Campaign for real country sports

Having started a campaign for real country sports I was disappointed not to have been able to attend any of the events I promoted.

The most recent event was the Cronk-y-Voddy sports held yesterday afternoon. I am reliably informed that Lloyd Taggart was the comfortable winner of the “fell race” which is about as much a fell race as Laa Columb Killey “marathon” is a marathon. Mind you I found it tough enough when I did it a few times when the Cronkie sports were first revived and like Lloyd I had lots of youngsters following me, probably a lot closer than Lloyd did.

Some things don’t change there though and I understand a few loose elbows on the sharp bends of the track ensured that there were no victories in the track race for Lloyd.

I remember one of my first appearances at Cronkie, probably around 1967 or 1968, when I was about 10 or 11. I was belting down the bumpy grass when a strong arm of an older lad came around my shoulder and pulled me to the ground.

Fair play in the country sports? You’ve got to be joking. There was a great event in the Ballaugh Sports called the Balloon Race. You had to run half way down the track, pick up a balloon, blow it up until it burst and then run to the finish. The gorse in the hedge was a handy aid – you held a little in your hand and only had to blow the balloon half way before bursting it with your piece of trickery and claiming the prize money.

There was another race at Ballaugh called the Shoe Race. Again you ran half way down the track but with no shoes on. They were all piled in a heap and you had to claim yours, put them back on, tie them up and run to the finish. That was difficult when you found your “mates” had removed the laces!

I got as far as the Sulby Sports a couple of times but I recall that they were a bit more conventional as part of the Sulby Show (not to be confused with the Royal Manx Agricultural Show which many years later was staged across the road). The Show included arts and crafts, and this is the bit that Marie never believes, I won five shillings as the outright winner of the handwriting contest, probably the last time I could even read my own writing!

I was probably about 17 or 18 when the late Frank Keig convened a meeting in Kirk Michael to organise village sports which I attended thinking that we should have something closer to home. I think I might have been on a committee but it was certainly Mr Keig, with the resources of the Kelly Brothers building firm, that did the work with a big marquee in White House Park. I can’t remember how long they lasted for but I do remember (no joking) one of the races with the most pressure in my life when I ran in a mile race there in 1979. I was just starting to make a mark as a race walker and had been out training in the afternoon with Graham Young and went to watch the sports in the evening. Under pressure from the locals to take part (like now people think that if you are an athlete you can do any event) I lined up against a field of visiting campers and other youngsters with the Michael crowd shouting “never hurry a Murray” referring to the old Murray Mint advert, as I struggled to keep up before getting to the front about 50 yards before the finish.

But Cronkie was always my favourite and as teenagers we used to cycle from Kirk Michael on wrecks of bikes (often without gears) up the hills, do every possible event and then cycle (mainly freewheeling because we were knackered) back down.

One event was called musical sacks based upon musical chairs. You cycled round the edge of the track until the music stopped and then ran to be the first to stand on one of the sacks positioned in the infield with one being removed each time. The funny thing was, I don’t remember any music - the time for action would be the hooting of a car horn and needless to say you would get an unofficial intervention.

The advertising for the event these days is so professional compared to the old days. A notice used to go in Edgar Quayle’s in Kirk Michael shop a week or two beforehand but sometimes the organisers forgot! On one occasion we arrived at the advertised time and the farmer was still baling the hay on the field and we all had to help.

The track was never measured and there were some sharp bends. My favourite recollection of all though was the year the half mile was run over four laps. An hour later we held the mile race over 6 laps!

The crazy thing was thing was that, like most of the Manx athletes of earlier years, I should probably have never been allowed to take part in official events as I had become a professional by taking part at places like Cronk-y-Voddy. What is more, there was a “contamination” rule that meant that anyone who competed against someone like me was also labelled a professional.

Professional? These were amateur sports at their best and there was a feeling that it was when the townies started arriving in shorts and spikes that the decline set in. It’s five or six years since I have been to Cronkie but I still ran in jeans out of respect for the event’s heritage – and I still fell over in the track race but with aging legs I didn’t take a push like when I was a young fella.