Senior FA man gets his kicks playing a robber

Next week, however, Rowland Maughan reverts to an altogether different role. For 40 years he has been among the leading lights in the annual pantomime at Whitley Bay Playhouse.

"Roly IS the pantomime," insists co-star Neville Wanless, the former Tyne Tees Television presenter. "He's the principal comedian, has an amazing rapport with the kids and absolutely holds the whole thing together."

Rowland plays one of the robbers in Babes in the Wood - no connection whatever, he insists, with the daily demands of a football disciplinarian.

"Not many people in London know I do this. I don't really talk about it down there, and not many up here realise how involved I am with the FA. They're two different worlds."

He helped form the Whitley Bay Pantomime Society 41 years ago, persuaded to join in by old friend and fellow football referee Len Hayden, a senior Northumberland FA man who died last year.

"We often played the brokers' men together, I suppose they were always after people's money as well," recalls Rowland, who is also co-producer and script writer and helps run the family builders' merchants company on top of his football commitments.

So how, as an FA man might say, does he manage to keep so many balls in the air? "It's quite easy," he insists. "There are times I have to be in London when I should be in Whitley Bay but it's only once a year and we work it out.

"The great appeal of pantomime is that it's a vehicle for ad-libbing, which is one of the reasons we'll miss Len so much.

"Pantomimes are often in trouble these days because comedians no longer seem able to ad-lib. Les Dawson was brilliant in pantomime, Dickie Henderson was brilliant in pantomime. We haven't got that sort of comedian any more."

For 35 years, he and Len Hayden were also key figures in the Coastonians, an amateur concert party which had regular dates as far afield as Cotherstone and Staindrop, in Teesdale.

"We used to do a little bit professionally in the summer but we were never going to be another Morecambe and Wise," says Rowland.

"We also did a bit of club work but didn't like it. Bingo was becoming really popular, and we couldn't compete with it."

Now the Whitley Bay Pantomime Society's annual extravaganza attracts 90 per cent capacity to the 800-seat Playhouse - "a proper theatre," he says - over a six-night run.

Rowland, vice-chairman of the FA Trophy committee and chairman of the National Game Board XI, performs a sort of top ten of pantomimes.

"I call them Delfont pantomimes, the sort of thing you'd get at the London Palladium. We're not into church hall pantomimes, really."

Neville Wanless, treading the Whitley Bay boards for 20 years, plays the Sheriff - a role even more villainous than the robbers.

"The plot should have had him trying to murder the children, but in view of recent events I've had to rewrite it. Now he just tries to take them away for a day," says Rowland.

He became a referee at 15 - "the Blyth News said I was England's youngest, so it must have been true" - and was also secretary of Seaton Sluice United until they played a wrong 'un in the semi-final of the Northumberland Senior Cup and a stern old Northumberland FA councillor told him to choose between refereeing and administration.

In July he qualifies for an FA award for 50 years service to football and with no plans to hang up his books - but Babes in the Wood may be his final curtain in pantomime.

"I'm not making a big thing out of it. I'll write next year's but I'm absolutely not taking part. There's still lots going on in football, and football will always come first."

* Babes in the Wood tickets are still available from the Playhouse box office: 0191-252-3505.

For Neville Wanless, in broadcasting since the early days of Tyne Tees Television in 1959, Babes in the Wood marks the third anniversary of a curtain call with death.

"The surgeon told me I was the luckiest man alive," he says - and if that's not manifestly sports page stuff, why change the habit going into the column's 20th year which has sustained it for the previous 19?

Now 73, he suffered an aortal aneurysm during a run of Aladdin in which he played the villainous Abadnazaar. Rushed from North Tyneside hospital to the Freeman in Newcastle, he spent two weeks in intensive care and another two months on a ward.

"They said that few people with aortal aneurysms made it the hospital in time and even fewer survived the operation," he says, cheerfully.

A year later he underwent a major hernia operation. After all that, he says, Babes in the Wood will be child's play.

"My wife is worried sick because it's the first time I've played a baddie since Aladdin, but I feel absolutely fine."

