Fifty Years in the Middle of Nowhere

“Every week tens of thousands of amateur sportsmen take to the pitch, court, rink or alley and play their chosen game, usually in a team. Every week they will enjoy personal moments of glory, often immediately tempered by moments of failure and embarrassment. Despite regular threats to ‘give up’, (sometimes encouraged by teammates and wives!), they will soldier on...” 

Peter J. Fowler has been an enthusiastic amateur sportsman all his life. Although he is a better-than-average tennis player, he decided to play as many sports as possible and as a result achieved a consistent level of inconsistency in both of them! 

In his sporting lifetime, he has had some considerable achievements, from the thrill of playing soccer at Dean Court, the home of AFC Bournemouth, to playing cricket at Dean Park, a former Hampshire County Cricket Ground. 

How many amateur cricketers have batted with ex-England player Robin Smith, or at sixty-two years of age tackled ex-England soccer forward Paul Walsh? How could he have mistaken Tom Harvey’s signal as five minutes to tea when he was on a score of 95 batting for Bournemouth Sport Club Wanderers? How can he thank Nobby Whittaker for taking away his ‘hole in one’ golf ball at Knighton Heath Golf Club and arranging for it to be mounted?