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Kensington Post - Friday 04 September 1953
FOOTBALLERS NEED SHOWER-BATHS - NOT HORSE TROUGHS
SPORTS TALK by KEN DRURY
AWAY WITH THE HORSE-TROUGHS and let's have decent washplaces at L.C.C. grounds. That's the plea the Sunday Football Association will shortly be making to the body which controls most of London's playing fields - and a good few horse-troughs, too.
And there'll be a lot of Kensington footballers behind them. For many of our players have had a sample, oh too often, of the the abominable washing facilities that the L.C.C. have to offer at a host of grounds.
I believe it was a Kensal House footballer who last season described the facilities at Wandsworth Common as the nearest thing to a horse-trough in which he had ever had to wash.
And a horse-trough it certainly resembles. A few extra taps make about the only difference.
It's situated in an open courtyard approachable through an entrance that's never closed and which, therefore, lends no privacy to mud-spattered footballers washing their bodies.
And don't think Wandsworth Common an exception among LCC grounds. It might be the worst, but there are several others with washing facilities of the common-or-garden horsetrough style, including Wormwood Scrubs.
Mr. Halfacre, general secretary of the Sunday Football Association, tells me that he will ask the L.C.C. to instal shower baths at their ground. By charging about 3d. for a shower, sthey would soon recover the cost, he thinks.