A Cardiff return for Simpkins?

Come May 30, however, he hopes again to be in Cardiff - and to be painting the town the colour of the national shirt.

It's the date of the second division play-off final - and if he seems a bit prematurely excited, says Ken, you should see his old mate Hughie Hamilton.

Hamilton's from Glasgow. They shared digs 40 years ago when Ken signed for Hartlepools from Wrexham and Hughie crossed the border from Falkirk. Hughie never left Hartlepool, either, still drives the youth team bus.

"They're just such friendly people here," says Ken; a Hartlepool born wife might also have something to do with the attraction.

Now the Welshman, the Scotsman and several thousand English grow ever more confident that one of football's great unfashionables can not only reach Cardiff, but scale the undreamed heights of the first division.

"The people who say it's impossible haven't seen us recently," says Ken, now 60. "We're a very good side and we're getting better.

"We've only struggled against Queens Park Rangers, gave West Brom a really good game and Sunderland could hardly wait to get off the park.

"It's a sign of how things have changed that people were so disappointed last season when we didn't win the championship. In my day there was a civic reception for finishing 23rd.

"The first division would be incredible, but supporters are starting to expect it."

If not quite old friends, we are certainly pen pals. Back in the sinning sixties, when Kenny Simpkins was chosen to represent his country and the column was helping produce the magazine at Bishop Auckland Grammar School, we wrote to ask if he'd submit a piece on the life of a professional footballer.

The article, altogether more original than the idea, arrived eagerly within a couple of days. It still explains why we support two "big" teams, and only one of them the Premiership chaampions.

On Tuesday evening we had a beer in the Harbour of Refuge, locally the Pot House, near his home overlooking the tranquil waters of Hartlepool Headland.

The Welsh accent still rises and falls, the big lad is bigger yet and ever more obliging, the firelit pub alive with anticipation that Cinderella really can go to the ball.

For Ken, who's missed just one home game in four seasons and is known to get a bit excitable, the prospect is even more enticing. He knew them when they had nowt, when he was paid £24 a week plus £1 a man bonus for every thousand over 10,000 in the gate. The bonus totalled £2.

"Among the things which amuses me is players arriving in suits. We used to have go in early on a Monday morning just to get a decent pair of shorts to train in.

"The dressing rooms, especially the visitors', were really just wooden huts; the stand had shutters at the back which they opened to let the wind through, otherwise the whole lot would have blown away.

"It's a lovely little ground now, more staff in the offices than we had players, and you have to take your hat off to them. There are people who've done really well."

At school he was an uncomplicated centre forward, as a 14-year-old scoring nine in a day - six for Wrexham Schools in the morning, three for Wrexham Reserves in the afternoon - and being compared in print to the new John Charles.

When former Boro keeper Rolando Ugolini broke a collar bone, however, Wrexham put him between the sticks - and he stuck, 116 of his 121 Football League appearances for Hartlepools with a green jersey stretched over the blue and white stripes.

The other five were up front, including the winning goal against Port Vale, November 18 1967.

"Tony Bircumshaw crossed it from the right, I just turned and hit it," he recalls for the million and first time.

Goal of the season?

"It was for me, anyway."

Alvan Williams had signed him from Wrexham in January 1964, his form so impressive in a still struggling side that he was called into the Welsh Under 23 squad.

"There were people like Wyn Davies and Mike England, famous even then. I remember wondering what I was doing there, them with their Adidas bags and me with my Asda bag, but they were very good to me."

Williams was replaced by Geoff Twentyman, Twentyman by a member of Sunderland's youth coaching team called Brian Clough, who brought with him Peter Taylor.

"Funny feller, Cloughy," Ken recalls. "I remember once asking him for a pair of rubber soled boots for the hard ground and Peter Taylor coming back with 12 rubber studs.

"You could tell he was going places, but I think it was Peter Taylor who kept him on the straight and narrow."

