A LOAD OF HOT AIR-ANOTHER BLOG!

It's amazing who you meet on a balloon flight. I happened to be in a hot air balloon  with a wicker basket, this very early morning, gently drifting with a south westerly over the Peak District from Tissington to Chatsworth. This was a present from my children that my wife and I enjoyed very much indeed. The landscape from above is remarkable and the "White" Peak District exceptional, with deep river gorges, ridge and furrow medieval field systems and sheep and cattle that responded to the scary thing floating overhead and of course the strange noises the burners made.

On the way back to the launch pad, I discovered I had been journeying with a serious retired footballer of "my age", travelling with his grandson. Grandad was Phillip Shrewsbury and I inevitably got onto football because I was looking for a football club to photograph from the air. I only found Darley Dale FC in camera shot, a village pitch with little dug outs, so fairly serious.

More interesting was Shrewsbury Senior, who had played at Notts County  in the 1960s/70s and coached too. He comes from Hucknall, so his interest was in the Midlands. He had played for both Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Schoolboys because he attended a school that had a foot in both counties, so Phil had two choices. He probably would have played for one of the counties at the ESFA Easter Festival for U18 county teams and if so, I reckon we must have passed by at some stage, either at Bognor Butlin's, Derbyshire Miners' Welfare Holiday camp at Skegness, venues chosen by ESFA to keep prices down! My best memory of Butlins was when the holiday camp approved an international Girl Guides' Convention inhabiting the holiday camp at the same time as we testosterone charged footballers. A whole new meaning to tiki taka, Akela!

Sadly, my research has not revealed much more about Phil although we had a good chat about Jimmy Sirrel, whom he used to have on a touchline watching the Notts County FC U15s, a team that Phil coached. Jimmy liked to have a word with the lads at half time just to show that he was interested in the "academy", but Phil said that once Jimmy had finished his inspiring chat, none of the kids could understand a word he said, so Phil interpreted quickly before the kick off.
Here's a previous blog on Jimmy....
http://baileyfootballblog.blogspot.com/2016/07/is-that-you-in-statue-jimmy.html
If Phillip happens to read this and can send me a few words around his c.v. I would be pleased to receive them.

Test: Name the 7 players whose name is DAVID who has won the Premier League....apparently only 7.