Whatever
I told him, his was more. It was the first time I think I’d come across
psychological warfare in sport. It was very basic but used against the right
sort of person it can be very effective. In later years I went on to employ all
manner of schemes and such like, when I competed. The thing I have always found
to be amusing about Iain is that he was as proud as punch declaring himself to
be Scottish. He is the least Scottish sounding guy you will meet. Raised in
Middlesex to Scottish parents he had what I always call a cockney accent. I
know he isn’t a true cockney (born within the sound of the Bowe bells) but he’s
from London way so that’s good enough for me. Iain won the competition that day
and I believe I was 4th behind Chris Edgar and Steve Dolan. Not a
great comp for me really, although I did get a new PB. As the season came to a
close I attended my first annual Hammer Circle Reunion. This is a gathering of
coaches and athletes of the Hammer throwing world, basically for a weekend of
seminars, competition, meeting of friends and general pissupery. It used to be
held at Grendon Hall which is an old stately home in the village of Grendon,
Northampton. It’s a lovely place and perfect for such a congregation. In the
village there are two pubs. Traditionally the coaches frequented the one
nearest the hall, whilst the athletes gave patronage to the one at the top of
the hill. That first year was pretty tame as I remember it. Just a lot of
getting pissed really. But I did set a seasons best in one of the comps.
54.92metres still behind Steve Dolan who finished on 55.12metres. I cannot
begin to explain how much that pissed me off. I had finished the previous
season fully 4 metres ahead of him and now I was second best. I resolved to put
that right the following year. After the Reunion (held in October) we always
had our 1 month of holiday from training before winter training started again.
I had just turned 16 and this winter we would be starting weight training for
the first time. My training would increase to 5 times a week too. I set myself
goals had a long talk with Steve my coach about it and we drew up a plan to get
me there.
The school football team made massive progress this year
and I had been moved from Centre Half back to my beloved goalkeeping role. This
came about from a friendly match where our keeper was down injured so I took up
position on the line and managed to pull off a pretty spectacular double save I
had no business doing. Obviously I was red carded and gave away a penalty but
Mr Emmerson had seen enough and I was given the number 1 shirt for the new
season. Well we had a cracking season. Played 20 won 19 drawn 1 lost 0 in the
league, we won the town and the county cups and kept 15 clean sheets. We played
in horrible blue strips that were mostly too small and made of some unknown
material that made you itch. I think maybe that was the secret. You had to
concentrate on the game to distract you from the itching. Despite winning
everything by a country mile that season, not a single one of our players was
selected to play for Sunderland boys. It was all a bit political. 8 of the Sunderland
boys team were from St Aidans (who we beat 5-0 and 4-0 that season). It wasn’t a
big surprise seeing as the Sunderland boys coach was the father of St Aidans
team captain. The other players came from Thornhill, Southmoor and
Monkwearmouth. Maybe none of our players were actually good enough but it was
just that we gelled together perfectly as a team. Who knows. All I know is we
battered everyone that season, so I’m happy with that.
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