Owen leaves gap at football's top table

Just the day previously he had been told that he would be a guest at today's lunch with Tony Blair and George Bush.

"He was so proud, really excited about it," says Ron Lester, a long time friend.

As a scout, and a man who held firmly to scouts' honour, Owen's finds included future England internationals Terry Fenwick and Colin Cooper - but he'd made more discoveries than Carol Levis.

As a youth team organiser he regarded the able and less able with equal affection, nurtured them tirelessly and remembered every one. Only on Monday he'd been planning the Christmas party.

He was from Trimdon, where much else is today on the agenda, but where no topic will be more earnestly discussed than the passing of a truly remarkable man.

Paul Gascoigne knew him as Dr Who, because of a passing reference to William Hartnell; Colin Cooper called him Catweazle. Like Samson, Owen was never very keen on having his hair cut.

Though forced to use crutches since his legs were shattered in an horrific car accident in 1987, he still watched football in all weathers, still dictated into his little tape recorder, still retained an astute eye for emerging talent.

"Other people climb mountains or row round the world in a dinghy," he once told the column. "I enjoy pitting my knowledge of football, seeing lads make the first or second division."

It was the challenge, he added, certainly not the glamour.

Though he played for Darlington Reserves before the war, he was better known as a foot runner, winning at both Powderhall and at Shildon Show - said to be the North-East equivalent - while his brother organised the betting.

After RAF service in the Far East ("I caught every tropical disease there was," he said) he became Oldham Athletic's full time coach and chief scout in 1950, when George Hardwick took over as manager.

Much later he was principal organiser of the belated Middlesbrough benefit for Hardwick and Wilf Mannion.

In 1957 he emigrated to Canada for 14 years, became circulation managed of the Toronto Telegraph and helped form the North American Soccer League.

In 1971 he was appointed Crystal Palace's North-East scout when Malcolm Allison and Terry Venables held sway at Selhurst Park, also worked for Venables at Queens Park Rangers and for Willie Maddren and Bruce Rioch at the Boro and was for many years chairman, principal fund raiser and ever-present inspiration behind South-East Durham Boys, later Trimdon Juniors.

When Venables became Spurs manager, he immediately asked Owen to become his North-East eyes and ears. Familiar on every ground in the region, he held the scouting position assiduously until his death.

"Hand on heart, I've never resorted to underhand means," he once said. "I've always been able to go back to the players and their parents and still have a good relationship."

Former Darlington player/manager Paul Ward, another Willoughby discovery, spoke yesterday of the man he thought would go on for ever.

"Owen was absolutely amazing, a man who lived and breathed football every day of his life and was a real student of the game.

"He could spot things in a player that other people just couldn't see, and that was his supreme gift. Some of the most massive people in the game had Owen working for them, or wanted him to.

"It was his pure energy. Even in his later years you'd still see him out there in all weathers, whether it was the juniors or a Premiership game. What he gave to the local community is just incredible."

Dennis Cooper, Colin's dad, had himself been coached by Owen as a ten-year-old at St William's school in Trimdon - they won the National Orphanage Cup.

"All the teachers were women so Owen just volunteered to take it on," said Dennis, who'd been with Owen on Monday evening. "He seemed as chirpy as ever," he said.

Malcolm Dawes, ex-Hartlepool United and New York Cosmos, talked of Owen's amazing contacts and insuperable spirit - "a great man, put so much into his life" - Paul Trippett, manager of Trimdon Labour Club, spoke of the shock as news went round the village.

"There'll be an awful lot of people in Trimdon on Friday, but almost as many at Owen's funeral."

Owen had been married to Joan for 50 years, admitted it might have been longer had he not stood her up on their first date. The explanation was predictable: he'd gone to a football match instead.

Hundreds of mourners overflowed St Mark's church in Darlington yesterday for the funeral of Paul Adamson, who died while playing in a referees' five-a-side football match.

"It is a tribute the like of which I have never seen in all my experiences as a priest," Archdeacon Granville Gibson told the congregation.

Archdeacon Gibson also praised Paul's commitment to other people's welfare, and his work in the community. Paul, 43, played Northern League football, chiefly for West Auckland, for more than 20 years. He continued as a referee.

A former Scots Guardsman, his coffin was accompanied by a piper playing a lament. His ashes will be scattered on West Auckland's penalty area.

Grapple fans hit Consett

TO grips with wrestling, not among the usual activities to occupy the Backtrack column's attention.

A sport? "Of course it is," says Les Stewart of the North East Wrestling Club, who have a show at Consett Victory Club tonight.

They're partly there, he says, to dissuade kids from emulating what he call the "back yard stunts" of the televised Americans. "Leaping from the outhouse into a bed of nettles.

"I've seen it happen, honestly. Every town up here seems to have its group of youngsters who copy the things they see on television. Some of it is very extreme."

Already they have three gyms, members ranging from athletes to "very sizeable gentlemen" and from 10-year-olds to 44-year-old Billy Morrison from Sunderland. "We're keeping an eye on him. He's progressing quite nicely," says Les.

It's not to say, however, that the show biz won't go on. Les is a member of Equity and has been a stand up, if not fall down, comedian.

