Davey Jones's soccer

Thirty seven years later, Davey Jones's soccer is played with the bottom team in the bottom division of the Over 40s League, still without a point all season.

He comes straight off the night shift, ignores the arthritis which results from six broken ankles - four left, two right - will take the nets down after the match and then dash off to coach his Wearside League team in the afternoon.

"You're a long time not playing, aren't you?" he says.

Signed by Arsenal on his 17th birthday and released a year later without making the first team, he had an inconclusive trial at Stan Anderson's Middlesbrough, played in the old second division for Oxford United - "Ron Atkinson was captain, taught me a lot" - retired from full time football at 22.

"People thought it was glamorous," he says. "I was playing fairly regularly in the second division and earning £25 a week. I wanted something else."

On Saturday he played as usual for Marsden Vets and might almost have been their youth policy, too.

Team-mate Kenny Clark is 60; fellow defender Tommy Bewick, an old friend of George Reynolds's - "canny lad, George," he says - will be 65 in January.

Tommy Swinbank arrives on his bike but is unable to play after breaking a leg in a pre-season friendly and suffering a heart attack a few days later.

"Me wife threw me boots on the bonfire, but I suppose I'd had a good run," he says, philosophically. Tommy is 67.

Great, great lads, they are footballers not so much in the autumn of their careers, as deep into the midwinter.

The home match with Doxford is on Cleadon Rec in South Shields, the venue - not many people know this - when Chris Marron of South Shields established a still-standing FA Cup record, ten goals in the qualifying round victory over Radcliffe Welfare in 1947.

The nets are held down by what in those parts are known as clemmies, the dressing room's in a broken windowed community centre a quarter of a mile away, the game's watched by half a dozen Januses with an eye on the adjoining pitch.

Kick off's 10.30am, or whenever they can trudge down from the community centre; only the referee, soft ha'porth, wears gloves.

Highbury? Marble halls? "I had my time," says Davey, now 54. "I can always say that I was there."

The Vets are run by south Tyneside estate agent Austin Elliott, 59, a Hartlepool United director during Garry Gibson's unforgettable tenure. Now he blows up the balls, sweeps the dressing rooms, professes admiration for the Jones boy.

"He's brilliant, no airs and graces, never shouts at anyone, just gets on with his game."

The shirts have Carlsberg, which may be symbolic, embossed where the chest used to be. Periodic injunctions that the Vets keep their shape may in some cases be of the horse and stable door variety.

They name three subs, one of whom promptly goes home - "tekken the huff" says Austin - while another player comes off because (he says) he's not enjoying it, and may in turn be considered a bit old to be spitting out his dummy.

Initially their passing is so wayward it's hard to work out which way they're kicking. At half time it's 1-0, after an hour 4-0. It ends 5-1, and shouldn't happen to the Vets.

Davey has been trying to instil good habits into old legs. "Keep it simple, pass the ball," urges the old pro.

"They're flat," says Austin. "Nee spirit, nee nowt."

Back in the semi-naked dressing room, Davey - muddied, bloodied, kicking cuddied - is recalling his days with Arsenal and the occasion, a couple of years ago, when he was sent off in the Wearside League after breaking up a confrontation between his son and a rival player.

Davey told the referee he was only trying to separate them.

"Aye," says the referee, "but not by the throat."

"I can see how all that Arsenal training came in useful," someone says.

He'd signed professional on his 17th birthday, the hirsute Charlie George - five months younger - told when his time came that he'd be given one more month to prove himself. Proof positive, he scored 11 goals in four weeks.

Davey's brought an old photograph of the day he signed for double winning Gunners' manager Bertie Mee, another of the youth team in Sardinia - Sammy Nelson, Eddie Kelly, Pat Rice, Davey Jones.

"When I got to 18, they kept Charlie and let me go," he says. "I still don't know what happened but you can't look back and say that they were wrong.

"I once had a hell of a fight with Charlie in the gym beneath the Clock Stand - the gym of death we called it, there were so many fights there - but Arsenal taught me discipline, and how what was important was passing and pace.

"The game is very simple. It's players who make it difficult."

