Coach's Biography: Paul Cockayne

My love of games goes back to early years, the age of about 4, I suppose, being beaten at chess again and again by my elder brother and occasionally a kind uncle.  On Sundays the family usually sat down to play a board game; Monopoly, Cluedo and Risk were favourites, and we’d often play rummy as well.  My mum was a lover of patience games and my dad introduced me to the idea of book cricket which occupied many an hour in the pre-computer era.

My secondary school was starting to take chess seriously when I arrived and I found myself playing regularly for school and later county teams.  Later bridge also became popular when the Rev. Davy gave up his struggle to interest his class in Latin or the Divinities.  As I progressed through university chess remained my great passion but in our twenties my wife and I started playing bridge together with some success – until our bridge became rather more successful than our marriage in fact.   I continued playing bridge seriously through to the mid 1990s, with even the occasional success at national level.  I did not, however, repeat my mistake by playing with my second wife.  A good decision, as we remain married and mostly friendly after 37 years together.

Sometime in the 1980s I got involved in the postal games hobby, initially playing Diplomacy (my first game featured one Vick Hall) and then, later, United and pretty much any other game that was going.  For about four years I ran my own postal games zine “On the Game”, which won the UK zine poll a couple of times.  It was in this period that I met Alan Parr, the originator of United (and still running various games to this day), and like me, a huge jazz fan.  In fact, Alan and I once went to a football match together, Tring Town v. Wokingham, in the basement level depths of the English league pyramid: a win for Tring, 3-1 as I recollect. I think the spectators outnumbered the players but I can’t be sure.

Family, house moves and career changes put an end to my games playing for a while around 1996, until around 2010 when I started playing bridge again and renewed my interest in games through the computer world.   Things have gone full circle, in a way.  I find myself playing a bit a chess again, and when my two sons (now 36 and 34) are home we will invariably pull out a board game (but no longer Monopoly, I’m pleased to say).  And no doubt the grandsons (age 3 and 1) will be joining us in due course.

In MSWLU1 I have previously managed Wycombe Wanderers