When Winterton swept the board

Jack Turton, who co-wrote a hospital history, continues assiduously to mop the column's brow - though there's talk of a blood bath, too.

Jack sends a photograph of the 1909-10 team - played 35, won 35 - and another of the 1950-51 side on which our dear old friend Len "the Leap" Watson sits second from left in the front row.

Len, Trimdon lad and Durham City Harrier, still held the world Over-75s long jump record when he died, aged 90, in January last year. Built like a roll of barbed wire, empowered by a noxious liniment called Watson's No 6, he was a painter and decorator at Winterton and ran until he was 80.

From the hospital magazine, interestingly entitled Ahead, Jack also sends an account of the presentation night after the Hospital's 1971 Durham Amateur Cup win - goalkeeper Brian Crampton was player of the year, having conceded just 29 in 51 games - and of a curious incident in October 1970.

Playing in the Teesside League against the likes of Teesside Polytechnic and Billingham Synthonia Reserves, Winterton were leading Darlington RA 2-0 when the match was abandoned "following an accident to referee Hall which necessitated his removal to hospital."

With two other referees available, including a Class 1, Winterton wanted to continue. The RA wouldn't, commenting in the local press that they feared the game would develop into that aforementioned blood bath.

Ahead was indignant. "It tends to give the impression that some ill-feeling was creeping into the game, which is quite unfounded. It had been hard but scrupulously clean."

Jack notes that the replayed fixture - "though viewed with some anxiety" - had passed without incident. Referee Hall, added the magazine, had subsequently returned to full vigour.

We've also heard from Ralph Petitjean in Ferryhill, whose confirmation that Winterton Hospital were a very good side indeed - "They virtually took over when the equally successful Bishop Middleham Casuals folded" - is born of personal experience.

Ralph kept goal for Newton Aycliffe-based GEC Sports Club, top of the Auckland and District League second division when drawn against the hospital - still to concede a goal in the first - in the 1967 league cup.

GEC half back Martyn Jones had a ten bob bet on the outcome, his team given both a three-goal start and the draw.

Winterton won 6-3, Billy Stott hitting a hat-trick and Ralph saving a late penalty to ensure that at least one of the losers had some winnings. "Martyn probably still owes me a pint," he says.

Bert Fawcett, then as now in Fishburn, was a flying winger - but still not as fast as centre forward Eddie Hughes, to whom we'd spoken on Tuesday.

"Eddie was so fast he could catch pigeons," says Bert, 35 when they won the Durham Amateur Cup. "We trained regularly in the Winterton gym and the benefits really showed. It was like going home, going to that hospital."

He also recalls that 'keeper Crampton, Bearpark lad, had a brother David who signed for Blackburn Rovers and made 14 appearances between Darlington's posts at about the same time.

Winterton Hospital, says Ralph, also had a junior side around 1965 in which the best player was probably free-scoring Kelloe lad Alan Wegg - fondly remembered at Shildon and last heard of running a Blackpool boarding house.

There may be more of this bedside manner yet.

The hospital magazine also has a reference to Winterton winning the National Orphanage Cup, among much else, in 1970. The mother and father of all mysteries, it's a competition which has intrigued the column for years - not least because the "nation" seems not to have extended much beyond south-east Durham.

Google offers just nine references, almost all from Backtrack. In 1952, for example, Trimdon Grange Boys - coached by the late Owen Willoughby, because there were only women teachers at the village school - beat Wingate in the final, having played just three matches.

That baby still sits insatiably on our doorstep. Does anyone know what the National Orphanage Cup was all about.

How Johnny found joy at Boro - on £12 a week

A little belatedly, a very happy 89th birthday - last Monday - to the magnificent Johnny Spuhler, now Middlesbrough's oldest former player.

He may be Sunderland's, too - someone will know - but definitely not Newcastle's.

Thus it was a little surprising that when Johnny and his wife Nancy moved three years ago to Fishburn, near Sedgefield, the word got out that Jimmy Scoular had moved in.

It was even more surprising because the former Magpies skipper had already been dead for five years.

Nancy and Johnny are the subject of a most courteous profile - "It would be difficult to meet two nicer, warmer-hearted people" - on the ComeOnBoro.com website.