After playing and managing in southern non-league football, he was a police officer for 15 years and is now night manager of the four star Copthorne Hotel on Newcastle Quayside.

He'd finished at 9 15am, nipped home for a cup of tea, dashed off to Cleadon Rec, was overdue at Harton and Westoe's Wearside League match, would grab a couple of hours sleep and go back to work.

"It'll only be about five o'clock in the morning I'll start to feel it," he says. "I call it the witching hour."

Two weeks ago he was also pressed into playing for Harton and Westoe, and won the man of the match award. "He was chuffed to little ribbons," says Austin poetically.

"I enjoyed it because it was faster," says Davey. "People think it should be easy against old men but it's not, it's frustrating when they don't react to what you're trying to do."

A former Northumberland and Durham junior swimming champion, he also opens the batting for Boldon CC - where he's chairman - and plays golf off a three handicap. Though the Vets still seek their first point, he plays football for enjoyment, he insists.

"It's because I can still do it without making a fool of myself; when I start to make a fool of myself, I stop.

"My mother always said that I kicked a ball before I could walk and that I'd probably die kicking one.

"I hope I've got a few years football yet, but I can think of an awful lot worse ways of going."

An intimate little secret, we discover, behind Brandon United's remarkable Albany Northern League win at Bedlington on Saturday - the entire team turned up in ladies' underwear.

Brandon have become a theme team, apparently - woolly hats one week, earrings the next - with a £2 players' pool fine for non-compliance.

"Unfortunately Craig Coates forgot to change before the game and played the entire first half in women's red frilly knickers," reports team manager Vince Kirkup (who borrowed one of his new wife's thongs.)

Victory robbed him of one of his better lines, however. "I was going to tell the committee we'd played like a lot of lasses, but I'm still glad I didn't have to," he says. Drawer specialists, notwithstanding.

Back in the Over 40s League, 63-year-old former FIFA official George Courtney had charge of Ferryhill Greyhound on Saturday - for his usual fee of golf balls.

Half way through the first half, a high cross found former Middlesbrough and Sunderland midfielder Stan Cummins - 46 next week - who in one movement (he says) brought it down and smashed it into the net.

George disallowed it. "He said I'd shouted 'Leave it' without adding anyone's name," says Stan. "I definitely shouted 'Leave it, Hicksy'."

The Greyhound lost 2-1. Stan, who coached for almost 20 years in America, borrows an American term to describe his feelings. "You can tell George from me, he sucked."

Proposing the title "Coldest cricket ground in Christendom" for Seaton Carew, last Friday's column recalled Dickie Bird's visit for a Durham second team game in 1992.

As Harry Archbold in Blackhall points out, umpire Bird also recounts his bone chilling day at the seaside in his autobiography White Cap and Bails - though his memory appears also to have been affected by the freeze.

It was the day after Dickie's appearance on This Is Your Life. Unable to sleep - "I don't know if it was the excitement" - he left for the North-East from his Leeds hotel at 5am and arrived with the milkman.

"It was bitterly cold and windy and not long after the game started, so did the rain."

He also remembers that the ground was right opposite the nuclear power station. Just a pity that Dickie believes they were in Sellafield.

Friday's column also noted that Steve Pickering of Dunston Fed had scored last week against Pickering Town - prompting John Briggs to recall Bobby Charlton's two goals on his Man United debut.

It was October 6 1956. The opposition, inevitably, were Charlton - the youngster, a week short of his 19th birthday, brought in because the club had four players on international duty the same day.

It was United's 25th successive game without defeat. "Their secret lies in an apparently inexhaustible supply of talent," noted the Echo, perceptively.

That same day at St James' Park, another Football League debutant caught the eye. "Newcastle make a real find in Eastham," noted the Echo's back page headline writer - and that was pretty perceptive, an' all.

...and finally

The honour which former West Brom and Aston Villa goalkeeper Jim Cumbes won in 1964 (Backtrack, November 26) was the County cricket championship, with Worcestershire.

Readers are today invited to name the only footballer to win full England amateur and professional caps in the same season.

Heads up as always, the column returns on Friday.

Published: 30/11/2004