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Over our fourteen and a bit years, the family of the Five Towns Quiz League
has sadly seen some of its greatest stalwarts move on to the great quiz in the sky. Here are the ones we know about
and a bit about them.
If you know of any other former FTQL players who deserve to be in this section
then let the Secretary know.
Obituaries written by Simon Curtis
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Christine Szmyt - Christine, like David Marsh of the Junction, was one of what we in the Five Towns Quiz League
like to call our day one'ers. She was Captain of the Golden Lion/Cartners Arms/Hope & Anchor team who along
with the Station Hotel were so dominant in the league in the early and mid-period days. Christine was a very strong-willed
and independent person, who didn't take kindly to being told that, as I recall from one incident recited to me by Keith
"the Cardigan Man" King, "Szmyty's wife has won the quiz", and she was apparently heard to counter
with "I'm a person in my own right you know!". When Christine passed on, another victim to cancer,
not too long after Peter McVeigh, in 2002, several of us went to her funeral and attended a very moving service at All-Saint's
Church and also at Pontefract Cemetery. Another one of nature's nice-guys, Christine Szmyt is keenly remembered
and sorely missed by the Five Towns Quiz League.
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Peter McVeigh - Peter McVeigh,
like Steve Crew, was one of life's nice guys. I knew him myself from the very early 1990s when I used to talk to
him about quizzes and cricket and things like that, at the Spread Eagle pub quiz night in Darrington on Monday nights (yes,
before the FTQL started). Peter played later in the 1990s for the Rustic Arms B team when the Rustics first entered
teams in the Five Towns Quiz League. Peter was acknowledged to be one of the best players in the league and I well remember
how devastated we all were, including of course his lovely wife Elaine, when he passed away a while after a successful operation
in 2001. As I said at the time in the obituary I wrote for the league at the time,
it always seems to happen to the nice guys, and if there was one thing that every single person I have known who met Peter
McVeigh agreed upon, it was that Peter McVeigh was one of the nice guys.
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Steve Crew - Steve was not an FTQL player at
any time, but he was co-founder of the quiz solutions company Wise Old Owls, whom the Five Towns Quiz League retained for
three years in the mid-1990s to set our questions. Steve Crew really was the nicest man you could ever wish to meet,
and he was also no mean quiz player himself, being leading light in the Redoubt Inn team of Wakefield. Steve's big
principle was the issue of fair play in quizzes and he founded Wise Old Owls in 1992 or so along with John Rowbottom to tailor
questions for the Tetley Quiz League, but when that league sadly folded in 1996, he and John carried the league on, on an
independent basis until Steve's death from cancer in 1999 when Chris Jones inherited the company name. The Wise
Old Owls League carries on to this day and holds a Steve Crew memorial quiz night every January. Steve Crew is probably
the best quiz setter I have ever met and he is fondly remembered in the Five Towns Quiz League.
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Linda Yelland - Linda played
for the Redhill Hotel quiz team, captained by our Committee member Brenda Clayforth, in their Division Two Championship
season of 1994-95. She was a virtual ever-present in that side, before sadly succumbing to cancer in 1997. The Five Towns Quiz League was privileged to be given prmission to send a wreath to Linda's funeral
and for the 1997-98 season, when the Carlsberg Tetley Handicap Cup was introduced we were very pleased to give the new cup
the name "The Linda Yelland Trophy", the final of which has been played every year at Castleford Anglers.
The trophy was presented to the winning team for the first three years by Linda's husband Paul.
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David Marsh - David was a
founder and stalwart member of the Junction team which spent every single year of its Junction existence in the Five Towns
Quiz League Division One. He played every match in the 1991-92 season, our first season and was generally known as a
very knowledgeable player and a very nice guy. David passed away in the summer after our inaugural season and an amount
of the money he left was used to buy a beautiful silver salver, which was competed for as the curtain-raiser to the Five Towns
Quiz League season, normally between the League Champions and the Knockout Cup winners until it was discontinued in 2009. David's family attended the Charity Shield match every year since its inception in 1992 and presented
the winners with this fine trophy, which by tradition never left the Junction or their subsequent home venues.
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Barney Brennan - coming
soon
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Shaun
Flanagan - Well what can I say about Shaun? He
was simply my best mate in the whole world ever and losing him in June 2003 to an undetected and completely unexpected heart
condition was the biggest trauma of both my his wife Andrea and their children's lives. He was an FTQL day-oner
and played in the all-conquering Station team of the early and mid-nineties before moving to play with the Dude Steve Scott's
team at the end of his time. Shaun was only 38 and had just started a new job as a train driver (previously Arriva bus
driver) and bought a new house when he suddenly passed away on 21.6.03. Like I said, it was the biggest loss of my life
and it was that event that made me realise just what people come to mean to you. The hole in all our lives is just as
big as the day it happened.
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Edgar Slater - coming
soon
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Meryl Currie -
coming soon
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Cliff Cordingley
- coming soon
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If anyone sees anything here that they think is wrong,
offensive or inaccurate then please let us know and we will of course correct it. My intention here was
to pay tribute to these people. We hope we have succeeded in everyone else's eyes as well as our own...
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