TABLE OF CONTENTS I became interested in sports during World War II when I was about nine years old. At that time, there was, of course, no television and not much to listen to on the radio. For amusement, all of the kids in the neighborhood played phantom war games that consisted of building small forts out of the bricks left by builders who had stopped working on new houses because of the war. As I mentioned, my involvement in this game came to an abrupt end when one of the enemies in an opposing fort threw a small rock into our fort, accidentally hitting my sister on the head. For forts and rocks, we then substituted rival soccer games.
In those days in England every neighborhood had a soccer team. There were no leagues, and so we had to arrange our own matches and provide a ball, which was hard to get in those days. For some reason, this task fell on my shoulders. We had some rough matches, and without a referee most of the time, they often got pretty heated. I was a big kid, and at first I played goalkeeper, but I found that was not much fun, as I didn't get much exercise. As I found, there was another disadvantage to the goalie's role. If your team was inferior to the opponent's, as the last line of defense, you really took a lot of flack from your own teammates.
After I started playing fullback and halfback, I...
