When the Vicar's boss watered Kingsway pitch

Page 11 is about the Rev George Holderness, St Cuthbert's Vicar from 1948-55 and Darlington cricket club captain from 1950-53.

"The sort of cricketer who, in his private dictionary, would underline the word 'aggressive'," writes Bob Hattersley in his exemplary Darlington CC history.

The church chronicle also acknowledges a 1997 Backtrack column in which we recalled a cup game at Bishop Auckland during which "the Vicar" - as Holderness was known to all except Bishops' patrician skipper Bill Proud - suggested that the pitch had been watered to the home team's advantage.

Two weeks later, as Darlington arrived at Kingsway for a league match, the heavens opened. "I see you're watering the pitch again," said Holderness.

"Nay, George," said Proud, "it's your boss who's responsible for this lot."

God may also have been on the Vicar's side at selection meetings. In four seasons as skipper he totalled just 223 runs and took 12 wickets, the most four in a season - but St Cuthbert's was accustomed to sportsmen in the Vicar's stall.

The Rev Robert Ferry Drury, Vicar from 1919-35, played football for Middlesbrough, Darlington and Bishop Auckland, a man so conscious of his amateur status - unlike many others of that era - that he not only declined expenses and "tea money" but paid to get in.

The Rev William Jordan, who succeeded Drury, had been an outstanding amateur centre forward with West Bromwich Albion and became a director of Darlington FC.

Jordan is said to have installed Hensley Henson, then Bishop of Durham, in the Feethams directors' box while he attended to other business and to have had a cool reception on his return.

How, asked Jordan, was the team getting on.

"I don't know," grumbled Henson, "but I understand from all the shouting that the so-and-so's must be winning."

Robert Williamson, Vicar these past four years, is a Liverpool lad who watched his 1960s heroes from The Kop - "it's where I learned to sing," he says - and who has been an able wicketkeeper.

In his last parish he played for the Carlisle diocesan clergy team but hasn't yet appeared for our under-achieving old friends in Durham diocese.

"I fear," says Mr Williamson, "that the job no longer affords the time."

l A Century of Service is a vivid, two-volume history of St Cuthbert's - available from the church or, £5 apiece, from the Rev Robert Williamson, 26 Upsall Drive, Darlington DL3 8RB.

George Holderness, later Bishop of Burnley, wasn't the only clergyman to grace Feethams during the early 1950s.

On Wednesday, June 13 1951, the Rev Bob Richards - known variously as the Vaulting Vicar and the Pole Vaulting Parson - broke the British all-comers' record with a jump of 14ft 9in during a Darlington Harriers Festival of Britain meeting.

The Echo's report noted that the attempt was against a stiff breeze; the back page photograph showed the spire of St Cuthbert's peering, appropriately, over the houses.

Richards, a Californian, became only the second man to clear 15ft - high church, as it were - represented the USA in the 1948 Olympics and won gold in 1952 and 1956, when he also contested the decathlon.

The Darlington event attracted 5,000 spectators. Two days earlier, 9,000 at Middlesbrough saw him clear 14ft 8in but were even more greatly taken by the redoubtable Mrs Fanny Blankers-Koen, whose 10.8 in the 100 yards was just a tenth of a second outside the women's world record.

Richards, the Lord's a-leaping, was elected to the US Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983; the world pole vault record seems not to have been broken since Bubka in 1994, but readers may know differently.

June 13 1951? Len Hutton scored his first century of the season, Welsh miner Eddie Thomas lost his European welterweight boxing title, Col Sir Thomas Bradford opened Bishop Auckland Cricket Club's garden fete, Cockfield and Chilton Athletic applied to join the Northern League and, days before his 21st birthday and just a year after making his first-class cricket debut, a young bowler was called up by England to replace Trevor Bailey. His name was Brian Statham.

A first for the Backtrack column, perhaps a first for football, Ray Gowan has nothing to say about referees.

"I'll have to think about it and ring you back," he says. "All I can tell you is that if a referee says black's white, it usually is."

Ray's been manager of Shildon FC these past 11 years, before that at Spennymoor and Brandon and never slow to voice an opinion. From time to time, alas, he has had to be reminded of the error of his ways.

There may therefore be something of the poacher turned gamekeeper about his address next Tuesday to the monthly meeting of the Durham Referees' Society. "Most referees know Ray, we're very much looking forward to hearing him again," says Society chairman Kevin Armstrong.

The speaker hasn't yet rung us back. The meeting, to which all Durham area refs are welcome, is at the Salutation in Framwellgate Moor on January 20. He'll have thought of something by then.

Advertising assaults notwithstanding, a familiar figure could be observed living in peace with a fat cigar at the Bridgewater Arms in Winston the other night. Mr I T Botham, Squire of Ravensworth, was dining at the Teesdale pub with a party of friends. "I don't know if anyone objected to him smoking," says our man at deep long leg, "but certainly no-one was going to say so."

Last Friday's piece on Telford United manager Mick Jones, Sunderland lad made ubiquitous, reminded Steve Smith of the last time the Shropshire side reached the FA Cup fourth round. They beat Darlington.

Quakers had seen off Chester and Frickley in the early stages and, more memorably, beaten Middlesbrough in a third round replay. Garry McDonald and Phil Lloyd scored in front an 11,240 crowd - Feethams' last five-figure gate.

The Telford match went to a replay at the old Bucks Head ground, with more than 8,000 squeezed in. 1-0 winners, United were drawn at Everton in the next.

Discursive as ever, the Telford column also questioned the origin of the phrase "All around the Wrekin" and after much to-ing and fro-ing may be very little wiser.

Though the Wrekin is hard to miss - 1,355ft, views to 17 counties, said to have been formed by a giant with a grudge against Shrewsbury - Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and, more surprisingly, the Oxford Dictionary, ignore it completely.

It's both a hill and an icon, a hill with a presence, says one of the websites. In the exploration of why it should have become synonymous with circumnavigation, however, we are still not above 100ft.

... and finally

The stars of the 1979 television series Telford's Change - same column - were Peter Barkworth and the wholly delectable Hannah Gordon.

Since we've been discussing the God squad, readers may today care to identify the Premiership club which began life as St Domingo FC.

On its knees as ever, the column returns on Friday.

Published: 13/01/2004