Hyde Seals Statue Unveiling
Hyde Seals Statue Unveiling
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A statue was unveiled by BBC Broadcaster Allan Beswick and Cllr Jackie Lane to commemorate Hyde Seals Swimming Club.
Text Only Version
Allan Beswick - BBC Broadcaster
Anyhow a very good day to you all and welcome to Hyde where you are all the time of course and you might wonder why we're here. Well we're here effectively all I've got a list of people I've got to cross the Mayor off he's not here. The Leader of the Council of course Councillor Roy Oldham fantastic fella (applause), James Purnell MP where are you James, there he is working James Purnell MP, members of the Hyde Seals (cheering), ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls are you alright?
Response from crowd: Yeah
Smart. It's the best sport you can get it is brilliant, you don't have to be competitive, you don't have to break your leg, you don't have to do anything like that, dive in and swim and I couldn't swim when I was ten I could not swim at all and I broke my leg playing rugby and when I went back to the swimming pool the next week after having my plaster cut off I could swim.
Councillor Jackie Lane
And I'm proud to welcome like I say Olive and Marjorie and Margaret along with Mr Wildgoose and I want to be thankful also to Roy Oldham, Gary Hulsden and all the members of the club who have given lots and lots of support to my team to make this event a very special event today. Lots of thanks also goes to the DA team along with the Events team who've put tremendous hard work and also local Members but a special thank you goes to Councillor Joe Kitchen who's also helped to research for this event today. So it gives me a pleasure now to welcome past and present members to come and help me unveil this but before I unveil this I just want to say a big thank you to the Hyde Seals that are here today. They've been very, very good, they've been practising their cheers so when we unveil it very slowly I want you to really raise the roof but I want you all to join them okay, thank you.
Unveiling of statue. Loud cheering and applause..
Dave Holmes - Hyde Seals
My name's Dave Holmes, I'm the current team manager of Hyde Seals Swimming Club, these are a few of our swimmers just a selection today. We're based in Denton believe it or not because we haven't got a swimming pool in Hyde at the moment. I used to play water polo, I'm retired now, England and Great Britain and also Hyde Seal. It does mean a lot.
Chris Jones - Midas Art
We were asked by Tameside Council to come in and have a look at this concept with the Leader.
He wanted something to commemorate such a famous team, swimming team and water polo team so we were trying to come up with something that was both simple, expressed obviously what Seals is it's easily recognisable for local people so they could see obviously see the seal form but without it being too sort of Disney-like so that's hence we came up with this the leaping seal to obviously suggest leaping out of the water and then tie in with that we could put the names of the people who were in the winning teams from the World Championships are all sort of interlaced into the base in a sort of an unusual, very subtle way so it means people have to actually have a look to find the names.
Olive Bowker - Former Hyde Seal
I joined Hyde Seals Swimming Club when I was four years old in 1923. I was swimming several years after that and it was my life until I was about sixteen. Today's wonderful I'm so pleased with that and I'm glad that I've lived to see the day when Hyde Seals have been honoured.