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Paul Edwards - Friday 5th March 2010
Warm tributes have been paid to the former Southport and Birkdale Cricket Club captain Roy Gibson, who died on Thursday 25th February, aged 89.
A hard hitting batsman and a useful medium pace bowler, Gibson joined S&B in 1937 whilst still at Ackworth School in Yorkshire. His 73 year association with the club included long service on the committee as well as being first team skipper from 1950 to 52 and again later for a further year as stand in for Roy Fox. Gibson was a member of the side that shared the title with Liverpool in 1954.
"Roy was very much a cricketer of the 1950s, although he was playing for the first team as late as 1971," said Peter Walker, who himself skippered S&B in the late 1970s. "In many ways he reminded me of the former England cricketer Gubby Allen in that he played with huge enthusiasm, whether as a very aggressive batsman or as a medium pace bowler who always hoped to be quicker."
Gibson was not the only member of his family to make a valuable contribution to the development of the Trafalgar Road club. His father played a leading part in the ground development scheme, his mother, wife and sister all worked hard in the now long demolished tea room and his son Nigel also played for S&B. "Never has the club been better served by one family," wrote one of S&B's historians, Ken Porter.
When he stepped down from playing league cricket, Gibson continued to work as a very successful local businessman and also became an enthusiastic member of the MCC, Northern Nomads and the Forty Club.
He spent many summer days playing high standard social cricket in Lancashire and beyond, and he captained the Forty Club against S&B as late as the 1990s.
"Roy was a very committed member of our club and one of the many good batsmen in West Lancashire in an era when the Liverpool Competition produced several such players," said S&B's president Ken Standring.
Gibson enjoyed his best years when recreational cricket was quieter but no less competitive than it is today. It is believed that he was the last surviving member of S&B's pre-war side.
In common with many of his generation, Gibson spent six of his prime cricketing years on active service during the war, although he even found time to play the game when stationed in Cairo in 1943. On that occasion, his pride in taking a catch off the bowling of the Yorkshire and England slow left armer Hedley Verity was soon overshadowed by sorrow when he learned that it was the last match Verity had played before being fatally wounded in Sicily.
Interviewed in 2005, Gibson admitted that he "would not have presumed" to give a team talk before a match. "We turned up, we got changed and we played cricket," he said simply.
As ever, he was far too modest to admit how well he and his side usually performed.
Roy Gibson's funeral will take place at Southport Crematorium on Wednesday 10th March 2010 at 1:30pm.
He had asked that his ashes be scattered on the Trafalgar Road ground where he played so much of his cricket and had such fun.
Friends and colleagues in the Liverpool Competition extend their condolences to Roy's family and the Southport and Birkdale Club.
