Cold wind blows down the Crescent

Four points from a possible 51, they will be relegated if they lose at Doncaster tomorrow and other results go against them. If the trapdoor jams, Leyton Orient could be Bootham Crescent's last league visitors the following Saturday.

It will be May Day. If ever a club needed a lifeboat it's poor, fast sinking York City.

Norman joined in 1954, hit 143 goals in almost 400 appearances, remained part time - content to work as a shoe repairer and to stay in the north-west Durham village of Annfield Plain, near Stanley.

"The Plain" he affectionately calls it, and the Plain man's verdict is that City's walls are fast crumbling, their 75 year sojourn almost over.

"In the last eight games we've scored two goals and never looked like getting any more. It's terrible, really terrible. I just can't see us escaping now."

Unlike the modern footballer, he wouldn't consider relegation to the Nationwide Conference as disaster, cataclysm or something akin to the eve of destruction.

This was a chap who lived through the Second World War, who knows (as well a shoe repairer might) what it's like for good men to be on their uppers.

"I'd be disappointed, of course I would, but in a way the worse news out of York this past few days has been Terry's chocolate factory closing down. Think of all those people; Terry's was always class.

"If the chocolate factories had got together when we went into the old second division who knows what might have happened. It's just awful what's gannin' on and I just don't know the answer."

He was born in Alnwick, though he remembers nothing of it, moved to the Stanley area when he was adopted as a small boy.

It was because of his elderly, adoptive father that he never left home or signed full time - "I couldn't gan gallivantin' when the old feller was still here" - and because of the same loyalty that he refused all offers to leave City.

"He died in 1966, but I'd finished then. If he hadn't been here I'd have maybe got myself a nice little bungalow in York, you could buy one for £2,000, but he needed me here."

Now 73, he's still in Annfield Plain, north-west Durham accent as distinctive as Pontop Pike mast, boots impeccably maintained, still helping out for the village's Wearside League club where he finished his playing career.

"I make the tea, help round the field, that sort of thing. It's hard work here, mind, the blooming kids won't leave anything alone."

On the table there's a 1955 Football Monthly, full of household names and of the young Wilkinson looking nervous to be in such company, and a book called Where Are They Now which has him down as a goalkeeper from Newcastle-under-Lyme. Norman wasn't amused.

Dave Batters's 1990 York City history was more accurate: "Without doubt one of the most loyal and outstanding players ever to appear for City."

He'd done National Service in the RAF ("joined on April 1, left on April 1"), played a handful of games an amateur for Hull City - that splendid action picture was taken at Boothferry Park - joined York at the start of something big.

Dubbed the Happy Wanderers after the hit record of the time, third division City reached the FA Cup semi-final in his first season, losing to Newcastle United in a replay at Roker Park.

It became so big, they were even given free boots by York Co-op. "You couldn't move outside the shop," he recalls. "We couldn't believe it was us they'd come to see."

In the first round they'd beaten non-league Scarborough, by the third travelled to the opposite coast to see off the Blackpool of Matthews, Mudie and Mortensen.

In the fourth, 15,000 fans crammed Bishop Auckland's Kingsway ground. City won 3-1, drew Spurs - Danny Blanchflower's Lilywhites - and beat them 3-1, too.

Wilkinson - brave, bright and bushy haired - scored twice. "The most classic football match of all time," declared the Yorkshire Evening Press, and may never have revised its opinion.

Notts County despatched in the sixth round, the semi-final was at Hillsborough. Arthur Bottom scored for York, Vic Keeble for Newcastle, York to Sheffield 8/6d return.

"The best year came first but we always had a reputation as a real Cup side," says Norman. "We beat Birmingham 3-0 when they were full of internationals, Leicester when they had Banks and McLintock. How we could do with that side now."

He still watches them several times a season, will be at the Leyton Orient match along with his misgivings, admits he's baffled. "A lot of people say we need an old hand as manager, not the youngster, but I honestly don't know."

A couple of weeks ago he also attended a players' reunion at which other guests included 91-year-old Jack Pinder, who'd played for York immediately after the war.

Someone asked what he thought of modern players. "Hopeless," said Jack, "all they so is go round hugging and kissing each other."

There was a theatrical pause of which Bob Monkhouse might have been proud. "I mean," the old man added, "who'd want to kiss Norman Wilkinson?"

Norman laughs so much he almost falls off the settee, pulls himself together, spots 84-year-old Len Small - 96 Football League games with Gateshead after the war - going past the window.

He's up and out of the door like a shot, nothing wrong with the knees and not too much with the eyesight. "Hey Lenny," he shouts, "d'ye fancy gannin' oot for a jog this afternoon."

Len's reply is inaudible but may be imagined. Norman resumes his seat, returns to fearful contemplation of his beloved City.

"People recognise me all the time when I go, tell me I should get me boots out again. I honestly wish they'd let me, but for both of us it;s probably come too late."

