19 MARCH 1994, Page 55

SPECTATOR SPORT

Mistaken identity

Frank Keating

WAS IT peverse mischief or a gormless fluke that had Radio 4's warbling Morning Service this week coming from the chapel of Dean Close School in Cheltenham? For spiritual uplift in the very week of the town's rafter-crammed, gourmandising and guzzling National Hunt festival, Dean Francis Close's old pulpit was a sensitive place from which to preach. Cheltenham's mighty bible-thumper, that 'puritanical despot of goodness', loathed the town's horsy Irish even more than the drink they poured down their throats — as, to be sure, we did this week, as sponsored as newts in the ruffled, candy-striped hospitality tents. `Papists, gambling and profligacy are essential concomitants of horse-racing,' raged the Dean in 1835, before leaving the town in disgust to exhort a more penitent flock up north. Meanwhile, handfuls of the Irish racing men stayed over, as grooms and ostlers and trainers — indeed, 100 years ago Cheltenham parish church had to build a new cemetery because, as the old refrain had it:

The churchyard's so small and the Irish so many, They ought to be pickled, sent back to Kilkenny.

A spring or two after I left school at Douai in the 1950s, I was surprised to come across my dear old Benedictine housemas- ter, Father Dunstan Cammack, sauntering around the ring at Cheltenham in deep and fraternal parley with a brown-trilbied, check-suited, very Irish-looking fellow. `Ah, Francis,' whispered a confidential Dunstan, `be sure to go for So-and-So in the 4.30.' And then he introduced me to his friend, the nag's tainer, 'Mr Vincent O'Brien.' `Sure, Father,' I scoffed, 'and my name's Tom Graveney.'

But half an hour later, the nominated Irish nag having strolled it, there was Father Dunstan alongside his buddy, saun- tering into the no. 1 stockade in the unsad- dling enclosure. One does feel a twit at such times, and it was only a year or two later, of course, that Mr O'Brien was three- cheered out of Cheltenham, having saddled a record 23 winners there, on his way to another glistening career on the flat.

One way and the other, these quirks of mistaken identity crop up often in sport. Before Bolton Wanderers' FA Cup quar- ter-final last week, I happily spent an hour or two with their buccaneering old centre- forward of undying fame, Nat Lofthouse, 70 next year and still full of the joys. We smiled about the time in the 1960s when ITV had a football commentator called Gerry Loftus. Often on foreign trips I would see Gerry, as vain as most broadcast- ers, smugly signing autographs, but never dared tell him my cerain suspicion that most were presuming that this nice and imposing Mr Loftus was, in fact, Mr Loft- house, the 'Lion of Vienna' and a very much more celebrated footballing man. Or again, and rather apt as the latest trib- al war breaks out again at Twickenham this weekend, how about Cliff Morgan's tale of his first journey down on the double-decker from the village to play his first ever match for Wales — and sitting tremulously next to two big, knowing miners?

"ow the hell will Morgan cope with them three giant fellows in their back row? 'e's only a titch — too bloody small. I know 'im well, see 'im regular, and he's not more than ten stone.'

`Don't be daft, 'e's more than that. Saw 'im at a do last week, eleven stone if 'e's an ounce.'

They turned to the pale, squat boy beside them. 'Hey, you, what you think Morgan weighs, boy?' Said Cliff with confidence, `Twelve stones.'

`Bloody rubbish,' said the men in unison, scoffing at Cliff, before one of them added, `Always the ruddy same, them who knows bugger-all about it do always argue.'