Roberts ranked with the Titans

It was published in 1962 when many were familiar, perhaps truly titanic - Stan Matthews, Tommy Lawton, Stan Cullis and Raich Carter, sub-titled The Great Horatio and still reverently remembered in Sunderland.

Len Shackleton was in there, too, told in 1938 by Arsenal manager George Allison - not long previously The Northern Echo's Redcar reporter, not many people know that - that he'd never make a footballer.

But Charlie Roberts....?

From the book Association Football and the Men Who Made It, published in 1906: "You see him in the street and you are told it is the famous Roberts. You are disappointed.

"He does not wear the healthful, lusty, muscular habit of the average ball manipulator. You would hint that he was delicate; his very sparseness puts activity out of your mind and his lack of beam suggests a restful holiday trip as the best way of rescuing him from permanent illness."

It was as misleading as the nickname The Ghost in Boots, coined by the cheap prints. There was nothing spectral about Charlie Roberts.

Born in the Rise Carr area of Darlington, he began as a furnace hand in a local iron works, played centre half for Manchester United and England, could run 100 yards in 11 seconds, became an early chairman of the PFA, was a workers' champion but fought a council election for the Conservatives, wore the briefest of shorts in bare fronted defiance of FA edict, worked when cricket came around on the Grimsby trawlers to Iceland, ran a tobacconist's in retirement and died, too young, aged 56.

PFA historian John Harding described Roberts as a cultured player - "not the Skinner Normanton type". The PFA website - we're coming up to date here - salutes a man of forthright opinions who led by example.

Partly because of the form of Bristol City's Billy Wedlock - a proper footballer's name, that - but mostly because of his campaigning zeal, he made his last England appearance at 22.

"He most certainly sacrificed his England career," insists the PFA.

Born in 1883, he played for Darlington St Augustine's and for Bishop Auckland in the Northern League, signed for Darlington, spent a season with Grimsby and then was lured to Manchester United.

Grimsby, the Edwardian authors recorded, had refused to part until dazzled by United's affluence. "Full £400 was dangled before their eyes and they fell. Roberts removed."

He was to make 271 first team appearances, help United to the second division title in 1906 and the first division in 1908 and 1911, showed his mettle and his muscle by helping form the first players; union in 1909 in defiance of both FA and Football League.

Locked out, his Manchester team mates continued to play football. "The Outcasts" he called them, unequivocally.

In 1906, however, they'd still been worried about his health and wellbeing. "He went from the bracing atmosphere of the German Ocean to the insalubrious atmosphere of chemical manufactories. The change may have had something to do with his present pallid appearance."

In that part of Manchester, the account added, the air was so polluted that an "unwary journalist" had taken a silver topped umbrella to a match and discovered on leaving that the silver had evaporated.

Charlie Roberts was probably used to an atmosphere. He'd worked on the rolling mills furnaces from which smelters and puddlers would flee to the pub across the road, drink four pints in their half hour dinner break and have sweated it out again by three o'clock.

Unlike the average professional footballer, Darlington ironworkers were men of the world. "I know of no other class of work people who are less able to look after themselves than footballers," wrote Roberts in 1910.

"They are like a lot of sheep. A representative of the union would go to speak about the whys and wherefores of joining and they would immediately decide to do so.

"Ten minutes later a manager would go and say a few words and they would all decide not to join."

By then, however, the Ghost in Boots was nicknamed Jack Johnson, after the world heavyweight champion, so effective a street fighter had he become.

In 1913 he signed for Oldham and was to become their manager eight years later. When the players' union reformed after the war, he took charge and saw the maximum wage rise from £1 to £9 in three years.

When he resigned to become Oldham's chairman, he was presented with £53, a gold watch and an illuminated address. "When I look back," he told his members, "I will like my fellow professional footballers to think that I have done my duty."

The following year they knocked £1 off the maximum wage. Without Charlie Roberts, the union membership crumbled.

Charlie Roberts's nephew was a titch of a lad called Mark Hooper who played for Cockfield when they won the inaugural Northern League Challenge Cup in 1924, signed for Darlington and then, for £1,950, for Sheffield Wednesday.

He won first division championship medals in 1928 and 1929 and made almost 500 appearances.

All of which begs the question: how flourishes Hazel Grove?

Verdantly named but economically furnished, Hazel Grove was the west Durham village team's home when they reached the Amateur Cup semi-final in 1922-23 and, more remarkable yet, when five years later they lost 3-2 to Leyton in the final at Ayresome Park.

Until three or four years ago, the reborn team's annual presentation evening resembled something from Goldsmith's Hall, so great the value and the number of the trophies.

Cockfield United folded two years ago. Though a couple of pub teams use it, for Hazel Grove it has been too long a winter. Now, however, we hear of green shoots once again.

"There are things going on in the village," says local councillor and Durham FA member John Priestley. "It's not the same without Saturday afternoon football at Hazel Grove. We're hoping to have something sorted out soon."

Harry Roberts, not Charlie, is remembered in a familiar terraces chant. ("He kills coppers"). Thus South Yorkshire constabulary's ears pricked a few years back when Crook Town visited Doncaster Rovers in the FA Cup first round. A sergeant approached, an explanation fell on hitherto deaf ears. It was Hughie Roberts of whose friendship they sang, said the Crook lads. Hughie was the local newsagent.

To no surprise whatever, Jonny Wilkinson picked up the top honour at the Sport Newcastle Sports Personality of the Year awards on Monday night. What was surprising was the ovation the 550 guests gave to Steve McLaren.

"Jonny only just shaded it on the clappometer, Steve was genuinely overwhelmed" says BBC television sports presenter Jeff Brown, who compered the evening.

"I thought they might have booed me, it was incredible," said McLaren.

Jeff Brown has warned the Middlesbrough manager, however, that it's the last standing ovation he's likely to get on Tyneside - "and if Sunderland win the Cup, I can't quite see them being so generous to Mick McCarthy...."

Former cricket all rounder for both Durham and Northumberland and still a never-off-the-roads football scout, Jack Watson has finally taken up bowls at the Sunnydale Leisure Centre in Shildon. He will be 83 next month.

"Everyone has been really welcoming to me. I don't know why I didn't do it earlier," says Jack, who took a cricket hat-trick for Bearpark when he was 70.

In the summer he hopes to move outdoors. "The hardest bit," he adds, "is remembering to bowl underarm."

The manager who led Sunderland out of the third division (Backtrack, March 16) was, of course, Denis Smith.

Bob Foster in Ferryhill today seeks the identity of the t wo clubs which have each been relegated three times from the Premiership.

More ups and downs on Tuesday

Published: 19/03/2004