Once a BBC news reader, he was a Tyne Tees continuity announcer from 1971-88, took early retirement but still does film and broadcast work - his most recent film role playing a nightwatchman in the Robson Green series Wire in the Blood.

"He's a tremendous performer with wonderful stage presence and incredible diction," says Rowland Maughan. "If you want a straight man who knows his lines backwards, Neville's your man."

"Babes" begins on Monday. "If the audience loves it half as much as I do," says the continuity man who runs and runs, "then we'll all be very happy."

Memories of legendary Charlton Athletic goalkeeper Sam Bartram in pre-Christmas columns have prompted John Sowerby in Coulby Newham, Middlesbrough, to send a Roker Park programme from September 21 1949.

Sam, Boldon Collier originally, was in the "ex-North Eastern League" side which played a combined Sunderland/Middlesbrough XI in a match to raise funds for a new North Eastern League headquarters. The previous building, in John Street, Sunderland, had been demolished by a German bomb.

Familiar names like Allenby Chilton, Jimmy Hagan and Stan Milburn - Jackie's cousin - lined up for the old boys; the combined team included George Hardwick, Len Shackleton, Ivor Broadis and Johnny Spuhler.

A 20,151 crowd paid £1800 towards bricks and mortar. Sam Bartram, reported the Echo, was "his usual brilliant self."

Whether the North Eastern League ever got its new office is unknown, but it's to be hoped it lasted longer than the league did.

Christmas past also brought a present, a splendid print (Backtrack, December 21) of steam engine 61652, named after Darlington FC.

Ken Milgate in Durham has now sent a list of all 23 locomotives apparently arbitrarily named after football clubs - Sunderland and Middlesbrough but no Newcastle United, Darlington but no Hartlepool, Man. United but no City.

Arsenal were 61648. "I guess you'll think that a good choice," adds Ken, "but as a lifelong Foxes fan I deem 61665 to be the pride of the class." 61665 was Leicester City.

Brooks Mileson, the former international athlete from Sunderland who became a multi-millionaire businessman, has been named "Cumbrian of the Year" - with more votes than all the other nominees put together.

"For once in my life I was gobsmacked," says Brooks. "I don't even qualify as a native."

The award recognises his munificence in many areas from building orphanages in Romania to sponsoring the Northern League in perpetuity and running an animal rescue haven. (The last two may not be dissimilar.)

For the moment, his mind's on his adopted Gretna FC, ten miles from his home, who tomorrow host the biggest game in club history - against Dundee in the Scottish Cup.

Though Dundee will still get their slice of the cake, all 3,000 spectators will be admitted free. "It's a way of thanking them for their loyalty," says Brooks. "At Gretna we believe in rewarding our fans, not milking them."

An interesting confrontation in prospect tomorrow at the Over 40s League match between Langley Park and the Barnes Hotel in Sunderland - 85-year-old Peggy Harker the younger of those involved.

The other is Kip Watson, 86, the redoubtable league secretary and former overall "Local Heroes" winner.

Billy Harker, Peggy's grandson, plays for Langley Park. Kip, who also writes the Over 40s press reports, inadvertently called him Billy Harper.

"I got into really terrible trouble from her. She's been wanting to see me about it for months," says Kip.

P's and Q's duly watched, he's unsure if the meeting will be one of reconciliation or recrimination - "but I'm taking my walking stick just in case."

Homeward from Darlington's match on Monday, Richard Jones looked into Hogans - among the town's more boisterous boozers - and was in time for the start of West Brom v Newcastle.

Before the match, a minute's silence was held in memory of the tsunami victims. To a man, Hogans fell silent, too.

"It was as impeccable as it was amazing," says Richard who - while he's at it - would also like to correct the bit in the Echo's report of the Scunthorpe match that it was Quakers' first away win since Hartlepool in 1964.

We meant the first New Year's Day away win. "I know we've had a bit of a hard time," says Richard, "but that was just ridiculous."

...and finally

Martin Birtle in Billingham recalls the centenary Test between England and Australia in 1981. What did David Gower achieve in his first innings 45 which had never previously been done in Test cricket?

An answer when the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 07/01/05