Writing to say how sorry he was not to be present at the [Kings Langley FC] dinner on Saturday, Mr S.F. Rous, the secretary of the Football Association, recalled that it was at Kings Langley that he refereed one of his earliest matches.

“My wife still teases me,” he wrote, “about the occasion when cycling from Hemel Hempstead to the ground I stopped on the way to take off my outer garments behind a tree. Later, of course, I was privileged and honoured to open your dressing room.”

[From the Watford Observer of February 14, 1947]

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