It was the 125th anniversary and beer was just £1.25 a pint, but still Kimblesworth Cricket Club's reunion on Friday night failed to create much of a thirst for meeting old friends.

What of 81-year-old Bobby Davison, better remembered as an English amateur international footballer but also a formidable cricketer who could talk the square legs off a cuddy? What of Kevin Dixon, familiar at Hartlepool United in the 1980s, or Bobby Orton, familiar just about everywhere?

"A lot of lads promised they'd be here," said Robson Smith, the organiser. "I'm going to kill that Bobby Orton when I see him."

Kimblesworth's north of Durham, separated from Nettlesworth by the thickness of a road sign and from Plawsworth by the width of the A167.

The cricket club were founder members of the North West Durham League, funded by the penny a week deducted from the pay packets of Kimblesworth's 300 colliers - still enough to pay for the first professional, circa 1955, and to leave enough for some whitewash.

His name was Nevison Lorraine, ten shillings a week plus bonuses for every five and fifty.

"He was still good enough to make a living out of it," insisted Brian Thurkettle, which might be coming it a bit rich though Lorraine played subsequently, lucratively, for several other North-East clubs.

Brendan Clancy, the present Australian pro, looks so conversely impoverished he can't afford a razor blade.

A few more foregathered in the buoyant clubhouse. Outside, Kimblesworth were beating Sacriston - forever Segger - for the Harry Wardle Memorial Cup.

Brian's father had been secretary for 30 years; Brian himself had played Kimblesworth cricket before leaving school. Billy Adair's pinpoint spinners had claimed four in four balls in a league cup semi-final against Stanley and 6-1 in six overs against Burnhope.

"He could put the ball on a tanner. I once dropped three in an over off him," said Robson.

"My dad used to bray his door down, trying to get him to play. He knew that if Billy Adair played, we'd win."

"I used to like me bed in them days," said Billy.

They also remembered lads like Alfie Robson - "tremendous all round player, great point fielder" - Wilfy Herdman, Ray Vest and Geoff Potts, absent either through unavailability or because the Great Umpire's finger had pointed inexorably skyward.

Robson Smith himself had shared in a record 278 opening stand with John Willis - Willis 156, Smith 100 - though none, they agreed, could surpass Bobby Orton, for ten years Kimblesworth's professional.

"We were whipping boys until he came," said Brian Barrass. "He was the one who put us on the map, made the club what it is today."

(Mr Barrass should not be confused with the admirable Brian Barrass who is chairman of the North East Durham League, though both umpire in it. "Clubs are very relieved when they discover it's me, not him," said Brian.)

If not necessarily part of the reunion, there was a good Friday night crowd in. They'd come from Nettlesworth, Plawsworth, all over, maybe up to a mile away.

"It's a lovely club, lovely people," said Robson Smith. "I'm still going to kill that Bobby Orton, mind."

Successfully playing the generation game, the village cricketers of Sessay - Tills and Flintoffs for the most part - will head just down the A19 for the National Village Cup quarter-final.

Sheriff Hutton Bridge, fellow York Senior League members, won at Freuchie in Fifeshire at the weekend to set up the North Yorkshire showdown.

Though Sheriff Hutton have already won at Sessay this season, they travel without trepidation. "They'll be slight favourites with being at home, but we're not quaking in our boots," says Sessay secretary Keith Holdstone.

The game's this Sunday. The final, which Sessay last reached in 1977, is at Lord's.

Speaking of generation games, what of Bulldog Billy Teesdale's nipper? Despite a highly successful season, young Billy was conspicuously absent when Evenwood lifted the Durham County League cup against Tudhoe on Sunday.

The same T W Teesdale, meanwhile, could be found batting and bowling for Bishop Auckland in their drawn NYSD League game at Richmond.

The Bulldog confirms that both he and young Billy have left the club, ending an era which began with Evenwood's re-formation in 1965.

The bairn, says his dad, has gone to improve himself. "I've seen good players stop too long in the Durham County League, I'm glad he's not doing that.

"As for me, there are certain things at Evenwood I just can't get my head around any longer. I haven't the same interest; enough is enough."

Sign of the times - a card in the window of North Road post office at Wingate: "Lost: white Persian cat, July 11. Answers to Rooney."

Last Friday's column named a side of Football League players past and present who shared a surname with a North-East town or village. Was there, we wondered, a Yorkshire select to take them on?

Tom Purvis in Sunderland obliges with a side, and subs, drawn entirely from the 1998-99 Rothman's Directory.

Steve Caldwell (Newcastle United/near Richmond), John Gayle (Northampton/Hawes), Paul Scholes (Man United/West Yorkshire), David Healey (Man United/Masham), Kevin Poole (Blackburn/Wharfedale), Stuart Ripley (Blackburn/Harrogate), Darren Bradshaw (Blackpool/West Yorks), Adam Newland (Blackpool/North Yorks), Dean Holdsworth (Bolton/West Yorks), Christer Warren (Bournemouth/South Yorks), Tony Battersby (Bury/Esk Valley line), Kevin Street (Crewe/North Yorks.)

Arnold Alton, who started this particular ball rolling, adds Tykes like John Maltby (Sunderland), Fred Pickering (Blackburn Rovers), John Richmond (Derby), Walter Bingley (York) and former Mansfield goalkeeper Arthur Bramley.

Sunday service took the column to the Royal at Trimdon Colliery, where talk is already of the conker championships in October but - by virtue of being hard baked and forever dangling on a string - of our being allowed a wild card entry.

The conker's already being conditioned beneath the oven, where the pans are kept. The Royal lads reckon it's the only place for a conker to be.

In exchange for all this, we are asked to mention the fourth Gary Rennick Memorial Trophy match, between Trimdon Colliery Albion and the Oddfellows Arms at Haswell, in aid of the Butterwick Hospice.

It's at Trimdon Station Rec on Sunday August 8 (10.30), followed at the Royal by a singer and refreshments. The emphasis, they say, will be on refreshments.

... and finally

The first English club to have an all seated stadium (Backtrack, July 16) was Coventry City, prompting a note from Liverpool fan John Milburn in Chester-le-Street that the idea proved so unpopular it had to be abandoned.

A pity, adds John, that others don't abandon them, too. "All seater stadia have taken 70 per cent of the pleasure out of watching professional football. Standing works in Germany, why not here?

"Little wonder that these days I prefer watching Brighton, my second team. At Brighton I can stand with my friends, at Liverpool they're scattered to the four corners."

Nice little question today, though enfeebled memory fails wholly to suggest who rang in with it. Which English player who twice won the PFA player of the year award, didn't make his European Cup debut until the age of 41?

Old timer's sake, the column returns on Friday.

Published: 20/07/2004