Demobbed in 1957 I joined the Isle of Wight Rugby Football Club (IWRFC) travelling each Saturday to Ryde Airport, the field now occupied by Tesco’s where “the chaps” played, and standing on the touch line with my kit with an “I’m available” sign over my head, it didn’t take many weeks before a visiting team turned up short handed. I was promptly and generously donated to fill their gap.

Two years of National Service Rugby did not even nearly make the complete player, it did however produce a ball handling, ball carrying, hard tackling missile that ran in tries for the visiting teams weekly, with horrifying consistency. And that’s how I got to play my early Rugby on and for the Island.

In 1958/9 Rugby came to the Isle of Wight Schools. In Sandown’s Fairway School’s case, it was their English teacher, Gareth Pritchard (a Welshman of course). We’d played together for a few years at the Island Club, When one Saturday afternoon, Gareth knowing that I had a small business locally, suggested that I might enjoy training Wednesday afternoon with him and his boys at the Fairway school, I did.

They very soon learned that to let him pass and tackle round the ankles from behind like the pictures just didn’t cut it. Even good schoolboy players at that time did not, or could not compare with a mature club player. The exercise was good for me, I did not of course power tackle them, they were boys and they rapidly got the hang of it.

The learning experience for them facing the body checking aggressive style of northern confrontation tackling that I got demobbed with, started to rub off. We all gained in our own way, theirs because the next season they won the Isle of Wight Inter Schools Rugby Tournament.

And the following season at the Island Club, I recognised several of them as school leavers getting an occasional ‘run out’ with the club’s lower teams, but they suffered from the usual impediment of a “Non Ryde School Person”, passed over at team selection and team photos. In those days outsiders had to be clearly un-dropable material to survive Sunday evenings’ selection process at Yelfs Tap, the Island Clubs watering hole.

I recall hearing in the shower the voice of one of our players a “Yelfs Selector” saying “what was that bloke (me) doing on his own behind the opposition pack?” Well he did have the ball! And having crashed through my opposite centre and fly-half, had the temerity to be pulled down just short of the line by several opposing players. A chap whose name was Peter May-Miller, our outstanding number eight, called critically clearly back across the shower, “and you should have been there with him”.

These are some of the seeds that nurtured the basis of the Hurricanes R.F.C, at this point they were just “that lot from Sandown”.

The Sandown “Seed Crop” was Bob Milton, Ian Rogers, Len Harvey,Ken Pardy, Philip Thomas, David Chitchley, John Whithouse, Tim Gross, Rowley Webb, Chriss Atrill, Mick Hutchinson, Mick Gilpin, Andrae Leur, Ian Bass, Howard Brown, Rowland Webb, Gerry Hinchcliff, Lou Easlea, Derrek Priddle, Kevin Squibb, Mick Buttle, Mick Brightwell & some of the rest of Garath Pritchard's Boys up to 1963.

Bob & Ian’s lot were known as 'The Sandown Lot' at the I.W.R.F.C. Their first season, that I remember, they lost every game that I heard of, this seemed to be due to the fact that most club sides have a mature heavyweight front row, and these lads with all their skills were being shoved about, “no ball, no game”. It seemed at that time, that sadly these guys had little hope of surviving another season.

Some outsiders thought that if we could put a man sized front row, possibly somebody at the back or someone in the centre to make plays, then this lot might just make it. It did not take much active persuasion to convince Clive Simpson, John Bowell and Jan Gaddes to, as we all saw it at the time, “donate our few remaining seasons to helping this lot to make it” and break the one club grip that existed in Island Rugby.