When Gus McLean followed Clough, leading Pools to a first ever promotion, Ken played just six times in the successful side - five at centre forward.

"My claim to fame is that I kept John McGovern out of the side," he insists. "They moved Ernie Phythian to the right wing to accommodate me and John was on the bench."

At the end of the season he moved to Boston, travelling for matches with former Victoria Ground colleague Peter Thompson from Blackhall and paid just £1 a week less than his Hartlepool money (before bonus.)

Boston had a choice between him and Reg Matthews, the former Chelsea and England goalkeeper. "I think Peter persuaded them," he says.

It lasted just half a season, including a hat trick against Goole, before injury meant the removal of a knee cap. Though he played a bit of rugby for Hartlepool, he never again played soccer.

Now he's retired, troubled by arthritis, remains hugely genial. "I'll shout for Wales in everything, even tiddleywinks, except when Wrexham are playing Hartlepool and then there's no contest.

"I'm a Hartlepool lad now, Hartlepool Welsh. May 30 could be a very good day for a Welshman to be in Cardiff."

Backtrack Briefs...

Remember Brian "Killer" Kilcline, once described by the Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme as "a pussy cat in wolf's clothing"?

The former Newcastle United centre half is now 42, slightly less hirsute, and on Sunday could be found at Whitby playing for a Goths XI against the Whitby Gazette.

The Goths, it should perhaps be explained, are a group of folk with dark clothes, white faces and extravagant ways who annually descend upon Whitby. Killer, on no account to be confused with Dracula, was with them.

"He steadied the defence effortlessly," reported the Gazette rather neatly, and clearly it was the case.

Last time the two sides met, Goths Almighty lost 17-1. This time it was a mere 3-0.

The Whitby Gazette - what comes of a day out on the Esk Valley line, this - also reports that the town rugby club's annual tour was to a "secret destination", a secrecy perhaps explained when the destination proved to be Grimsby.

All went well save for the poor chap who forgot the name of the hotel, got out of his late night taxi to look at the little bit of paper and was aghast to see it blow away.

Somehow remembering that he lived in Whitby, he ordered the driver to take him home again. The journey took two and a half hours; the cost is sadly unrecorded.

Tuesday's column was mistaken to suppose that former Northern League secretary Gordon Nicholson still uses the typewriter which he'd had from the font.

"I gave it to the Timothy Hackworth museum in Shildon three or four years ago," insists Gordon. "This one's barely 25 years old."

Still in working order, the original had been given to his father in 1912, to mark both his wedding and - even then - 21 years as secretary of Eldon Albions FC.

The quote about "little acorns growing into great big acorns" was clearly mistaken, too - we meant oak trees - as was FA Cup final referee Jeff Winter's recollection that his season's average mark in the Northern League was 6.7 out of ten.

"It wasn't even that good," says Gordon. "It was 6.6."

Maybe we didn't make it sufficiently clear in Tuesday's column, but Willington Cricket Club chairman John Coe asks us to underline that it was Neil Moore and Karl Brown - the two pollisses - who did all the administrative spadework for the club's magnificent new facilities. "The credit," says John, "is entirely theirs."

A piece in the Black Sheep Brewery magazine recalls how Brandon United - then in the Northern Alliance - reached the FA Cup first round in 1979-80, the home tie with Bradford City switched to Spennymoor United.

Radio Leeds man John Boyd and his Bradford Telegraph and Argus colleague finished telephoning their copy, returned to the clubhouse and were disconcerted to find themselves locked in, with a polliss guarding the door while the takings were counted.

Finally freed to attend the reception elsewhere, they found the food scoffed, the ale drunk and City manager George Mulhall ushering press and players impatiently back onto the bus.

And finally...

The county cricket club with three pears on its badge (Backtrack, April 27) is Worcestershire.

Brian Shaw in Shildon today invites readers to name the only English club to win a major European trophy in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

More Euro babble when the column returns next Friday.

Published: 30/04/2004