Jack Whitehead

Jack Whitehead was captain of the 1948 Great Britain Olympic team. A member of the Old Waconians (Cheadle Hulme School old boys), he was one of seven “Old Wacs” in the squad. Whitehead, who played for Lancashire and the North of England, also captained his club side to five northern senior flags between 1947-55, going on to win the Iroquois Cup on each occasion.

Whitehead served in the Royal Navy during World War II, and his involvement in the raid on Dieppe in 1942 won him the Distinguished Service Cross, to which a bar was added following his involvement in the Normandy Landings. Whitehead spent all his working life working at Barclays Bank, and after his retirement, was a non-executive director of Morland Brewery for 12 years. Later he was a general commissioner for the Inland Revenue taxation department, looking into complaints.