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go back to top-flight rugby, but only for the Old Boys; it was clear that he had found his home.

practised and John felt that team organisation was better at Nottingham than with the national side. He counts himself lucky to have missed the final match against the Welsh in Cardiff where the English came up against the animosity of the home crowd and an inspired Keith Jarrett. John remembers seeing his good friend Dave Rollett remove his shirt to reveal a back covered in scratches and bite marks.

Concordia Winter 2024

In 1968 John overlapped with Jackie Brown, the Head of Sport who had led the department for 29 years. Brown was a committed gymnast from a different era: the gymnastics display on Speech Day was a legacy of the Charterhouse Square days. John recalls that many practices, such as recording the weight and height of every boy at the start of the year, were out of date. These practices included the PE staff changing back into suits for lunch and an eclectic offering of activities ranging from boxing to ballroom dancing, the latter even accompanied by a glitter ball! Above all, the school gymnasium, with its wooden flooring, ropes and climbing bars, looked more like something from the 19th century, and the open-air swimming pool would have suited the present wild-swimming trend very well. The First XV was being run by another long-serving member of staff, Frank Spragg. John took over the reins in 1969 and concentrated on improving the boys’ general fitness with lots of outdoor activities, cross country and the dreaded bleep test, and he sought to recruit more rugby coaches, such as Bob Prescott, to the SCR. John’s own rugby coaching was based on his time at

The Challenge of Merchant Taylors’

John took up teaching when he returned to Nottingham from Loughborough, working in a tough city school for two years and playing at the weekends. Player welfare was not a major issue in the late 1960s; in his final season John had already played 54 games before Christmas and decided to give up playing fixtures away from Nottingham. That took its toll, and with a wedding to his beloved Margaret to plan, he seized upon a letter written to his former college from Brian Rees, the Head Master, seeking a Head of Games for Merchant Taylors’ School. Rees was offering three times JNP’s current salary, and one sight of the facilities was enough to convince him that his future lay at Sandy Lodge. To sweeten the deal, Rees suggested that John give it ‘five years and then go back to rugby if you want to… ’ John did

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JNP gets his tackle technique perfect against France