Clough began as a Synner

Peter Lax, lifelong Synner and former ICI workmate, recalls Clough scoring three in five games for the Northern League side at the end of season 19521953 - only one of them in the 9-2 hammering of Stanley United on April 25.

Jack Wetherall, a Synners' supporter since 1945, even has the prescient match report from the Billingham Express (RIP) after a floodlit home match with Evenwood that April.

"Not only was the lighting good, but the soccer was grand to watch, too. Clough combined the skill, vigour and guile of a veteran campaigner." Young big 'ead would doubtless have agreed; he always did have plenty to say for himself.

"We junior clerks used to go to education every other Tuesday and sometimes they'd organise debates, one side of the room against the other.

"It was hopeless. No one else could get a word in edgeways." Tony Francis's excellent 1987 biography does, however, recall Clough playing for Boro Juniors on Saturday mornings and in the afternoon for Great Broughton, a village side near Stokesley.

The nine Clough children from Valley Road, Middlesbrough, slept three to a bed - "it wasn't too bad, but it became a bit of a squeeze when the cousins came to stay, " Bill Clough once recalled.

They attended St Barnabas's Sunday school and holidayed with an aunt in Blackpool when every couple of days there'd be a stick of candy floss between three.

Most of the six brothers had at some time played for Great Broughton, the team managed by "roly-poly" village postmistress Nancy Goldsborough - supposedly because she was one of the few villagers who could write.

The older Cloughs would have a pie and a pint in the Black Horse before changing (with abstinent irony) in the Temperance Hall. Their 16-year-old brother was restricted to lemonade, which may have explained his ten goals in the 16-0 win over Skinningrove.

By then Clough, the only one of the family to fail the 11+, had a job at the Casebourne cement works, part of ICI Billingham. He was in the gypsum plant, Peter Lax in the cement plant, until national service sent them packing.

Peter, still in Billingham and himself a former Sheffield Wednesday junior, recalls picking up a paper in an Egyptian Naafi and noting with some incredulity that Brian Clough had scored a hat-trick for Middlesbrough.

"I thought that it couldn't be my mate who could only get one of nine against Stanley United. History shows I was mistaken."

A CERTAIN incredulity also surrounded the suggestion in Tuesday's column that Clough almost became Labour's parliamentary candidate for Richmond. It was true, for all that.

When Hartlepools' manager in 1965, however, his left wing politics didn't stop him offering public electoral support to John Curry, leader of the town council's Conservative group.

Curry was United's chairman, too. "Brian wasn't one to let politics or religion stand in the way of ambition, " he once recalled.

Though the Labour candidate had about as much chance of winning Richmond as Shildon have of winning the FA Cup, local party leaders thought Clough could much improve their vote.

"He was famous, well-liked and talked a lot, " said Richard Hoyle, who'd fought the seat twice previously.

"He'd have rubbed shoulders with men like Gaitskell and Wilson, a great experience for a beginner." Clough, still trying to recover from his serious injury while at Sunderland, finally turned them down. Labour lost as usual.

ARGUABLY one of the priciest pieces of paper in football history, a single sheet 1892 programme - Liverpool v Stockton - is on the market for a "minimum" £1,500. A bit expensive? "One and a half thousand quid's quite cheap these days, " says Roy Calmels of Bedfordshire-based Sports Programmes.

Stockton were one of just six clubs in the Northern League, alongside Newcastle East End (who became Newcastle United on December 9 1892), Sheffield United, Middlesbrough, Middlesbrough Ironopolis and Darlington.

Liverpool played in the Lancashire League, their only season outside the Football League and clearly making an impact.

At a Northern League meeting in January 1893, the Merseysiders, Gainsbrough Trinity and Rotherham Town were all invited to join - and all declined.

The penny programme fails to identify if it were a friendly, a cup match or if Stockton, facing just ten league games all season, simply wanted a way of putting a Saturday afternoon in.

The Northern Echo merely recorded that Liverpool had won 2-1 before a crowd of around 3,000 on the Anfield enclosure, "each goal being visited in turn." A similar programme from Liverpool's first game, against Rotherham County nine days earlier, has recently sold for £5,000.

"It's no longer a hobby, it's big business, " says Roy. "When we started 30 years ago we were dealing with kids standing on the terraces behind the goal, but since the Premiership began the establishment has moved in.

