Tony Westray

June 2023. Greg Powell remembers Tony Westray:

We were in the same year  ( 1959 onwards ) but very different classes, Tony in the A stream for the higher flyers, perhaps best characterised by the offer of French and Latin  while in the C stream it was French and metalwork, a less than subtle indication of our potential future occupations.

Our connection  was in the sports teams. It was in Rugby where Tony excelled as a powerful inside centre in tandem with the very swift Martin Cook  It was a formidable team as various school magazines record. It had that first priority, a strong pack,  comprising a front row of Colin Knight, Max Parish and Geoff Horn. Two huge second rows in Alan Trueman and Roger Alleyne and a backrow of Dave Lockwood, Ian Jones at number 8  and Chris Prior.

The ample ball they provided was well utilised by scrum half Geoff Lucas and the standoff Rob Speck but it seems in memory that the focal point and scorer of try after try was Tony who powered his way through the opposition backs and then kicked the conversions.

Whilst some memories can be attributed to the great significance of an event in life  many others are mundane moments that remain crystal clear when so much else is lost in the haze of barely remembered years . So here are two of Tony.

We are the last two left on a rain drenched mucky field after practice and chatting while Tony practised his goal kicking in that strange fashion of the time, the ball perched on a small mound of mud and the kicker making a straight approach and unleashing the boot in a most unnatural awkward attempt to propel the ball in an equally straight trajectory. I think I was collecting the ball and returning it  for Tony to have another go. I wish could say I suggested, “why don’t you try a curved run up, like a footballer“ but that came later along with long hair.

The other memory must also have been a practice session but this time cricket. The two of us hurling a cricket ball as hard as we could onto the slip cradle, a curved wooden slatted device, and then hurling ourselves to catch it,  just great fun.

On sports day I turned up to watch and can simply recall what in memory was Tony’s domination of the year group.

Just returning to that rugby team for the sake of completeness its star in the first year was Seymour on the left wing who seemed years older and seemed to score whenever he got the ball. In the 3rd and 4th years Barry Craske had joined the school and was on the left wing (Martin Cook tells me Seymour had musical interests that he pursued instead of rugby), I was on the right wing trying to keep up with Westray and Cook, and Jim Scarlett was full back. So often we came off the pitch and it seemed that Tony had won the game for us.

We met again only last year and had lunch with Geoff Horn, Chris Prior and Dick Wyse and of course promised ourselves future meetings. I am sure Tony could have recalled so much more and I wish we had had those opportunities.