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When there are few players on each side, a player can " shy " the ball to himself. The goal-keeper may be either a " fixed goalie " or a " fly goalie." The latter means that anyone can act as goal-keeper. The length of a game is variable. It can last anything from ten minutes (morning break) to four hours (Saturday afternoon). In the long games, it is exceptional to finish with the same team that you started with.
The season lasts throughout the two winter terms, with intervals when the ice-patches are too dangerous. They have to be pretty bad to stop play. It goes on into the summer term, until one sunny day a boy appears carrying a bat and a ball onto the small square. That marks the end of the football season.
20 YEARS AGO
The " Victorian " closed down in 1939, with the outbreak of war, and was not published again till 1943. The Grand Day " Victorian " of 1945, records the School's celebration of the victory in Europe. This was a two-day affair, V.E. and V.E. plus 1, the schedule for which had been worked out in advance. On the first day there was a late reveille, and the rest of the morning was occupied with a thanksgiving service and swimming. After dinner there were late passes or swimming, as preferred (the weather was too wet for games outside), but the pipe band and the military band were at Stirling playing a victory programme in King's Park. The next day there were were games and swimming in the morning, and in the afternoon a parade of the whole School, headed by the pipe and military bands, to a victory service in Dunblane. The boys returned to a special tea, " the likes of which we have never had in the School before ". Those who remember the austerities of the war years can imagine how much that tea would be appreciated. After supper, the School paraded again on the big square. A guy, representing Hermann Goering, with medals and paunch, was marched round the square and up to the bonfire site, to be ceremonially burned. The only unhappy faces, records the writer, belonged to two Monitors who had been on telephone duty during most of the proceedings.
Besides the reference to " telephone duty ", there are mentions of other School institutions that have since changed or disappeared. There were many more monitors. We read that six monitors had just left ; but the list that follows shows only five names. They are Senior Monitor J. Kidney, and Monitors P. Thomson, V. Southon, D. Parkinson, and K. Kitney. Later in the magazine there is a note that James Kidney had a very long stay at the School, from September, 1937 to April, 1945. Now this stay of just under eight years is regularly surpassed by boys who join us at the Primary VI stage and go on to the full six years of the secondary course. Boys who joined or left the School in 1945 are shown under two headings : Q.V.S. and D.Y.R.M.S. That was
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because boys of the Duke of York's Royal Military School in Dover were accepted as " evacuees " at Q.V.S. A curious thing is that in the same issue of the " Victorian" a dozen D.Y.R.M.S. boys are shown as being admitted to the School, while one, K. Whatmough is shown as having " returned to D.Y.R.M.S.". Members of the staff will remember the last of the D.Y.R.M.S. contingent. That was Norman Poulson, who left in 1956. There was still an annual prize for the best boy in the " Dukies " section of the School. He won that without
opposition, for two years at least. Where is he now? Hockey is mentioned as a regular School game in 1945, in the summer term along with cricket ; but the rules were not well known by all who played, for there is mention of one player who tried to stop an opponent by throwing his stick at the ball. A note about summer leave says that the boys " wished Dunblane good-bye for the following five weeks". Tailoring was a regular " trade", at which boys worked under the control of Mr Henderson. Two ex-tailor monitors are said to be taking turn about at telephone duty, while the others were away at the numerous band engagements. So it looks as if monitors had the privilege of this duty. The correspondent for the tailors mentions the prospect of a return to the red jacket for ceremonial wear, which is going to mean more work for the boy tailors. There is an article called "Advance into Time." in which the writer describes how, as Commandant's orderly, he is sent to fetch a master who is taking a History lesson about the Napoleonic wars with a sketch-map of France on the board. Suddenly the orderly finds himself transported into the future in the same room where a master is now dealing with the war of 1939-45. If the article is true to fact it looks as if the Commandant's orderly really had to work as a message-carrier in those days. There is mention that the author is Commandant's orderly " that day." He therefore has " nothing to do ", but sits waiting for the three rings of the bell that will summon him to do an errand for the Commandant. The duty now is a ceremonial one. The Commandant's orderly is a boy of the first year secondary, chosen for smartness in drill and bearing, who accompanies the Commandant to church, and marches with the inspecting party on Grand Day as the Commandant's attendant. The white pouch that he wears does not carry any dispatches. The article is signed " N.McL.D." These are the initials of Norman Dick, a regular contributor to the " Victorian " at that time and one of the sub-editors of the summer-1945 number. We identify him with the Norman Dick who is now an R.A.F. officer at Leuchars. He visited the School not long ago, for the first time in many years, and was also at Old Boys' Sunday. A
review of the films shown to the School, and an article on the pipe band, are both signed J.F.P. We surmise that the writer was J. F. Phillips, primus that year, and later B.D.S. of St. Andrews University.
There is a great deal about bands in the 1945 magazine. At that time the School was running not only the pipe band (Mr Sanderson) and the military
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