The following is a transcript of two articles first published in Polytechnic News (Polynews 1982) and entitled:’ Long live the Madeley Spirit! ‘A review of the 20-year contribution of Madeley College’

PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORTING EXCELLENCE

1962 – 1982.

By Alan Hargreaves (Principal Lecturer)

MADELEY, physical education and sporting excellence have been synonymous for over 20 years and it is impossible to review the contributions of over 2,000 students and 20 physical education staff during this period without omitting some notable achievements.

Perhaps it should be made clear from the start, therefore that the foundation of Madeley’s reputation lies not in the performance of any one individual or team but in the collective professional excellence, which staff students and former students have achieved.

The greatest testomy to the work of the department is that not only do all our leaving students find jobs, but also many gain promotion to post of higher responsibility. For example former Madeley students are now lecturing in Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges and acting as local education authority advisers.

There is no doubt, however, that our reputation for sporting excellence was first founded in two sports, swimming and athletics.

It is not by accident that all three of the national technical officers currently employed by the Amateur Swimming Association are ex. Madeley, as are three National AAA Coaches.

For example, it must be unique for an institution of our size to have had two Olympic swimming captains, Martyn Woodroffe (Mexico 1968) and Clive Rushton (Munich 1972).

During our early years, no fewer than ten Madeley students gained full international swimming and water-polo caps and not surprisingly dominated men’s student swimming competitions for over a decade. Similarly in athletics, in 1967 our sprint relay team won the AAA national indoor championships for the 4 x 110 yards at Cosford.

If swimming helped to form Madeley’s early reputation, this was quickly enhanced into team games, notably rugby and soccer. The rugby team won the Staffordshire Cup, the British Colleges Cup and the British Colleges 7’s

In Soccer, our students have won all the major colleges competitions and four players have gone on to play professional soccer.

Madeley teams have also won national student competitions in water-polo, trampoline, cricket and hockey and have achieved a reputation in a number of other events particularly canoeing, in which we have had two internationals.

Individual international honours were also achieved in gymnastics, cycling and tennis.

Deservedly then Madeley has a fine reputation for physical education and sport and the transfer to the Stoke site, where considerable increases in sporting facilities are already taking place, augers well for the future.

INTERNATIONAL AND BRITISH STUDENT
SPORTS HONOURS
MADELEY COLLEGE
1962 – 1982

MADELEY IN RETROSPECT

By Keith Thompson (College Principal)

PERHAPS with the passage of time there will be a thorough, balanced and acute study of Madeley College, as the closure of the campus approaches it is more appropriate to record merely a few random but not, I hope, wholly insignificant observations.

Let us go back ten years; Madeley had an official role of 1260 students. There were 123 staff. All students were full time, all involved in initial teacher education. Most terminated their course with a Certificate in Education. A minority stayed for a forth year for a B.Ed.  Degree. This marked progress, as recently as 1961 students qualified as teachers after two years of higher education

The College had been one of the first to mount a PGCE course. From the outset a particular strength of this was the provision for those with degrees in subjects not normally in the school curriculum such as sociology, law or anthropology.

It was though professionally enlightened. Whatever Sir Keith Joseph’s views on the curriculum a good case can be made out for it.

The College’s secondary specialisms were men’s Physical Education and Home Economics for women. They remain B.Ed. specialisms nationally despite the demise of Madeley. The P.E. students always stood out, royal blue tracksuits and the Leonidas emblem were (and are) worn proudly. Leonidas and his Spartans, it will be recalled, fought to the death against overwhelming odds. At least some of the Madeley Spartans will emerge through ‘Sport and Rec’ unscathed at Stoke.

But Madeley, then and since, was not and has not simply been its courses. It is fully a community. Despite the occasional justified complaint over noise, relationships between village and college have been excellent. Many in the village grieve its loss.

And the college has been indebted to the affection and loyalty of those who have worked for it and its students in so many roles, admin support, porters, cleaners, cooks, It is trite to say that they belonged. Trite but true.

Individuals who have lived and worked at Madeley will have their own particular vivid memories. Many of mine relate particularily to the arts and to sport. I shall never forget their fusion when the outstanding gymnasts of 1973 former a tumblers for the circus scene of ‘The Bartered Bride’. Nor shall I forget the verve of ‘Carmen’ or the elation of the 1^st XV’s victories in 1975, over Stoke to win the Staffordshire Cup and over Cardiff to win the British Colleges Cup.

I hope that Madeley has made a contribution to the Polytechnic in the five years which it has been part of the wider institution. Its overwhelming sense of identity has not been weakened by the merger. Nor should it have been. One does not strengthen the whole by weakening its parts.

Now there are two years for ‘Education’ to make its mark at Stoke even if they are the final years. And the P.E. tradition can and must become fully embodied into the Polytechnic, maintaining that element of continuity, which must coexist with change, and keeping the Madeley tradition alive though absorbed. It lives too in the sustained contribution of former Madeley students to the schools in which they teach.

Madeley is all but dead. Long live Madeley! A paradox, yes. But not a contradiction.