Benefit of the doubt

Richard Chew sends what he supposes to be circumstantial evidence.

It’s the programme from the benefit match, Darlington v an All Stars XI, for Quaker stalwarts Ron Greener and Keith Morton. Richard’s instinct is to be cautious: between printing and playing, the All Stars appear to have lost much of their shine.

It was March 20, 1961, Richard then a ten-year-old allowed early out of Haughton scouts in order to watch his first “real” match. “To say I was overwhelmed would be a bit of an understatement,” he says.

“We were in the Tin Shed, surrounded by large men. I didn’t have a clue who was who or who was actually playing. Tom Finney was in the programme, so I’ve always maintained that I saw him play. I still don’t know if I did.”

The date’s the clue, enabling a check of the Echo’s match report.

Bob James’s characteristically stylish opening paragraph pretty much summed up the story.

“The galaxy of famous names promised at last night’s match at Feethams proved only to be a minor constellation. What looked on paper to be a splendid assemblage was dimmed by a long list of apologies.”

On paper, the team included Newcastle United favourites Ivor Allchurch, Alf McMichael and Len White, Manchester United (and former Darlington) goalkeeper Ray Wood and Liverpool legend Billy Liddle – plus, of course, the fabled Preston plumber.

So few stars came out that night, however, that Quakers were obliged to loan three spare players just to prevent the XI becoming a VIII.

Chris Balderstone, perhaps better remembered as the last man to play in the County Cricket Championship and the Football League on the same day, gave the visitors a fourth minute lead. Terry Poole, not even on the team sheet, equalised for Darlington.

Darlington defender Jim Brown’s second half own goal gave the fading Stars victory – the only goal, however misplaced, that the Scotsman managed in a Quakers shirt.

By then, however, a 38-year-old winger was beginning to make his mark on matters. “Finney was turning on flashes of his old magic. It gave the game a respectable aura,” wrote Bob.

So the young boy scout was right all along – and Tom Finney was to give the game a respectable aura for another 53 years.

TOM Finney, coincidentally, ties in another recent thread – the appearance of former Newcastle United and Liverpool man Albert Stubbins on the sleeve of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP.

Cumbrian journalist Ross Brewster recalls occasionally working alongside Tom in the press box at Carlisle United. A more regular Brunton Park scribe was Ivor Broadis – now 92, fit and well and, since Bert Williams’s death, the oldest England international footballer.

Ross even recalls an almost classic press bench front five for a Carlisle game – Broadis, Finney and Stubbins joined by Magpies’ favourite Ivor Allchurch and, er, Ross Brewster.

“It’s a shame,” he adds, “that I had to spoil such a fantastic forward line.”

SO was Albert Stubbins’s guest appearance amid that slightly motley band the Beatles’ only link with football? Ian Robson in Bishop Auckland thinks not.

For one thing, he says, Lennon and McCartney both attended the 1966 FA Cup final between Everton and Sheffield Wednesday and definitely not Wednesday’s children, either.

John Lennon, however, is also said to have been among the Wembley crowd for the 1952 final between Arsenal and Newcastle, which United won 1-0 and the Gunners finished with just seven fit men. (Nothing new there, then).

Lennon was so impressed, it’s reckoned, that he painted an action picture which appeared, above, on the cover of his 1974 solo album Walls and Bridges.

The internet suggests that the number nine is Wor Jackie Milburn.

The likeness is immediate, of course.

COCKERTON Cricket Club, a village side long seamlessly subsumed into Darlington, held a reunion the other night of players of the 60s and 70s. Age?

Decades? The two more or less coincided.

Inevitably, there was talk of coffins, not those which ineluctably await but the corpulent kit bags which these days overflow every pavilion like an undertaker’s anteroom.

“If you needed a new bat in our day, the club had to hold a jumble sale,” Steve Salmon recalled.

Another remembered playing for the club in pads bequeathed by the great all-rounder Frank Woolley, whose first class career ended in 1938. Sadly, he couldn’t remember how Cockerton came so sumptuously to be leg before.

There was a huge Cockerton banner, of the sort draped universaly at test match grounds, and the centenary flag which flew when the club entertained Durham County in 1993.

Truth to tell, the game may best be remembered for the smallest and prettiest streaker – male – e’er to cast a clout.

Dickie Cowan, the reunion organiser, had a rear view picture in a scrapbook. “There are full frontals, too, but there are ladies present,” he chivalrously explained.

Roger Saunders recalled how he’d once claimed the first nine against Eryholme, Dickie Cowan then ensuring that Maurice Binge remains the only man in the club’s 120-year history to have completed the set.

Someone had also brought a framed letter from the Sunday Chronicle, signed by Alec Bedser in 1954, awarding Maurice a bat for “handsomely” winning a quiz. Better than jumble sales, anyway.

They start again on Easter Saturday, hope to be able to muster two teams. In truth, the reunion may have been a thinly disguised second XI recruitment drive, a familiar scenario of willing spirit but weak flesh. “If I had one wish in my life it would be just to play one more game of village cricket,” someone said. “Sadly, I think I’ve had it.”

FEELING, he said, a little worse for wear, Sunderland FA Cup winner Micky Horswill spoke at a do for Evenwood Cricket Club (prop Bulldog Billy Teesdale) last Friday.

Micky’s fragile state, it should swiftly be explained, was wholly unconnected to the sort of excesses he’d enjoyed when spending two years as George Best’s housemate in Manchester. “They tell me I had a great time,” he likes to explain. “I’m afraid I can’t remember.”

Micky, Annfield Plain lad originally, had befriended a Spennymoor youngster with cystic fibrosis. An early hours telephone call that day had reported that the lad was seriously ill, Micky spending from 2am- 7 30am at his bedside.

So before once again revisiting the road to Wembley, he asked for a few moments’ contemplation – perfectly and pensively observed – for his young friend back in Spennymoor.

Perhaps we thought also that it was all very far removed from the image of the professional footballer 40 years later.

...and finally, readers are today invited to name the Premiership or Football League clubs in England which are the furthest north, south, east and west.

Usual direction, the column returns next week.