Harry was one of the best

He was 68, played regular cricket until last season, excelled at tennis, squash, snooker and table tennis, was a canny footballer in his day and had just booked his next skiing holiday.

"Undoubtedly it was the way he would have wished to go, it was just 20 years too soon," says David, his son.

Harry was a Shildon lad, played for Shildon LNER - as they were in the days of steam and dream - before leaving Bishop Auckland Grammar School on the fast track to university in London.

Back where he began, his funeral will be at Shildon Methodist church at 12.15pm next Wednesday.

For almost 40 years, however, he had been involved with Bishop Auckland Cricket Club - player, captain, secretary - teased perennially in the Backtrack column for his annual vow to hang up his boots and, sure as snowdrops, for his whitedecked reappearance the following Spring.

"No-one batted more resolutely for the Bishops, either on or off the field, " says Keith Hopper, his longtime friend and teammate.

He finally did retire in 2003, persuaded just one more time to turn his arm over in that deceptively gentle parabola.

"It was the measure of the man," says Keith, a longserving former club chairman and skipper. "The seconds were short because of holidays and things, I'd left no stone unturned and still we were a man down on the Saturday morning.

"I knew there'd be one guy who'd still have his cricket bag in his car boot and who'd never want to see Bishop Auckland play with ten." Harry had reached the quarter-final of the London University singles tennis tournament, returned to cricket during national service in the RAF, met his wife - the ever-smiling, eversplendid Shirley - at a dance near RAF Boulmer. Keith Hopper, still Bishop seconds' eminence grise at 71 - "I keep on meaning to retire but I never get round to it" he says - had been best friends since the days of nationalisation, if not always rationalisation, at Shildon BR.

"He was a very good cricketer whose bowling was vastly under-rated and who knew how to set a field," says Keith.

"There must be thousands of score books down the years which read 'ct Hopper b Smurthwaite'. He put you where he had a pretty good idea the ball was going to go.

"The one thing you should never do, whatever the sport, was to underestimate Harry. There's plenty of young squash players have thought they were up against a grey-haired old feller and after a game and a half been in a heap in the corner." He could bat, too, perhaps never more memorably ? or more obdurately - than in a second team match at Marton around five years ago. The home side had been 100-0 until Smurfy was introduced and claimed eight or nine wickets.

Bishops lost quick wickets in turn - "bairns, mostly" says Keith - until the sage Smurthwaite joined the yet more venerable Hopper and blocked for a draw for the next two hours.

Marton grew ever more frustrated. That Harry had taken to whistling the Laurel and Hardy theme at the crease possibly didn't help.

"They reported us to the league and all sorts," says Keith. "Their captain wrote to the local paper inviting us to their annual dinner, so I wrote back saying we'd come if we could bring a box of tissues, because they'd been crying so much." After the game, however, they'd all sat down for a beer. "You could call each other all sorts and still have a pint at the end," says Keith. David Smurthwaite agrees.

"So far as my dad was concerned, when the match ended, the contest ended.

"He was a natural sportsman in every sense and played in a way that many people don't seem to understand today." Harry lived in Gainford, had taught at Bishop Barrington school in Bishop Auckland.

"He was widely read, a fund of knowledge, " says David. "Even if not in the classroom, he would frequently enlighten people." Twenty years ago, he'd also taught K R Hopper to ski - "He went down those slopes like someone not right, " says Keith, colloquially - and sometimes drove his car with similar abandon.

His parents had formed two-thirds of a dance band called the Merrymakers.

Harry, in turn, was an accomplished organist. "He could have given Schumacher driving lessons, " says Keith.

"It was nothing for us to finish a game of cricket at Saltburn at ten to eight and for Harry to be playing the organ in the Belvedere club in Bishop at half past." For Harry, alas, the music stopped without warning.

He will be very greatly missed.

Backtack Briefs...

NOT five minutes after his 80th, or so inexorably it seems, the remarkable Len "the Leap" Watson reaches nine score years tomorrow.

Sadly, his leap years are over.

Physically fine, his memory's not what it was and he lives in Barrington Lodge care home in Bishop Auckland, from where friends still treat him to a half in the Green Tree.

Had Watson's No 6 been solely invoked, of course, he could be breaking records yet.

Len's the former painter and decorator from Trimdon who became Britain's fastest pensioner, ran the London Marathon at 69, joined Durham City Harriers at 70, marked his 73rd birthday by competing in the world veterans' championship in Melbourne and ? finest hour, furthest stretch ? covered 4.13m to take the world over 75s long jump title.

His 80th birthday, at a pub in Durham, was marked by the presentation of Harriers' life membership and, another first, by Lenny wearing a tie. We had also been able to squeeze out of him some of the secrets of Watson's No 6.

It was a family recipe, he said, an elixir of life guarded down the generations and not - definitely not - to be taken internally.

Rather it was rubbed on the chest, probably put hairs on it, and on any other bodily area where aches and pains might predominate. Suggestions that a key ingredient was dandelions - Len was forever gathering them in the hedge backs - were never officially denied.

He competed until he was 84, always started the day with a banana, usually ended it with three gills of one sort and a little lubrication of the other.

Barry Parnaby, his longtime friend and training partner - still just a bit bairn of 72 - continues to train six days a week, to help at Kelloe boxing club, near Durham, and to eye more medals.

"There's only three quality runs among them," insists the retired school caretaker. "The other three are just gannin' through the motions." Len the Leap continues to keep active, too. "He still toddles aboot," says Barry.

"I'm not sure the vets' championship has an Over 90s class, anyway."

RECALLING Sunderland's 1920s goalkeeper Albert McInroy, the column a couple of weeks back suggested that his sole England appearance was one of just two occasions when Sunderland players were capped together.

It wasn't, as John Briggs points out. On February 15, 1913 the Wearsiders had three men - Frank Cuggy, Jackie Mordue and Charlie Buchan - in the side which lost 2-1 at Windsor Park, Belfast, Ireland's first win in 32 attempts against the English.

"England's amazing failure" screamed a Northern Echo headline; "The worm has turned," said a second; "Feeble defence," a third.

Without any of them, Sunderland still went top of the old first division with a 2-0 win over Middlesbrough, edging on goal difference ahead of Manchester City, who beat Newcastle 1-0.

Elsewhere on that winter afternoon, Esh Winning lifted the Durham Benevolent Bowl with a 10 win over Willington, "irresistible" Darlington went top of the North Eastern League after hammering Hebburn Argyle 6-2 and South Bank drew their Amateur Cup tie 0-0 at Rotherham, prompting the Echo's anguished observer to quote Burns' thoughts on best-laid plans.

More men than mice, the Teesside team went on to win the Cup.

STILL efforts proceed to fill the hole and bridge the financial gap at Tow Law FC. Tomorrow night in aid of club funds, 60s band Revival plays in the community centre - admission £3, doors open 6pm, bar.

...and finally

THE only footballer to win amateur and professional England caps in the same season (Backtrack, November 30) was former Bishop Auckland winger Warren Bradley.

Eddie Roberts in Richmond not only offers readers two minutes to name the nine Premiership or Football League clubs whose principal title ends in "ham", but seeks the identity of the first player/manager voluntarily to transfer himself.

Non-transferrable, the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 03/12/2004