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The following is an article that appeared in the "Home & Abroad" column authored by Peter Hinchliffe in the March 30, 2002, edition of The Huddersfield Examiner newspaper in West Yorkshire, England. Robert Wharam, Benoni, Johannesburg, South Africa Robert Wharam has been involved in South African football for nearly three decades. He played as a semi-professional and managed a team. Now, aged 49, he is chairman of the Eastern Transvaal Football Association and regularly plays for an over-35 side. Robert, who grew up in the Holme Valley, played cricket for Holmfirth and Armitage Bridge and football for Upperthong. "I remember the club being formed. Laurie Platt was in at the beginning of it." As an infant he lived in a row of houses at Jackson Bridge seen regularly in Last Of The Summer Wine. He then lived at Scholes and was educated at the village school and at Holmfirth New School. After an engineering apprenticeship at David Brown Tractors in Meltham, at 21 he emigrated to South Africa. He married Linda Powell, who worked in the office at David Brown Gears. Linda was educated in Lepton and Almondbury. They settled in Benoni, near Johannesburg. Robert was a milling machine operator for a number of engineering firms, including Salweir, the South African branch of Weir Group. Eventually he went into steel sales and now runs a one-man business selling steel to small manufacturers. The South African manufactured steel goes to a variety of industries, including suppliers of car firms BMW and Nissan. He has played provincial cricket against South African Test stars and was a semi-professional footballer with Vaal United as a fullback. He played as a mid-fielder with Elsburg, going on to manage the club. "We get lots of football on television. You can watch as many as six live UK games in one weekend," he says. The Wharams have a daughter Michelle and a granddaughter Sinead. Another daughter Deborah died in a car accident when she was 20. Copyright and Trade Mark Notice © owned by or
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Trinity Mirror Plc 2004 N.B.: Robert Wharam of Benoni, South Africa, is from the same general area as the family of James O. Wharam in West Yorkshire. Also, the surname of the article's author, Peter Hinchliffe, is the same as James O. Wharam's maternal grandmother.
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