Page 22 - topcoverissue19

22 TOP COVER SPRING 2024

TEAMWORK TAKES ANDY TO THE TOP

From Met SFO to squad member and then manager of the GB Men’s Hockey
Team, Andy Halliday has reached many highs in his long and varied career, and
teamwork has played a key role in all of them, as he explained to Top Cover.

For Andy Halliday, managing the After 22 weeks at training school
GB Men’s Olympic hockey team in late 1980, he was sent out onto the
at the 2012 London Olympics was streets as a keen, enthusiastic, albeit
the pinnacle of a career working on gullible and highly impressionable
teams in two very contrasting high- young man. It seems incredulous now,
performance settings. The former Met but in those days as a young constable
specialist firearms officer can now you had to wait until your 19th
reflect on 18 years with SO19, and birthday before being allowed to patrol
a subsequent career in international the streets on your own.
sport spanning three Olympic cycles For PC Halliday it was an eye
both as Team Manager and Coach opener. After months of postings
with England and Great Britain. learning the ropes alongside a parent
It all began when a young, naïve constable, you were on your own.
17-year-old started a job delivering “On reflection it was a tough, topsy
milk after struggling with school. In turvy way to learn policing skills,
the late 1970s there were no academic but provided the foundations for
qualifications to be had by being good developing that copper’s sixth sense,
at sport, and by his own admission, he the ability to communicate effectively
would far rather have been out on a and deal with confrontation and
sports field than sat in a classroom.
conflict,” Andy told Top Cover.
“ It was terrifying – bricks, masonry, petrol

bombs – and we had shields, but no tactical

awareness and no personal protection aside
from the trusty beat duty helmet.

“I left school in what was then “Every experience contributed
known as the lower sixth and started to support decision making skills,
a milk round in Harpenden where I particularly around appropriate use of
grew up,” said Andy. “One morning force. It was an ideal grounding for the
I heard an advert on Capital Radio enhanced skills needed when carrying
saying: ‘Do you want to play as much a firearm later in my service.”
Fair to say that in 1981, London was
sport as you like and earn £22 a week? simmering; racial tension was high,
Picture © Paul Schlemmer / Shutterstock and within five months I was arriving between police and local communities
Come and join the Metropolitan
Police cadets.’
particularly in Brixton where relations
“It was my ‘sliding doors’ moment,
were becoming incredibly strained.
Operation Swamp was the straw that
at Hendon Cadet School. I always
broke the camel’s back; a major stop
thought I’d spend a year in the cadets
and search operation in and around
and then move on to something else.
Lambeth, it provided the spark, and
staying in the Met for 31 years!”
WWW.PFOA.CO.UK But I never looked back, and ended up Railton Road and Mayall Road in