Lord Gnome's XI - The Fourth Decade

The year 2002 sees the club enter its fourth decade of playing organised fixtures - a proud record of continuity and longevity. The first Private Eye matches can be traced back to 1963, when William Rushton's XII started playing against the village of Aldworth in Berkshire, home of the magazine's editor, Richard Ingrams. Among the illustrious figures who played in those halcyon days were Paul Foot, Peter Jay, Roy Kinnear, Jonathan Routh, Barry Fantoni and Tony Rushton - Willie's cousin, and the only representative of that pioneering era still with the modern team. The Rushton XII became the Private Eye XII in 1969, and in 1971 the team advertised in the magazine for 11-a-side fixtures - thus making the transition from an occasional and satirical side to one deemed "organised" by the canons of the game.

In the ensuing years, the early Private Eye pioneers drifted away, to be replaced by the present mix of members, including artists, teachers, writers, journalists, architects, builders, fund-raisers, consultants, financiers, chancers and others of independent minds. The team changed its name from Private Eye CC in 1977 when it discovered that some opponents still expected it to play cricket in a satirical manner and were surprised that it took the game as seriously as they did. It adopted the name of Private Eye's mythical proprietor and became Lord Gnome's XI, playing its first game in that guise on May 1st that year. (A separate Lord Gnome's Invitation XI, containing some of the original Eye stalwarts, continued with a fixture against Aldworth until 1984.)

Since then Lord Gnome's fixture list has grown to its present size, with most of our matches played as a wandering side, and a strong emphasis on the social aspect of the game. The title "World Indoor Champions", which appears on the cover of our fixture list, refers to our triumphs in the Lords Indoor league and cup competitions in 1985, 1989, 1990, 1997 and 1999. (The contest is played by teams using the Lords nets in the winter.) We still have no fewer than seven active members who first played in the 1970s. At the same time the team has pursued its celebrated Youth Policy which has seen at least eight sons and daughters and one grandson play for the side. The recent influx of other semi-youthful players into the club, providing an appropriate balance with the old geezer element, should mean that the future of the club is secure for the decades to come.