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This month's story is a video of an interview
with footballer Kalvin Phillips (former Leeds United and England
player , now signed with Man. City) showing Ian Wright around his
childhood neighbourhood in Armley, where he also started playing
football.
He played his football on the "Mushy
field," which I recognised as the old West Leeds High School
rugby pitches-where I played with the oval ball in the 1960s. The
one exception was on my last day at the school when we dared to
play a game of football with the round ball.
In the 1960s, there was an ongoing issue
with effluent from a mushroom factory, which turned the field into
a quagmire , resembling the Somme, and it seems to have continued
unabated for 50 years until Kalvin Phillips played there, although
he mentions the factory has now been replaced with housing. Kalvin
points out the "new" housing development on the site of
the former mushroom farm in the video. Even if the mushroom farm
closed over 20 years ago, the environmental problems caused by its
effluent overflowing onto the school playing fields must have persisted
for about 40 years. I know the wheels of local government grind
exceedingly slow, but this must be some kind of record.
The author Peter Robinson, a former pupil
of the school in the '60s, also draws on his experience of playing
rugby on this muddy pitch in one of his Inspector Banks novels.
The video features some good footage
of street scenes in Armley and aerial shots of sports field,and
Heights Lane and the railway bridge . It's worth watching even if
you're not a football fan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-spJoinPxeI
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