Dave Calway worked in the blade shop at Westland and remembers his colleagues playing football with Yeovil Town FC

Yeovil Football Club had a liaison with Westlands that if they brought the players down there, Westlands would give them a job. Later on, I worked in the blade shop, where Ernie Ash was working. He was an ex-Yeovil player and he was brought in by that method and Morris O’Donnell who finished up as the Physio at Yeovil Football Club, I believe he was brought in in that way as well, and another guy I remember meeting in a pub, George Muir, he was in Yeovil Football Club and he worked for Westlands. It attracted a lot of good players for Yeovil Football Club, that’s for sure.

I suppose on a Monday morning you got a full match report, did you, from these chaps?

I heard about it …

only if they won the game …

Well, no. I wasn’t really interested in it, you know, and footballers tend to stick together and I was a sort of outsider, which I didn’t mind because I wasn’t too interested in football and such like.

But that was a nice tie-up wasn’t it between the football club and the local employer and a good way to get players down from the North and places like that?

Oh, definitely, yes definitely. I believe in those days there was a good support for Yeovil Football Club and I guess it was because they used to get good players, very good players, into the club by means of offering a job at Westlands.