Mike Joy was a member of staff from 1965 to 1994. In October 2013 he wrote:
I have just read your most recent notes, and in particular the section relating to Gary Grimshaw’s rugby notebook. He could be very persuasive……
Towards the end of my first year at Trinity he was raising a staff XV to play the school first XV. He must have been getting pretty desperate when he came and sat beside me in the staffroom and asked if I had ever played rugby. I allowed him to persuade me that this would be just a fun match etc., etc., I should have steered well clear! No match was ever taken so deadly seriously as the Staff v School game, as I found out on the day.
As we changed and prepared for the game I realised Gary had only been able to find nine teachers willing to play - and one of those was sidelined with injury. Two senior boys had been volunteered to help make up numbers, and there were five other males. I began to realise how serious this was going to be when someone said to me that they were thought to be from the Saints, friends of Gary. Too late by then to make my excuses and leave, so I started the match as hooker, although later I was moved further back in the scrum.
Reading your note prompted me to look out a photo from that day, which you may or may not have seen. I have attached it.
It was the very last game of rugby I ever played! I did not fall for Gary’s patter the following year.
Jasmine Andrews has filled in some missing names. Jasmine also says that everyone was from the school and not from the Saints.
Kneeling left: Pete Fellowes, my colleague in Peter Harris’s Geography Dept, Ken Price, Mr Strickland (PE), (?) pupil, Alan West.
Standing from right to left: Gary G; Ivan Greaves, maths; Steve Meakins then an art teacher; me Mike Joy, geography; Les Northover crafts, Mr Burgess, : D Wilson (on the bench); Richard Austen, physics, Mick Adhemar