MAKING OF FOOTBALLS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 293, 10 December 1929, Page 3

MAKING OF FOOTBALLS

GENERATIONS OF CRAFTSMEN. TONBRIDGE’S GROWING TRADE. The post-office of Tonbridge, Kent, might easily have been mistaken a few weeks ago for the despatch department of a fruit store with the melon season in full swing. Mountains of melon-shaped parcels were stacked on the floors and the counters. but the contents of these neat spherical packages were not melons, but footballs, nice new spotless footballs, ready with the most blameless impartiality to score goals alike for Sheffield United or Tottenham Hotspur, or some humble village team. For Tonbridge is the town where many of the footballs which will kicked to victory by one side or another are, so to speak, born. Here, in a quaint, old-fashioned building, beside the quiet waters of the Medway, they have been made by generations of skilled craftsmen. “Footballs have been made here since 1760—that’s 169 years,” the foreman of the factory told the writer. “Every year the trade is growing. Last year we sent more than five thousand footballs overseas alone. They go to Australia. New Zealand, Canada and the United States, and we send quantities of the Rugger shape to South Africa. All the summer we have been hard at work repairing footballs for the clubs and schools, largo and small, all over the country. Now we are busy with hockey orders for girl’s schools, and with huge consignments of cricket balls for Australia.” This is one of those old-established firms where inherited aptitude for the work is an important factor. Ono bf the most skilled workers is a man whose great-grandfather was apprenticed to. the business in the year of its foundation. This ancestor puts his sons into the trade, and their descendants have continued in it up to the present day.