Slimline Bristow still the craftiest of Cockneys

What's gone, or at least seriously diminished, is his beer and skittles belly. "I've been like this ten years, I look after meself now, " says the Crafty Cockney.

"I play a round of golf and I walk for miles - fast walking, get the old heart pumping. Best exercise in the world." The explanation is interrupted by an accent, and an admirer, from Co Durham. "Bollocks, " he says, affectionately.

Born again Bob Anderson, like Bristow several times world darts champion, is 57, has risen in the last year from 32 to 16 in the world rankings, calls it his renaissance period and professes to be loving every minute.

"I'd slid down to 32 and my girl asked me if I was going to be a hasbeen or a professional darts player, " says the man they called the Limestone Cowboy. "It was the kick up the arse I needed. I'm very grateful to her for that." He drinks pints of cider and blackcurrant - "throwing fuel, " he says - a drink which can only taste better than it looks and may taste pretty horrible notwithstanding.

Though not perhaps as limestoned as once he was, the Cowboy can still slug a few. Eric, said by Sid Waddell to be the man who showed that darts could be both theatre and poetry, is on draught Guinness and doesn't appear to be draught dodging, either.

The two multiple champions are playing an exhibition at the Rise Carr Social Club in Darlington - another day another Deller, as might have been said of one of their contemporaries - and if not exactly the War of the Worlds, it's a damn good night out for a quid.

At one point they hardly spoke - "cat and dog, hated one another" says Bob - but are now so close that the Cockney was the Cowboy's best man when he re-married in April.

"If you'd told me a quarter of a century ago that he'd be my best man I'd have said something pretty uncomplimentary, " says Bob.

"Not 'alf, " his new mate adds, cheerfully.

Last time they played together at Rise Carr, the crowd was precisely 19. "It was weird, I remember every dart I threw that night, " says the Cowboy, a director of C&A Leisure which owns the club and ten more in the north-west.

On Wednesday evening the place is full, England v Spain no contest, double top lads from the town's darts leagues - the Builders, the Slaters, probably even the Candle Stick Makers - lined up to take them on.

They've even turned out the Fire Station, though probably not on red alert.

They're still very good darts players, of course, a perpetual bar room boast for those who oppose or partner them, but it does seem a bit like Arsenal against an Albany Northern League side.

Ken Houlahan, manager of the club and managing director of Evenwood Town, disagrees - his team having walloped the second division leaders the previous evening. "If we'd played Arsenal last night, " says Ken, "they'd have lost, an' all." There's also a chap in the audience who claims to be a distant relative of the column's, having been told as much by his Aunty Doreen who, honest, was Madame X the mystery horse racing tipster on BBC Radio Cleveland.

The world beaters seem good guys, affectionately recall when the Embassy World Masters was played annually at the Coatham Bowl in Redcar, swap tales about Jocky Wilson, once in Wallsend but now rather subsumed by Kirkcaldy.

They sign everything, almost everything, that's put in front of them, play off the front foot as effortlessly as Boycott blocking Bedi, are there until closing.

The Cowboy, a former javelin international who played non-league football for Woking Town, Farnborough and Lincoln United and now plays golf off six and enjoys trout fishing, swears he has another major title in him.

The Cockney ? "the Freddie Trueman of darts, " says Ken Hewison, 32 years secretary of the Darlington league - will be in next month's World Masters, too. "I mebbe won't win, " he says craftily.

At the end of the evening there's a cheque presentation. The top flight have helped raise £325 for the North East Air Ambulance, an' all.

BENEATH the headline "Two faces of sympathy in the North-East" - and with thanks for the cutting to Phil Chinery in Darlington - the Guardian on Monday sounded off loudly on silence.

Middlesbrough fans, it was said, observed impeccably the prematch tribute to Emlyn Hughes at Anfield; Sunderland supporters, claimed the Guardian - and by no means alone - acted "shamefully" during Saturday's silence for former Leicester and England forward Keith Weller.

The match was at Leicester's new Walkers' Stadium. The Sunderland faithful aren't taking the allegation in their stride.

Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland, a regular contributor both to these columns and to the Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme, heard it all very differently.

The visiting contingent, he says, got an inkling that a former Leicester player had died that day during pre-match conversations broadcast over the "50p public address system." Since it was the day before Remembrance Day, they expected a minute's silence. "Unfortunately the DJ from Cheese FM, or whatever it was called, spent so much time talking radio-speak that he didn't bother to tell the crowd about the silence, let alone let us know who it was for.

"It would also have helped if the referee had blown his whistle to signal the start of it. It was the worst organised silence I've ever known." Keith Weller, adds Paul, was a very good player ? despite once "infamously" wearing tights on a cold day.

"Basically we expected a minute's silence and they didn't tell us they were having one. If you're going to spend millions on a new stadium, buy a decent PA system." While they're about it, adds Paul, some decent toilets, an' all.

SUBSTANTIALLY and generously profiled in one of the Sunday broadsheets, Sunderland-born entrepreneur, former international athlete and Northern League benefactor Brooks Mileson - "the Roman Abramovich of nonleague football" - was nonetheless surprised at the claim that as a 17year-old he ran 100 miles a day.

They probably meant 100 miles a week, says Brooks - "There's no wonder I'm so knackered."

RECENT notes on footballers forenamed Albert stirred memories of Albert McInroy, a packer at Preston Co-op who became Sunderland's much exalted goalkeeper in 1923.

"One of the smartest and most daring goalkeepers in all England, " claimed a 1926 report; "never foozles a ball, " observed another journalist seven years later.

After 227 appearances and a solitary England cap, McInroy joined Newcastle for £2,750 and later played for Leeds United, Gateshead and as a wartime guest for Stockton.

His son, young Albert, was a free scoring centre forward for Durham City in the 1950s.

After running pubs in Newcastle, Gateshead and Houghton-le-Spring, he died in Houghton, aged 83, in 1985.

THE old palindromes act - our search for 11 footballers whose surname reads the same forwards as backwards - has so far added only one over Tuesday's eight. John Briggs in Darlington adds the perfectly palindromic Mike Kimm a player for York Region Shooters in the Canadian Professional Soccer League. We hope for a further reversal of fortunes.

A REMINDER that former England amateur international footballer George Brown will be publicly recalling those happy, hippy days in Tow Law's clubhouse from 7.30 tonight. Admission's free, but they'd welcome a few bob over the bar to help further to fill the hole.

Since the column will also be at the Ironworks, we have been obliged to decline an invitation to Sedgefield Cricket Club's annual dinner - speaker Graeme Fowler, comedian Wayne "Check" Allen - at Hardwick Hall.

Others with one consent also making excuse, as the Good Book has it, some tickets remain. Organiser Malcolm Dawes, well remembered at Hartlepool United, is on 01740 620514.

LATE news: word arrives that our indomitable old friend Vince Kirkup, 26 years manager and much else at Stanley United and now in charge at Brandon United, was married yesterday. Congratulations.

...and finally

THE first female to become a Football league assistant referee (Backtrack, November 17) was Parcelforce worker Wendy Toms from Poole, Dorset.

Keith Bond in Brompton-on-Swale points out that while the Albany Northern League may in Stacey Woodrow have its first woman ref, England is still a fair way behind other countries.

New Zealand has a female on the FIFA list and Germany a Fraulein on the Bundesliga line.

Today back to Albert McInroy, whose only international appearance - against Northern Ireland in 1927 - was alongside team mate Warney Cresswell, the first time two Sunderland men had played together for England.

Readers are invited to name the only other Sunderland players, very much later, to have turned out together for England.

Patriotic as ever, the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 19/11/2004