Hockey Gold, Glinting in the Rising Sun

 

Veryan Pappin, British Men's Olympic Hockey Goalkeeper

Sorry to learn of the death of Imran Sherwani, the goal-scoring hero of the British Men's Olympic Hockey team, who won gold at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

It reminded me that I knew one of the team members, reserve goalkeeper Veryan Pappin, who came on the field for the last minute of the final, and was thus awarded a gold medal.

On his return to his, then, home county, Devon, he and I drove up to Dartmoor in the early hours of a chilly morning, to take some photos.

At the time I was writing articles for a local glossy coffee-table magazine called SWT*. I had persuaded them to take an article about our local hero, and since I was also freelancing as a (not very good) relief photographer for local newspapers, I decided to take some cool photos for it. I persuaded Veryan to bring his goalkeeper kit up to Haytor - one of Dartmoor's best-known and most loved rock outcrops - for a photoshoot at sunrise.

SWT ran it as a feature article. One of their trademark layout styles was to take up an entire page with a photograph, with the article on the facing page. It always looked dramatic because the magazine was printed in A3 (large). I remember eagerly looking forward to seeing it... and then the crushing disappointment when I discovered they had printed it in black & white!

Hey ho :(

*As I recall, when it launched it was called South Western Tatler but, understandably The Tatler took a dim view and brought in the lawyers. So it became simply SWT.