Above, line-up: The Northfield boys’ football first team in 1954-5. Back row, from left: Mr JF Wightman, Michael Walsh, Michael Foster, Barry Dyke, Alec King, Alan Blockall and Randal Henwood. Front: Peter Jackson, Michael Pym, David Kirkbride (captain), Morris Honey, Robert Parsler and Charles Smith

The football team at Northfield School, Littlemore, were the first winners of the Bob Gray Cup.

The Oxford Schools’ Knockout Cup was renamed in 1949 in memory of the 16-year-old schoolboy international who, as we have recalled, died of a rare blood disease.

And it was Northfield whose name first went on the trophy, according to the school magazine published in December 1950, a copy of which has been sent in by former pupil Marion Powell, now Marion West, of Blenheim Way, Horspath.

The 1949-50 season was hugely successful for Northfield, with the senior side winning the Pressed Steel Jubilee Cup as well as the Bob Gray Cup, and the intermediates finishing top of their league and reaching the semi-final of the Murray Intermediate Cup.

A report in the magazine suggested that their good form was being maintained in the 1950-1 season.

It read: “The results so far are extremely satisfactory and show promised of results comparable with last season.

“Both teams are playing confident and, at times, constructive football. The senior defence can be devastatingly destructive and it was take a good forward line to score a hatful of goals against them.

“The intermediate forward line has built up a good combination and should score more goals than their comrades in the senior XI. Our byword for both teams is: ‘Keep the trophies at Northfield’.”

The school magazine was called Four Rivers, reflecting the fact that pupils were allocated to one of four houses named after local rivers – Cherwell, Evenlode, Isis and Windrush.

For some years, the school acquired the nickname of Cardboard College because of the frail condition of the interior walls – they were made of hardboard.

According to one former pupil, “if you fell against them, you fell right through.”

Mrs West has sent in two pictures of school football and hockey teams and another of the prefects from a later edition of the magazine, all featuring pupils from the 1954-5 school year.

  • The Bob Gray Cup was one of the premier trophies competed for by schools in the 1950s and 1960s – other known winners were Wheatley and Gosford Hill, Kidlington – but what happened to the trophy is not known.

Oxford Mail:
Top pupils: Northfield’s prefects in 1954-5. Back, from left: David Packham, John Clinkard, John Bowley, David Kirkbride, Morris Honey, Robert Parsler, William Walker, Randal Henwood. Front: Patricia Richmond, Patricia Titcombe, Patricia Wright, Patricia Barrett, Annmarie Rogers, Julie Tolley, Maureen Joynson, Sheila Milburn

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