Mr VERSATILITY

How quickly fame can fade. The thought originally occurred to me when, way back in the 1960s, the former Charlton Athletic goalkeeper Sam Bartram, then retired, turned up in the old wooden Press Box at Norwich City's Carrow Road football ground - ostensibly to cover a match for a Sunday newspaper - and no-one knew who he was.
Well, I knew who he was, because I had seen him play and because he had been my sporting hero. Sam played hundreds of games for his club, was never dropped, and even played in four successive FA Cup Finals in the 1940s. Two of them were during the War, however, and didn't really count for record purposes, but the other two certainly did. One Charlton lost and the other they won, so Sam got his medal. But it was still disappointing to realise how quickly the public memory had let things slip.
Thoughts of a similar nature occurred to me again when I read recently that another Charlton hero of mine, John Hewie, had died at the age of 87. 'John who?' I can hear most of you saying. John Hewie, that's who.
I remember him from the 1950s, when I also saw him play several times. Tall, lean, athletic, John had arrived in this country at the age of 21 from South Africa, where he was born to ex-pat Scottish parents. Over here, he played tennis and hockey and turned out for his works' football team, and in 1949 Charlton came calling. He duly signed for them, joining the club's already famous 'South African contingent,' along with Tocknell, Kinsey, Kiernan, O'Linn, Firmani and others.
John had 19 good years at The Valley and played in almost every position, though full-back or centre-half were his best. He even turned out as goalkeeper on four occasions. This was in the days before substitutes, of course, and if the 'keeper was hurt and had to go off then John took over between the posts. He was as versatile and he was doggedly determined, and he duly made over 500 Lague and Cup appearances.
In 1958 Scotland also came calling, and he made his international debut against England at Hampden Park. In all, he was awarded 19 Scotland caps, including those won during Scotland's World Cup campaign in Sweden in 1958.
He rerired from Charlton when he was 39 and returned to South Africa to manage a team there. But the family came back to the UK when the political situation in Africa worsened, and in the 1990s they settled at Donington (Lincolnshire), where he was still playing tennis at the age of 70.
There is a small tailpiece. In 1997 I wrote and published a book called Passing Seasons, which I had compiled to mark 50 years since I first started to watch football. An article about it duly appeared in a Lincolnshire newspaper, and the title sold modestly well.
About a fortnight later the phone rang at home and a voice said, 'This is John Hewie speaking.' He'd seen the article and got the book. Now, I had never actually met John Hewie before, or even spoken to him, and he would not have known me from Adam. But he was friendly and chatty and we spoke for ten minutes or so about the old days, and of course I told him how, as a football-mad lad in the 1950s I'd made the long journey from Lincolnshire to London, and to The Valley, to see him play on several occasions. He seemed pleased to be remembered.
A fine sportsman, John Hewie, and modest with it.