A Kick In The Family
In a special podcast for World Radio Day 2018, children’s storyteller Gilly Stewart discovers the part that football has played in her own family’s cultural heritage when she tells the story of making the difficult decision to track down her birth family in the 1980s, only to discover her paternal grandfather, Tom Perry (and two of his brothers) played for West Bromwich Albion in the 1890s.
Gilly believes it might go some way to explain why she was so keen to join the boys’ football team at college for a kick-about, but with diversity less embraced on the pitch than it is today, deliberate fouling to keep her off the pitch, and her own concern to stay ‘injury-free’ for her other love, dancing, meant she had to give up the football.
If Gilly had been born today, might she have been more likely to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and play at Wembley, but for West Bromwich Albion FC Women?
Gilly is a founding contributor at Sound Vault, and lives in Farnham, Surrey. Her regular podcast is called Tale Waves.
This podcast is one of three special shows made for Sound Vault to mark World Radio Day 2018. The theme this year is ‘Radio and Sports‘, and in particular, issues associated with diversity in sports coverage, coverage of traditional and grassroots games, and helping people reconnect with their cultural heritage.
Sound effects credits:
Whistle from SpliceSound, via Freesound (under CC0 1.0 Public Domain)
Crowd noises from paulw2k, via Freesound (under Creative Commons CC BY 3.0)
Others from http://www.freesfx.co.uk – with thanks.
Sound Vault 