It was one of those totally off-the-cuff moments.
I was born in Richmond. When I was a child, most of my uncles used to take me to Chelsea, but I was never quite a fan, and just liked being taken out for an ice cream! I actually left school at 15, and went on to work in the city for some international commercial insurance brokers.
My family moved to South Norwood in around 1959. My new friends told me I should either support Crystal Palace, or Croydon Amateurs – and as Palace’s ground was only 300 yards up the road, it was a no-brainer!
I met Doreen at the local youth club. At that time, she was working in Allders – in its day, the megastore of Croydon. She was Chinese Malaysian and had come to England to study a Nursing course, but gave it up and decided to stay and work in London. A friend had brought her to a dance at St. Chad’s Youth Club, just up the road from Selhurst Park.
When I found out Doreen lived in West Croydon, I offered to run her home. The rest, as they say, was history.
Doreen and I met in 1965 and got engaged in 1966. At the time, living on Holmesdale Road, I was regularly attending Palace matches. If I happened to be doing something else on a Saturday and missed a bit of a match, I could actually still get into the ground for free, because the top gate on the Holmesdale Road End was always opened at half-time! My friends and I used to stand on the Terrace, or walk round to Whitehorse Lane.
I used to buy what was a tiny little programme at that point and, in around November time, I was flicking through it and thought: “Oh, my 24th birthday is going to be on a Saturday – that’s very handy.” Doreen and I were already engaged, so I thought: “We’ll get married on my birthday – and then we’ll never forget our wedding anniversary!”
In those days, everybody seemed to get married on a Saturday, and the parish priest said: “It’ll have to be a 10 o’clock wedding, John, because I’ve got two others that day.” As a result, the church hall was already booked, so we decided to have the reception in the family house on Holmesdale Road.
The day came around and, by the time we’d already had our wedding breakfast, everybody was sort of standing around. With all our family and friends there, the place was a bit crowded, and we were wondering what else we could do, so I said: “well, why don’t we go to the football match? We’ll go as we are!”
I persuaded Doreen and the two bridesmaids (the blonde one in the photograph is my sister). Everyone thought it could be a fun idea – even one of my uncles and his son, who were Chelsea supporters! I phoned up and said there were about 17 or 18 of us who wanted to come to the match, and the club found a block for all of us. One of my aunts generously paid for the tickets – about 10 shillings each in those days.
It was just one of those quirks that in any other year, on a 4th February [1967], you could have had snow. Some of the guests lent Doreen and the bridesmaids fur coats – but it happened to be quite a nice, sunny day.
