It is with great sadness that The Hockey Museum records the untimely death of one of its greatest supporters and friends. Peter has given so much to hockey and he had hoped to do so much more. He accepted the inevitability of his illness with amazing bravery and even humour. You can read his comments on his last journey on his Rabbit in my Head website.
Peter found hockey quite by chance. He hailed from North London and there was no hockey at his rugby playing school. During a particularly wet winter when even the rugby pitches were unavailable, the PE master found some shinty sticks and the boys exercised on the playground. Peter’s love of hockey was born. It is fitting to note that his introduction to hockey was with an historic version of the game.
After leaving school he began to play at club level and, by his own admission, he was not a very skilled field player, so he moved into goal. However the club had five goalkeepers for four teams and he turned to umpiring. His hockey career proceeded, sometimes on the field, mainly in goal and often with the whistle but he proudly boasted of being a player from age nineteen to forty-three. As work moved Peter around he played for a number of clubs, including Beckenham, South Saxons and Brighton and Hove, as well as for the Sussex Constabulary.
It was towards the end of his police career that Peter’s interest in journalism came to the fore. He was asked to do a regular umpiring feature for Hockey Sport magazine and to obtain photographs to accompany his writing he began to take his own pictures. His modest camera was regularly updated as his skills developed and he became one of hockey’s most accomplished photographers.
His passion for hockey took him all over the world – to many Hockey World Cups (both outdoors and indoors), European Championships, Champions Trophies and of course the London Olympics. When asked what his most exciting hockey photographic experience was, his answer was the 2012 London Olympics. However he only obtained accreditation at the last minute as the demand for Press Passes was the highest ever. Initially rejected, he ‘got in’ because the demise of the News of the World meant that extra passes became available. That may have been lucky but Peter was a firm believer that one makes one’s own luck in life. He certainly did that in the 2009 European Championship final between England and Germany. All Peter’s photographer colleagues fancied a German win (and goals) so positioned themselves at the England goal end. Peter was alone at the German end and with England winning 5-3 he got the best shots. We are proud and grateful to say that Peter’s photographic archive is now housed at The Hockey Museum.
Peter also held a number of administrative posts as a member of the Sports Journalists’ Association, the International Sports Press Association, and was also a committee member and chairman of the Hockey Writers’ Club.
His journalistic skills were to be further extended to include the spoken word. Quite by chance he became the regular announcer and commentator for a local horse show, because the regular man disappeared! He enjoyed this and was soon doing work for Radio Sussex and it was not long before he started his Talk Hockey Radio with weekly podcasts. These interviews and spoken stories now form part of the oral history project at The Hockey Museum. It was the knowledge of Peter’s experience in this area that drew us to him when we began to consider oral history. His advice and encouragement were invaluable in setting up our Heritage Lottery-funded project and it is because of his support that we named the collection after him. As well as having Peter’s podcasts in our collection we were able to do a full oral history with Peter last summer. Your compiler of this appreciation has written many similar pieces over the years, however to obtain more information for this I was able to listen to the interview Peter gave us last year. It was the first time I have been able to refer to the spoken as opposed to the written word and it was comforting to listen to his familiar, friendly voice chatting away about the many aspects of his hockey life. To listen to the interview yourself, click here.
There were other loves in Peter’s life beyond hockey and one was railways. His recent 70th birthday was marked with a superb cake (right) that included three dimensional imagery of a train and a camera. However, the greatest love in Peter’s life was undoubtedly his wife and best friend Stella. To see them together said it all and all of us at The Hockey Museum send our love and condolences to Stella at this difficult time.
Mike Smith, The Hockey Museum Curator
6 February 2017
