Tynedale family prove they are jolly good sports

This summer, Freddie, 19 and Charlie, 17, along with their mum, are teaching everything from tennis to treasure hunting to youngsters around Tynedale, and their 11-year-old brother, Jonathan, is a good help too.

But then it’s hardly surprising that they’re such a sporty family, bearing in mind that Sarah once coached her country’s athletics team in the Commonwealth Games.

In a piece of sporting history that’s almost as kooky as Eddie the Eagle’s exploits, it was the former Hexham High School pupil who was responsible for getting the Falkland Islands’ team in shape for the 1990 games in New Zealand.

At the time, Sarah was the only PE teacher in the Falklands and fully understood how much the Games meant to the islanders – after all, 1990 was also the year diplomatic relations between the UK and Argentina finally resumed following the bitter war of 1982. The importance of still being a part of the Commonwealth could not be underestimated.

Sarah, who hails originally from Rochester, recalls, “We were invited as a country to go to New Zealand and the chairman of the islands’ games association decided to enter two runners in the 10,000 metres.

“He wanted me to organise a trial, so we used the airstrip because there was nowhere else flat.”

Two members of the Falkland Islands Defence Force were chosen to compete – tax collector Peter Biggs and sheep shearer William Goss.

“They were the first two islanders past the post in our trial on the airstrip,” Sarah says. Sarah had just three weeks to coach them so they were ‘match fit’.

There was also the small matter of getting them kitted up. “We had to do it all ourselves. They had never run in spikes before. But Frank Dick, who was then the British Athletics Federation’s director of coaching, and Brendan Foster were a really good help and got us all sorted with kit and people from the local fishing industry sponsored us.”

The team comprised of the two athletes, Sarah – as their coach and manager – and Patrick Watts – an announcer on the islands’ radio station and the man who famously told a group of gun-toting Argentinians who had invaded his studio that he couldn’t broadcast with rifles pointing at his back.

Sarah remembers the games with real happiness, in spite of the fact her team was lapped no less than seven times.

“They got a standing ovation from the whole stadium,” she declares proudly.

“They’re known as the ‘Friendly Games’ and they really were and we just had some hilarious times.

“ Normally, countries have officials going to evening events, but as there were only four of us, we had to attend.

“An ambassador introduced me to a Mr So-and-So. I was chatting to him and he said ‘Excuse me, but I have to do a speech in a minute’.

“I made a joke to calm his nerves, asking him if he had a hanky and had he been to the toilet? Then this man took to the stage and it was the Prime Minister of New Zealand!”

Sarah left quite a legacy in the Falklands, including a thriving running club in Stanley and a netball club.

She also established the Falkland Islands half marathon, which is still going strong. Indeed the organisers sent her a commemorative T shirt on its 20th anniversary.

She also brought home a little bit of the Falkland Islands in the shape of her two eldest sons, who were both born out there.

Sarah had married Mike Allan, an islander and sheep shearer, from whom she is now divorced. Jonathan, their youngest son, is a Geordie however, born at the RVI.

It’s four years since Sarah, currently a cover supervisor at her old school in Hexham, set up the summertime scheme that she runs with her boys.

‘Good Sports @ Tyne, Rede and Coquet’ provides multi-sports and activities weeks at Bellingham, Riding Mill and Hexham for children aged four to 13.

“I wanted my kids to have some experience of doing coaching, and from the age of 13 both Freddie and Charlie helped me as sports leaders.”

They are both Level 1 football coaches and Freddie is a Level 2 tennis coach at Tyne Valley Tennis Club. He also coaches the Stocksfield Eagles under 12s soccer club whilst Charlie coaches the under eights.

Not only has Sarah raised them as a single mum, she has also nursed Charlie through acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) – a blood cancer he developed in infancy.

“I was running at the Jersey Games in Guernsey, competing for the Falklands, when Charlie became ill,” Sarah says.

“We waited until we got back to England to see a doctor, thinking it was just a nasty bug that he couldn’t shake off – his temperature was fluctuating and he lost his appetite and he had bruises down one side that I thought was from climbing over the bunk beds with his brother.”

The GP recognised the symptoms and sent them straight to the RVI where he had an immediate blood transfusion.

Over the next three and a half years, Charlie underwent a gruelling combination of chemotherapy and blood transfusions.

Sarah recalls: “He had to have injections in his spine every three months to put chemotherapy into his spinal fluid in case it had gone into his spine or his brain.”

“They told us that neither myself or Mike were a match if the treatment failed, but fortunately the treatment worked and Charlie is ten years clear now.”

A Prudhoe High School pupil, he is studying chemistry, maths and physics whilst Freddie studied biology, chemistry and economics and hopes to go on to study forensic science. Jonathan is at Ovingham Middle School and is on “all the sports teams going.”

Sarah says Charlie’s illness was ‘hard on the whole family’.

“But you just have to keep pushing on. We still do the North East Children’s Cancer Run every year, which paid for Charlie’s consultant and the nurses that worked with him.

“And although I want to move on from that time, it’s good to let other people know that there is now an 80 per cent chance of survival for this kind of leukaemia thanks to all the research that’s gone on.”

And seeing all her sons enjoy sport as much as she does is a great source of joy and pride.

“I’m very proud of them all. They’re really good kids. They can empathise with people well, they relate really well with the kids they work with and are good motivators, as well as being skillful sportsmen in their own right.”