Wakeham, Pat
FRIENDLY MR EFFICIENCY HE CAN ALWAYS SQUEEZE A QUART INTO A PINT POT
By Derek Lean Western Morning News
Pat Wakeham, whose testimonial game we all look forward to tonight, is an ex-copper who become a soccer club secretary.
And more than once the game he loves gave him more grey hairs than enforcing the law ever did. When everything is going smoothly-an average sort of season with the club ticking over nicely if not spectacularly then the secretary can remain quietly in the background, getting on with the undramatic but essential business of administration.
But when things go wrong, or ironically, when there is sudden success, then a club secretary can find himself well and truly in the hot seat.
It happened a few times during Pat's ten years as secretary of Exeter City, but never more so than in City's cup run of 1981.
For weeks on end, as Exeter captured the imagination of the country and fought their way through to the quarter finals, Pat slogged out a routine of 12 to 14 hours working days.
I know, more than most, the tremendous amount of work Pat got through during those heady days because I was closely associated with him on the Press arrangements for those matches that not only everybody wanted to see, but the whole of Fleet Street wanted to cover.
His Press problems were exactly the same as those with the general public.
A Third Division club's facilities are not normally adequate to deal with glory games that come only once every half century.
Yet the amazing thing is that somehow he did manage to get a quart into a pint pot-even if he did have to enlist the services of a burly policeman to keep the Press in their places!
Throughout it all his friendliness was as warm as ever, and his sense of humour remained razor sharp.
Pat reflected at the time that incidents like struggling through snow-drifts, as a motor patrol constable, to reach a stranded expectant mother, were never so tough as organising those cup replays with only two or three days in which to do it.
Perhaps in some ways, though, that police training was one of the reasons he was such a good secretary.
He was an administrator, certainly, but never a bureaucrat. Problems were not merely things to be discussed; they were to be solved.
Decisions were things to be made rather than endlessly debated. If action was needed, then Pat Wakeham took it.
By Derek Lean Western Morning News
Pat Wakeham, whose testimonial game we all look forward to tonight, is an ex-copper who become a soccer club secretary.
And more than once the game he loves gave him more grey hairs than enforcing the law ever did. When everything is going smoothly-an average sort of season with the club ticking over nicely if not spectacularly then the secretary can remain quietly in the background, getting on with the undramatic but essential business of administration.
But when things go wrong, or ironically, when there is sudden success, then a club secretary can find himself well and truly in the hot seat.
It happened a few times during Pat's ten years as secretary of Exeter City, but never more so than in City's cup run of 1981.
For weeks on end, as Exeter captured the imagination of the country and fought their way through to the quarter finals, Pat slogged out a routine of 12 to 14 hours working days.
I know, more than most, the tremendous amount of work Pat got through during those heady days because I was closely associated with him on the Press arrangements for those matches that not only everybody wanted to see, but the whole of Fleet Street wanted to cover.
His Press problems were exactly the same as those with the general public.
A Third Division club's facilities are not normally adequate to deal with glory games that come only once every half century.
Yet the amazing thing is that somehow he did manage to get a quart into a pint pot-even if he did have to enlist the services of a burly policeman to keep the Press in their places!
Throughout it all his friendliness was as warm as ever, and his sense of humour remained razor sharp.
Pat reflected at the time that incidents like struggling through snow-drifts, as a motor patrol constable, to reach a stranded expectant mother, were never so tough as organising those cup replays with only two or three days in which to do it.
Perhaps in some ways, though, that police training was one of the reasons he was such a good secretary.
He was an administrator, certainly, but never a bureaucrat. Problems were not merely things to be discussed; they were to be solved.
Decisions were things to be made rather than endlessly debated. If action was needed, then Pat Wakeham took it.
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