Many a milestone for Dunston Federation Brewery on Tuesday. It was the club's 500th Northern League game, the win - at Billingham Town - which clinched their first league title and club chairman Malcolm James actually apologised to a linesman.

Malcolm has been known to be critical, shall we say, on Tuesday because he suspected that a goal kick had been taken a couple of yards outside the six yard box.

"It went on for four or five minutes, Malcolm playing hell with the linesman," reports match referee Russell Tiffin. "Finally I had chance to get across to explain that it wasn't a goal kick, it was a free kick for ofisde.

"Malcolm spent the next five minutes running up and down trying to apologise. It was the funniest thing I've seen in years."

The championship was also a triumph for Fed manager Bobby Scaife, whose late and lamented father was Whitby Town's chairman in Northern League days. Bobby gazed skywards: "I think he'll just be getting out the whisky bottle," he said.

The watchful and wakeful will have noticed Judge Michael Taylor's comment in allowing the appeal by a "drunken" Middlesbrough fan who fell asleep at the match. It's an Englishman's right to do so, said the judge, especially when watching Arsenal. The remark has prompted a picture postcard from the Rev Leo Osborn, Aston Villa supporter and chairman of the Newcastle upon Tyne district of the Methodist church. "The judge deserves a sainthood," he says.

Former Middlesbrough full back Derek Stonehouse has died just weeks after his friend Ray Yeoman, with whom he formed a management team at Darlington in the late 1960s. He was 71.

The death notice also referred to him as a "legendary wicket keeper" - principally at Guisborough in the NYSD.

"He was exceptional," says former NYSD League secretary Stewart Clarke, who played in the same junior side in 1949. "He was offered a second team game with Y orkshire but turned it down. I've no doubt he could have made a career there."

Born in Lingdale in east Cleveland and a former English schools international, Derek made 174 Football League appearances for the Boro and 34 for Hartlepool. Unlike the summer game, he never once troubled the scorers.

Norman Wilkinson, coincidentally in the same RAF team alongside Peter Sillett, Ray Wood and Bryan Douglas, recalls a relatively small defender who could outjump six footers - and, adds Norman, a really lovely man.

Trimdon United Juniors' annual dinner goes ahead next month with three poignantly empty chairs: club driving force Owen Willoughby, perennial principal guest George Hardwick and incomparable compere Frankie Baggs have all died recently.

Organisation has been taken over by Trimdon newsagent Ian Harper. "I always walked a yard behind Owen and hoped that the gap would never close," he says.

"People thought he was crazy but he was simply 20 years ahead of his time. Now everyone else is trying to catch up."

Owen, Spurs' North-East scout until his death at 84, had also been George Hardwick's assistant manager at Oldham Athletic. Gentleman George's funeral is at St Mary's cathedral, Middlesbrough, at 1pm today.

Trimdon Juniors now have ten teams, including two girls' sides, all with club tracksuit tops. "It's for Owen and for the kids that we're doing all this now," says Ian. "As someone once said, the show must go on."

The evergreen Ken Thwaites - greyhound trainer, Methodist church organist, again opening the batting for Normanby Hall II tomorrow - recalls not only that George Hardwick was in Normanby Hall's 1947 NYSD championship winning side but his time as Middlesbrough FC's youth coach in 1961-62.

Ken himself was a promising Boro junior. En route to a match at Chesterfield, they picked up a newcomer - young lad called Cyril Knowles - who, like Geoffrey Boycott, came from Fitzwilliam in Rugby League country.

George was impressed, young Knowles less so. "He turned to us and asked who the geezer in the suit was," recalls Ken, now 60. "To the rest of us George Hardwick was a legend even then; Cyril had never heard of him."

Knowles himself kept wicket - once - in the side which won the NYSD in 1963, the second England left back to play cricket for Normanby Hall.

Our old friends at Kimblesworth Cricket Club, north of Durham, mark their 125th anniversary in July with a month long cricket festival and, on July 16, with a reunion of all former players.

Robson Smith, 34 years at the Kimblesworth wicket, would love to hear from any of them. He's on 0191-371-8298 (work) or 0191-371-0071 at home.

Former club professionals include Dennison Thomas, a West Indian who broke records at 78rpm, former England amateur footballer Bobby Davison - featured recently hereabouts - and Brent "Bomber" Smith, who could talk for England instead. For reasons to which no one admits, the present incumbent answers to Clanger Clancy.

They began, Robson suspects, as just another colliery cricket team. "In many ways nothing's changed. We're still all pits lads at heart."

...and finally

The only goalkeeper to make five FA Cup final appearances at Wembley (Backtrack April 20) was Ray Clemence.

Readers may today care to name the overseas player who has made most Premiership appearances. We're back on familiar shores on Tuesday

Published: 23/04/2004