We still remeber

Rugby club's memorial room, with hooks for all 18 it lost in the 1974 Five Nations air crash

-  ANDY LINES

Chief Reporter G ordon Ellis was full of excitement on March 3, 1974, because it was his eighth birthday. But recalling how happiness turned to despair, he says: "Then there was a knock at the door." He adds: "I remember seeing the police, and my mum tried to tell me that my dad wasn't coming home." The terrible news was that his 34year-old father Bryan had been killed.

He died in what was at the time the world's worst ever plane crash.

Almost 180 of the 346 fatalities in the disaster near Paris 50 years ago tomorrow were from the UK, and the crash was particularly devastating for one market town and its rugby club.

Bryan - nicknamed No One - was the chairman and former captain.

In all, 18 men on the rugby club trip were killed, including businessman Lawrence Cornish, 39.

His son Austin, who was only three at the time, recalls: "For months after, when the phone rang at home, apparently I always asked, 'Is that Daddy?".

A party of 21 from Bury St Edmunds Rugby Club in Suffolk made the trip to Paris to watch the France vs England match in the Five Nations.

The men from East Anglia were also due to play a game over there but it was called off. Three of the men decided to stay on in the French capital but 18 ended up on an earlier flight home.