IT was an incredible coincidence when two senior golfers eyed each other up before they teed off in a seniors match.

They both thought the other looked familiar as Saltford took on Chipping Sodbury last month.

It transpired that the pair had been close pals at Bath Technical School but had lost contact. They were reunited through golf after 49 years.

Chipping Sodbury's seniors captain Tony Jones and John Lashenko from Saltford had so much to catch up on after the chance meeting.

Here are their stories.

John Lashenko

John Ivan Lashenko was born in 1936 in the Ukraine and came to England in 1948, as a refugee.

He lived in a family hostel near Corsham, Wiltshire. The hostel accommodated only mothers and children from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine. Fathers lived in a different hostel.

He initially attended West Wilts School that only taught children from the hostel. Then he was one of eight boys from this school who sat an entry exam for Bath Technical School in 1951. He was accepted and started in the last term of the third year of a five year course.

At the start of his final year, 1952-53, he became head boy for his outstanding efforts to overcome the language and various academic and technical subjects.

He left school in the summer of 1953 started work at Stothert and Pitt as an apprentice draughtsman and with his family moved into a flat in Bath.

In 1961 he married and moved to Oldland Common. Twelve years later he joined C & J Clarks as a project engineer designing shoe making machinery.

He joined Saltford Golf Club in the summer of 1976 and retired from work in 1999.

Tony Jones

Anthony (Tony) John Jones was born in 1936 and went to school in Shepton Mallet. At the age of 14, he also sat the entrance exam and was accepted for Bath Technical school starting in the September of 1950.

For the following three years he travelled daily by train from Shepton Mallet, on the Somerset & Dorset (SD), to Green Park Station, Bath.

During his third year he became very friendly with John Lashenko in both academic, sport and leadership activities.

In the summer of 1953 completed his studies at Bath Tech. and started an apprenticeship in engineering pattern making in Wells, Somerset.

After completing a five-year apprenticeship, followed by two years National Service in the Royal Air Force Police, he moved to Bristol with his wife in 1961.

After almost four years employed with Bristol Siddeley Engines he returned to the paper machinery business in Bristol, living in Winterbourne.

During the 1990s he lived and worked most of the time in Massachusetts, USA and took up golf after completing 25 years as a Gloucestershire football referee.

He initially joined Chipping Sodbury Golf Club as a five-day member in 1992.

On returning from the United States at the end of 1998, joined the senior's and retired from business a year later in 1999. In October he became seniors' captain.