Jim Cochrane

Jul 20 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

WE HAVE heard it so many times – the buzz of anticipation and the yelps of enthusiasm gradually being re-played by the hollow exhortations and the sad “ahhs”, as another British hope is defeated at Wimbledon.

But few have felt these pangs more sharply than the mathematics teacher, who through his long administrative career in tennis still managed a perky response to the inevitable press question: “When will we have another champion?”

But Jim Cochrane was a realist. In 1984, as president of the Lawn Tennis Association, he said: “If we are going to produce champions, we have got to get the kind of children playing, who now take up football with a view to making a career with Liverpool”.

Three years later, he lamented the fact that the game was “too social and too middle-class”. Happily, some of the reforms for which he worked so tirelessly have now been implemented.

Cochrane was born in Bolton, the son of a doctor. He was educated at Mostyn House School, the distinctive black and white building on the front at Parkgate, Cheshire, admired by day- trippers licking ice cream cornets or forking their shrimps. He left the school as head monitor and went to Wrekin College, Shropshire.

During the war, he served with the Royal Navy and was invalided out because of a leg injury, joining the staff of Mostyn House, then a boarding school, in 1946.

Big, broad and bespectacled, with a fitting anecdote for most occasions in life, he guided boys through their Common Entrance exam and scholarships into the grand public schools. But sport was his love, whether on the football field, advising on tactics, or the tennis courts whooshing his racquet with considerable aplomb.

He is remembered particularly for attracting Stanley Mathews and the Blackpool team to training sessions at the school.

In the old tradition, he will be remembered as a fine teacher and friend, who became second master (deputy head), before retiring in 1983.

Devoted to Parkgate, he had been a Wirral magistrate and was fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Zoological Society.

During 26 years in tennis administration, he served on the management committee at Wimbledon and chaired the LTA (1981) and was its president (1982-84). In 1984, he was appointed CBE.

He is survived by his wife and their two children.

Jim Cochrane, teacher; born 1924,died July 17, 2007.