"There's a different sort of person in football now, and the market has been hijacked." So far, he admits, there's been little interest in Liverpool v Stockton. "There'll be a lot before we close bidding in ten days. The last couple of days are when the big punters move in." Stockton finished fifth out of six in the 1892-93 Northern League, Darlington were bottom. League champions Ironopolis also reached the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, partly due to centre half Bob Chatt, said by The Northern Echo to "stick to opponents like an American postmaster to his office." What was so adhesive about American postmasters, we have been wholly unable to discover.

SEPTEMBER 10 1892?

Grangetown Athletic Club opened their new cycling and running tracks near Middlesbrough, Gilkes Street Prims convincingly beat Pinchinthorpe at cricket, and football teams in action included Romanby Thistles.

Murton True Blues and Howden Rangers who, regrettably, beat Shildon 11-1.

STEVE Leonard in Middleton Tyas stumbles on e-bay over the rather more modestly priced 1929 North Riding Senior Cup programme between York City Reserves and Darlington WM, played at Fulfordgate.

Could they have been the Wise Men, he wonders?

In truth they were the Wire Mills, known to supporters as the Wire Workers, famously beating City with goals from Alsop and Catterick - which couldn't have been the future Everton manager Harry Catterick, just nine at the time, but may have been one of his Darlington family.

Those matters resolved, a mystery remains. Drawn to a conclusion, how did Darlington Wire Mills sneak into the North Riding Cup?

LAST Friday's column recorded that for £60 Marske Cricket Club had bought back at auction a ball won in 1908 by J Lucas, that season's bowling award, and made in Middlesbrough by D Bookless.

David Bookless himself, owner of a tobacco shop and sports outfitters in Linthorpe Road, proves to have been some cricketer.

He was born in Berwick-upon-Tweed around 1849 and played professionally for Northumberland between 1881-94 despite protests from Durham (recalls county scorer Brian Hunt) that he was ineligible.

Durham folk, unalone, may have supposed that Berwick was in Scotland.

"Without doubt the outstanding performer of his day, " writes Northumberland historian Harry Jude, and Bookless and R B Hoare still hold the county record for any wicket, sharing a fifth wicket 258 in 1891 with Bookless 135 not out.

Bookless also represented Middlesbrough for 16 years, and (says Jack Chapman, in Hebburn) was match professional for clubs as far afield as Tynemouth, Constable Burton and Scarborough, for whom he scored a double century, against Hull.

He claimed 9-10 for Darlington against Sunderland in 1881 - including a hat-trick, two of them hit wicket - had another hat-trick for West Hartlepool against Darlington the following season and "playing perfect cricket" scored 102 for Durham City against Scarborough the same year.

Though he also played for the North Riding, Bookless never won Yorkshire colours. "I don't think the Yorkshire committee looked very far north in those days, " says Middlesbrough CC historian Ray Baker.

"In that respect, nothing's changed at all."

BACK in Marske, where all this began, the football club has taken delivery of several pieces of equipment, including a treatment table, from the old North Riding Infirmary in Middlesbrough. There's also a waste bin labelled "Clinical waste; artificial eye services." They've put in the referee's room.

TWENTY five years ago this weekend, Horden hosted Evenwood Town in a top of the table Northern League clash.

Steve Coulthard in Bishop Auckland sends the programme, perhaps most remarkable for the profile of Horden player and former England youth international David Johnson.

"His favourite position is decision appealer, though he is often called upon to serve the team as goalie unsighter or six-yard box diver. It was for the latter that last season he received an Arts Council grant." Johnson was also said to have a very dangerous left foot ? "his right one is uncontrollable, too" - and to be a long throw expert, frequently hitting his intended victims with lumps of mud from 35 yards.

Jarrow lad, Johnson had a couple of seasons at Bristol City without making the Football League side and made one Hartlepool United appearance in 1974-75. He'll now be 48, and here's mud in his eye.

GREETINGS also to John King, a two-goal scorer for Trimdon Vets last Saturday - his 59th birthday.

"They were his first goals for getting on ten years, " says team secretary Hamish Joyce.

"We all reckon they were intended crosses, but John emphatically denies it." By no means the oldest in the Over 40s League team ? Freddie Wilkinson is 62 and "fit as a lop", says Hamish ? John celebrated in the usual fashion but plans to sit out tomorrow's match. Thus invigorated, he takes part in the Great North Run on Sunday.

And finally...

Tuesday's column noted that Villa won it in 1981, Sunderland won it in 1979 and asked who won it in 1980. Many responded, none was fooled - it was Trevor Brooking, scorer of West Ham's winner in the FA Cup final.

Alf Hutchinson in Darlington today seeks the entirely sensible reason for which Graham Yallop made cricket history when playing for Australian against the West Indies in 1978. The cricket season over, the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 27/09/2004