Roy Harding RIP

Roy Harding
OP 1954
1938-2025

With our thanks to Roy's family and John Sweetman OP

Born in London the son of a professional footballer, Roy Harding joined the Senior School in 1949 and quickly displayed versatile sporting ability. In his first year, he was awarded a bat signed by the famous England cricketer, Len Hutton, for outstanding performances but soon opted for athletics during the summer term. Despite his later national achievements in that sport, his son Richard mused that ‘he always wondered how far he could have gone with cricket’.

In 1953 and 1954, Roy represented the School in the English Public School Sports at White City, London, in the latter year coming fourth in the junior long jump. In 1954, too, he was one of the quartet to win the 4x110 yards relay at the Hampshire Schools Sports meeting at Southampton. In the PGS Schools Sports that year he won the 100 yards, Putting the Shot and Discus intermediate events.

Roy showed great promise at rugby. The Portmuthian observed of his Colts XV performances: ‘Harding was the only back who could regularly give and take a pass at full speed’. A feat against Churcher’s was highlighted: ‘Harding, backing up hard, took a beautiful pass at full speed, swerved past a defender and scored under the posts’.

Then, playing for the 3rd XV: ‘Harding, at stand-off half, has shown great promise and is worthy of promotion to the 1st XV … his speed should enable him to outpace most defending forwards or backs’. He duly did turn out for the more senior side.

On leaving PGS in 1954, he was described as ‘dependable, keen, cheerful and thorough’, characteristics which he continued to display initially in the Civil Service, then for the Southern Electricity Board until he retired after 38 years having ‘thoroughly enjoyed it’. Early in that spell, he was located in Reading and bought a motorbike to aid travel. Richard recalled that 'as part of the test, he was warned that the examiner would step out in front of him, for him to do any emergency stop. As Dad was following the route, he saw the examiner in the road about half a mile away, so changed down gears a couple of times and coasted to a stop in front of him. The examiner congratulated him on his emergency stop which confused Dad a bit as he hadn’t really needed to brake at all. It wasn’t till afterwards that he found the examiner had been knocked over the week before’.

Concentrating on the long jump, Roy’s athletics career flourished immediately after he left PGS. He represented the Amateur Athletics Association in several competitions, narrowly missing out on selection for the then British Empire and Commonwealth Games of 1958.

He, his wife, son and daughter Julie settled in Havant and annually enjoyed camping holidays in the west country, though ‘not the compulsory 4am start so Dad could avoid the traffic’.

After the children grew up, Roy and Daphne took to touring France in their car and both became enthusiastic gardeners, frequently winning prizes at local flower shows. With the arrival of grandson Nathan, Roy turned his hand to conjuring. ‘More Tommy Cooper than Paul Daniels, I think he was as surprised as the rest of us when a trick worked successfully at the first attempt’, his son recalled.

On the sporting front, he took up golf and, predictably, became an accomplished player. But his family always came first, as Nathan reflected: ‘He was a truly caring and loving man and I hope I can be like that as I get older’.