Unassuming, industrious - and lifelong best mate

MIKE Armitage, one of the North-East's best known, longest serving and most vastly respected football administrators has died after a long and cruel illness. He was 60.

Mike was Shildon's secretary for almost 40 years, served on the Northern League management committee for 22 years until ill health forced his retirement last year, and until this summer had spent a decade as the North-East divisional representative - dedicated and much appreciated - on the FA Council.

In electoral terms, the FA calls the North-East the first division. Mike belonged right at the top of it.

On top of that, he was my lifelong best friend - unassuming, industrious, manifestly and magnificently meticulous, the most wonderful judge of character and generous of both time and talents. They do say opposites attract.

We'd met, it was parentally recalled, on the first anxious day at Timothy Hackworth infants school. Thereafter, we just seemed forever to kick around together - kick around a proper ball when there was one, a busted ball when there wasn't and a large marble when all else failed.

We'd play football at playtime, football at dinner-time and football homeward in Shildon rec, until the parkie tolled his bell and chased us home for tea.

It might honestly be said that Mike was a rather more able administrator than he was a player, but he was still a great deal better - at either - than I was.

Once a year we'd also gather at the Hippodrome corner to watch Bishop Auckland, Crook Town or even Willington returning in open-top glory with the Amateur Cup. One day, we told ourselves, it would be Shildon. One day pigs might fly.

That the town's football club perennially under-achieved was, of course, nothing to do with the secretary. Mike had the stuff of champions. He lived the club and loved the club.

He was a Shildon lad, of course, his dad a shopkeeper, prominent Freemason and football club treasurer. We'd watched the team since we were bit bairns.

We went to King James I Grammar School, in Bishop Auckland, together, to St John's church together, to the wide world together and discovered that it didn't really extend much beyond Darlington after all.

Mike joined an accountancy company in town, becoming a partner. Though the firm changed its name a couple of times, he never left it. Such was his reputation, his clients came from all over the region.

I'd worked three and a half years in Bishop and eight months in York before crash landing back in Darlington, too.

When one or other of us was having a hard shift, there'd be suggestion of a lunchtime livener. There were quite a few of those.

When he joined the Northern League management committee, effectively though not officially the treasurer, his workload increased still further. When elected to the FA in 1997, he could have become the complete football man - save that he also had a living to earn.

Had he remained well, he would now have been chairman of the FA Vase committee. Few doubted that yet higher office would follow.

Much of his day might be spent at the football club - it helped when they got a clubhouse - much of the night working at home. Sometimes he'd be up into the small hours, many a time he never went to bed at all.

His books were ever immaculate, his administration awesome. He navigated the rule book with consummate and unparalleled ease. If only he hadn't been a Man City supporter.

Happily, his wife Audrey was frequently at his side, particularly during his FA tenure, but content to make Shildon's sandwiches, too. Since his illness was diagnosed in May 2005, she was never away from it, a phenomenal, day-by-day portrayal of love in action.

Together they had a son, John, now deputy head of a primary school in Darlington, and a stepson, David, a factory gaffer in Aycliffe.

Though they'd lived for 32 years in Newton Aycliffe, Mike's funeral will be in St John's church, Shildon - back where it all began - on Tuesday, August 14 at 12.45pm.

He will be much missed by many, and no man ever had better best mate.