The one thing that John Lennon and I have in common is that we both went to Quarry Bank Grammar School in Liverpool (a couple of years apart). Quarry and The Liverpool Institute (alma mater of Paul McCartney) were the two most sought after prizes of the Eleven Plus Examination and two persistent rivals for the Liverpool Grammar Schools Football Cup.
St Johnstone have just become the fourth football club in history to win both the Scottish major trophies in the same season. The unusual and outstanding thing about that is that all the members of the team were born in Scotland.
That made me think about my school football team and then the amateur teams I was involved with when I left school.
The chant for my school team at the inter-school cup final (and any other matches for that matter) was:
Chuneranna chuneranna chun chin chee
We are Quarry, Quarry are we.
Chuneranna chuneranna chun chin chow
Quarry never lose, Quarry win now.
Followed by suitable roaring.
(I've put that totally irrelevant bit of information in simply because I remembered it.)
What was important then was that you could only play for an amateur team if you were encompassed by the name of the team. So only Quarrymen played for Quarry Bank. Only members of NALGO played for the NALGO team. And so on. I wonder if it's still the same.
Interestingly I've just looked up that across Liverpool FC's entire history 823 players have represented the club and only 17 per cent of them have been from Merseyside (and, presumably even fewer from Liverpool). What I found even more interesting is that 43 nationalities have played for the club.
