BEING picked for the school football team meant the world to me. When the team-sheet finally went up on the wal at St Peter's in South Bank, I couldn't bear to look at it, in much the same way that I can't bear to look at my bank statement now.

John McDermott ended the agony with an excited cry of: "We're in!"

I opened my eyes and there it was: McDermott, Fletcher, Mulcaster, McHugh, Carter, Barron, Judge, Butcher, Hart, Morrison, Wyke.

While the others went to lessons, we went off in the minibus to matches. We wore those white shirts, black shorts and white socks - with two black rings round the top - with as much pride as anyone has ever worn anything. Our mums always came to watch but never our dads. They were always at work.

Three decades later, I've been waiting patiently for my offspring to follow in my stud-marks. It never happened with number one. His strengths lie in other directions and his sister just thinks football is stupid.

But their little brother Jack, aged ten, is footie-mad. For weeks, each new day has started with the same question: "Do you think Mr Graham will name the school team today, Dad?"

Finally, I got the call at work: "Dad, Dad, Dad, guess what - I'm in the team. Well, not the A team exactly, but there's two teams to play in a tournament, and I'm in the B team."

A or B, it didn't really matter. He was in.

Hurworth Primary's all-blue strip came home with him the night before the tournament. He changed into it as soon as he was through the door and only took it off, reluctantly, at bedtime.

I did my bit by driving Jack and a few of his team-mates to the tournament the next morning but I couldn't stay to watch because I had to be at work.

Later that day, I emerged from a meeting to see that there was a recorded message waiting on my mobile. It was Jack, using Mum's phone, speaking so fast that the words were falling over themselves:

Hi Dad, it's Jack...um...it's just I'm...um...just ringing cos...um...I just wanted to speak to ya because...um...we're just playing Harrowgate Hill but I'm not...um...I can't play cos I pulled my hamstring...yeah, my hamstring, so unless...um...well, I was, yeah, I was captain until I was taken off 'cos of my hamstring and...um...well, no, but no, we lost our first match 6-0 but that's only 'cos we were against Reid Street A team and they won the league last year so we can't really be expected to beat them and...um...then we won our next match 1-0, can't remember who we were against then but...um...just wanted to give you an update, bye.

The A team made the final. The B team didn't do quite as well but they recovered from their 6-0 drubbing to emerge with credit: two wins, two draws, one defeat.

"Are you disappointed?" I asked when I got home.

"Not really," he replied, limping a touch more than before. "I pulled my hamstring - the coach said that's why he took me off."

Winning wasn't everything. What was really important was that he'd made it into the school team, albeit the B team, and proved himself - by heroically pulling a hamstring.

Real footballers, like Michael Owen, pull hamstrings. It says so in the papers and on the telly. It's cool.

To a ten-year-old boy, a pulled hamstring in a 6-0 defeat for the B team is as good as a hat-trick in the final for the A team. Well, nearly.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

JOAN Barron (no relation), of Durham Ladies' Club, recalled the time she was on a double-decker bus on the way to Bishop Auckland with son Michael when he was four.

Michael's dad Harry had a habit of getting 'caught short' and the little boy suddenly shouted out at the top of his voice: "Look - that's the hedge Daddy had a wee wee behind."

JENNIFER Friedrichsen had a job teaching in Durham Prison a few years back and her four-year-old son Martin was being looked after by his grandma.

The grandma in question, Ena May Sparks - Sparkie to her friends - ran a draper's shop in Ryhope at the time and the local doctor came in.

"Hello, Martin, what are you doing here?" asked the doctor.

"Hello Doctor Henderson," replied Martin. "It's like this - I finished school yesterday but Mummy has four more days to do in prison."

PAUL Robson, of Houghton-le-Spring, had been bought a guitar as a little boy but hadn't been able to learn to play it. He was fascinated when a man appeared on television, playing a Spanish guitar beautifully.

"Well, that's why I can't play it," he declared, "it's Spanish".

JOYCE Elliot, chairman of Durham Ladies' Club, remembered the time her son Graeme - six at the time - came home from school.

"We've got lots of spellings to learn and if we get them right Mrs Evans is going to give us a sweet," he announced.

"But Mam, how do you spell woebetideya?"

JOYCE'S grandaughter Wendy, aged ten, had been in hospital having her tonsils out and was in a philosophical mood.

"There's always someone in hospital who's worse off than you, isn't there Grandma?" said the little girl.

"That's right," agreed Joyce.

"Well, I was that someone," Wendy added.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

/dadatlarge