It's written by Eric Goldby, who's old enough to remember watching Johnny at Ayresome Park in the years after the war. "Though the team never won any trophies, they were an excellent first division outfit," Eric insists.

The column shares his view of super Spuhler. We'd first met him in 1997, when they lived in Barnard Castle, the subsequent headline simply reading "A real toff." Toff luck, he wasn't at home yesterday.

Born in Fulwell, Sunderland, Johnny was a tanner-a-time Roker Ender when, at 14, he won the first of two schoolboy international caps. The school had a whip-round to buy him a suit. "I had two paper rounds and still couldn't afford a suit," he said.

He joined the Sunderland office staff, made his first team debut at 17, against Arsenal, courted Nancy while she was at teacher training college in Darlington.

It needed a note from her mum just for him to get into the place, much less to get her out again. They've been married for 67 happy years.

"I've never regretted it for a day," said Johnny, back in 1997.

"If I'd not taken an interest in football, I'd never have spoken a word in this house," said Nancy.

Never particularly happy at Sunderland - "Bill Murray, the manager, was a real snotty feller, used to leave me standing round like a tin of milk" - he signed for Middlesbrough, for £2,000, after the war. They paid him £12 a week.

Friends warned against it - "It's Yorkshire," they said, darkly - but Boro gave him a clubhouse with a telephone, he scored 69 goals in 216 Football League games and he and Nancy loved every minute.

Mind, they had the telephone taken out. No-one else they knew had one.

It's with Boro that his heart still lies, where still they give him two season tickets and some executive suite hospitality, where he remains a hero. Even the bench in his garden is painted Teesside red.

He subsequently scored 21 times in 74 first team appearances for Darlington, became manager of Shrewsbury Town and of Spennymoor United, played for the Moors until he was 40.

"Look at that bugger, he's old enough to be a grandfather," a Brewery Field spectator shouted.

"He is a grandfather," Nancy replied.

Johnny also managed the West Auckland side which reached the 1961 Amateur Cup final, coached in Germany and at Billy Butlin's in Filey, took over Yarm post office at a time when that Teesside community was burgeoning - "I worked like a slave," he said - and at 55 retired to Barnard Castle.

Now there are five grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. "Johnny and Nancy are a credit to the human race," Eric Goldby concluded. It would be impossible to argue.

One of the many Arsenal fans hereabouts points out a remarkable coincidence about the Gunners' scorers - Henry, Gallas and Phil Jagielka's own goal - in last Saturday's 3-0 win over Sheffield United. Henry and Gallas were both born on August 17 1977; Jagielka was born on August 17 1982.

Back from a holiday in western Scotland, Martin Birtle in Billingham reports much interest in the World Stone Skimming Championships - skim of the earth, as it were - held last weekend on Easdale Island.

This sounds rather like the World Quoits Championship held annually at Beamish Museum, in that it's a pretty small world, but you know what they say about he who is without sin.

Easdale's the smallest inhabited island of the Inner Hebrides, the competition held with Barnes Wallis attention to precision in a former slate quarry.

A stone, maximum three inches across and officially approved, must bounce three times - the distance measured from the third bounce before sinking.

They do it in style, pre-competition entertainment by Murky Waters and the Red Topped Tossers.

Though the winner seems almost always to be from Scotland, and quite often from Easdale Island, we have been unable to discover the outcome of Sunday's event. No stone unturned, we continue.

Presumably because it is perceived to be a sort of outer office, Harry Dinsdale in Darlington drops into the Britannia details of the reunion he's organised in October of his all-conquering army football team.

Harry was with the 2nd Battalion Durham Light Infantry when, in 1955, they became the first infantry side for 20 years to win the Army Cup. A banner was draped across the Aldershot ground: "It's wor cup this time," it said. Harry's tracked down 18 of the squaddies' squad.

Using the pub as a mail-drop is perhaps, unwise, however, because we've subsequently lost the letter and must ask him, please, to get in touch again.

As for the 2nd Battalion DLI, they were disbanded before they had chance to defend it.

And finally...

the present Premiership side which between 1981-85 had three successive managers who'd played for North-East sides (Backtrack, September 26) was Bolton Wanderers - Stan Anderson, George Mulhall and John McGovern.

Fred Alderton in Peterlee today invites readers to name the Scottish league club which began life as Ferranti Thistle.

We're back to the point about Tuesday.