Teacher recalls day Ryan Giggs caused stir at Deane School

August 13, 2020
Posted by Steven Tan | Source from The Bolton News
A PHOTOGRAPH in last week’s Looking Back of the pool at the Deane School prompted Dave Price, a PE teacher at the school for 20 years from 1982 to get in touch.
 
He remembers spending many hours teaching swimming in the pool.
 
He recalls: “In 1985 I was chairman of Greater Manchester County Schools’ FA and we were drawn to play at a school in Rhyl. The headmaster took me on a tour of the school prior to the game.
 
“As we went up the stairs to the first floor he told me I’m going to show you something unusual and led me into their pool.
 
“’What do you think of that?’ he asked, ‘A swimming pool on the first floor, the only one in the country’.
 
“He was rather crestfallen as I informed him, perhaps the only one in Wales but I’d got one at my school in Bolton!
 
“My changing room was on the ground floor and several times over the years I would come in to find it flooded, my boots and trainers floating around the room and water cascading down the stairs as a valve had been left on over-night.”
 
 
Dave also remembers an entire afternoon spent trying to rescue a pigeon which had flown into the pool using some grain from the school farm and a badminton net to try to trap it,
 
Another school memory concerned the day when crowds gathered to catch a glimpse of a football superstar.
 
Dave remembers: “In the late 1990s when I was serving on the English Schools’ FA Council, I was asked if I could perhaps get an ex-schoolboy player that had played for one of my teams at town or county level to present the Record of Achievement Folders in a special afternoon assembly.
 
“I asked Ryan Joseph Wilson, who had scored a hat trick for the county in a national final in 1989. By this time Ryan had changed his name and was now rather better known as Ryan Giggs.
 
“The year group, especially the girls and some of the female staff, were suitably pleased to see him despite Man U beating BWFC 6-1 at Burnden Park the previous Sunday.
 
“Although I had tried to keep Ryan’s visit a secret word got around school that we had a ‘special’ visitor and, as Ryan left, literally every window at the front of school was full of pupils waving him off – a wonderful afternoon.”
  • Related keywords: Ryan Giggs, Deane School