Ken Taylor
DRAWN TO SPORT
Stephen Chalke
Ken
Taylor has had an extraordinary life. At one stage he was playing cricket for
Yorkshire, football for Huddersfield Town and studying full-time at The Slade
School of Fine Art in London. In the words of a contemporary newspaper
feature, he was ‘the most wanted young man in Britain’.
His brother Jeff played football for Huddersfield and Fulham, gained a Geography degree from London University and became an opera singer.
Yet
the two of them had started out in a small terraced house in Huddersfield,
sharing a bed for ten years. Their father had become a mill-worker after being
unemployed in the 1930s.
As
a footballer Ken Taylor played alongside Denis Law and Ray Wilson under the
management of the legendary Bill Shankly. As a cricketer he played with Fred
Trueman and Geoff Boycott under the inspirational captaincy of Brian Close, a
member of the great Yorkshire side that won seven championships between 1959
and 1968.
For
the last thirty years he has worked as an artist and teacher in North Norfolk,
and in this book he shares his memories of his sporting life and the
characters he encountered, accompanying all this with his art work.
Some
observers think that Ken Taylor might have achieved more if he had
concentrated on just one of his talents, but he has no regrets. “If you took
out any of the three strands of my life,” he says, “it would have meant my
missing out on so much pleasure, so much satisfaction.”
Any
reader of this book will understand what he means. There is so much here to
enjoy: larger-than-life characters, thrilling sporting contests, memories of a
different age – and the work of a very talented artist.
He
didn’t like it when I was off playing cricket.
He called it a lassie’s game.
He
used to look at his pay after he’d taken out his expenses:
“Do
they want me to bowl second innings?”
But he always did. He’d always be trying.
Ray
Wilson
If
Ray hadn’t played that day at full-back, he might never have had
the
chance to become the absolutely great player that he became.
Geoff
Boycott
It
just proved what he could do. But it must have frightened him
to
death, thinking that he had to play like that every innings.
He
was a skinny, little lad, and he had these horn-rimmed spectacles
and
a squint. There was talk that the club phoned back to Scotland
to
check that we’d got the right one.
Brian
Close
I
can still see him, knocking on the french windows,
trying
to get back in, dripping wet, just in his underpants.