"We will make our shows as colourful and spectacular as possible while keeping it safe," he says. "That's the most important thing to us."

Tonight's bill includes The Assassin - known to his friends as Brian Bell - and Les's sons, billed as the Avery Brothers, Sean Storm and Chris Youngsta. ("As in gangster rap," he explains.

So - delicate question - is it fixed? "I can't give you anything that would be a quote on that one," says Les. "Our shows are a mixture. The idea is that the audience doesn't know the difference."

John Burton, among those sitting down today with George W Bush, played for half the football teams in Co Durham before becoming better known as Tony Blair's constituency agent.

His most memorable match, however, was Durham County against Yorkshire at Kingsway - on the day of his father's funeral.

"I didn't know what to do, but my mother insisted because my father would have wanted it," he tells the column. "I'd been to the funeral first, but the match was bloody difficult."

After the game, County FA secretary Walter Turnbull asked the newcomer's expenses. "Dunno, about 7/6d," said John.

Turnbull produced notebook and bus timetable. "No it's not, it's 6/4d," he announced and, says John, he was absolutely spot on.

They were all amateurs in those days, of course, which doesn't entirely explain why Trimdon Grange paid him thirty bob a game "travelling expenses" and why Fishburn Juniors offered an extra seven and a tanner - long way from Fishburn to Trimdon - if he'd stay with them.

"Well you know what it was like at the time," says John. "Seamus O'Connell couldn't even afford to play for Chelsea because he was getting more at Bishop Auckland."

His biography, published this week, records a football career which also embraced Shildon, Billingham Synners, Bishop Auckland, Bowbuirn, Crook, West Auckland, Cornsay Park and an unhappy spell as player/manager at Ferryhill Athletic.

"I took my ball home," says John, once the youngest ever holder of a full FA coaching badge.

His 75 goals for Stockton, claims the book, were not only a Wearside League best at the time but a record that will stand for ever "since the league no longer exists."

This will doubtless come as a surprise to the 18 clubs from Whitehaven to Wolviston who played in it last weekend.

Burton's unfulfilled sporting ambition is to play for Sunderland - "I was goof, but not that good" - though club chairman Bob Murray still calls "for one reason or another" most weeks.

The former free scoring forward always responds by saying that he won't be available on Saturday.

"Damn," says the chairman, "I'll just have to make do with the squad I've got."

l The Grit in the Oyster, the biography of John Burton, is written by Keith Proud and published by The Northern Echo at £9 99.

Colin Cooper, taught PE by John Burton at Sedgefield Comp, features in a full length interview in the Middlebsrough fanzine Fly Me To the Moon - marking its 15th birthday with a special against Liverpool tomorrow.

The engaging Coops, 37 come February, was also in the Boro team on FMTTM's debut in November 1988, home to Sheffield Wednesday.

The photocopied fanzine sold just 50 copies; Middlesbrough lost, too.

Now they also do T-shirts and things and have a message board attracting up to 50,000 hits a day. Happily, there's also Roofus the Boro Dog who thinks their strikers couldn't score beneath Albert Bridge with a crisp £20 note stuck behind their ears. The anniversary's marked with a party next Wednesday at the Georgian Theatre in Stockton. They might even be around in another 15 years, says editor Rob Nichols. It's a frightening thought, he adds.

As generous as everyone knows him to be, Sir Bobby Robson has come to the aid of Newcastle United nut Tommy Stephenson (or Stivvison, as they say in West Auckland.)

Tommy, 61, has a form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos dust when working for the water board in the 1960s. "Would you believe we were laying asbestos lined pipes?" he asks.

Treated with both skill and compassion at hospitals in Newcastle and Bishop Auckland, he set out to raise money for the special unit at Bishop General and wrote to Sir Bobby.

The Magpies; manager has now sent a limited edition photograph of St James' Park at night, signed by himself, Alan Shearer and club chairman Freddie Shepherd. It's being raffled, to be drawn when Malcolm Macdonald has a talk-in at West Auckland FC tonight.

"It's an absolutely brilliant gesture from a wonderful man," says Tommy. "I've often written to Newcastle before but never asked for anything. I just wanted to show my gratitude to the hospital."

Though the tumour is inoperable, new drugs have substantially shrunk it. "I've been through a bad time but now I feel champion," says Tommy.

"Mind," he adds, "I still can't believe about them pipes."

Readers from the sports editor's dad to Kevin Mottram in cyberspace - "caught your column while looking for something else; quite entertaining actually" - have raised eyebrows at the question a couple of weeks ago about four English clubs which had been managed by three different men who'd won European Cup winner's medals.

It was originally posed by Peter Beardsley who reckoned Newcastle, Man City, Blackburn Rovers and - the tricky one - Rotherham United.

Consensus - readers and the Rothmans - now compels the addition of Preston North End, managed by Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles and ("for five minutes in 1986," says Kevin) by Brian Kidd.

...and finally

Tuesday's question stumped almost everyone. The defender who won most England caps in the 1970s was Emlyn Hughes - with 62.

Fred Claydon in Shildon, among those who supposed the answer to be Dave Watson, today invites the identities of the North-East referees who officiated in the 1960, 1975, 1980 and 1985 FA Cup finals.

We're back on Tuesday.

Published: 21/11/2003