Crook in Calcutta but Bobby stays at home

There were receptions at the British Embassy and at the governor's house, 100,000 crowds, five star hotels, 100 degree temperatures and a whole treasury of travellers' tales.

It was 1976 and now the story of that remarkable passage to India is being told - affectionately, idiosyncratically - in a new book by Steve Chaytor from Sedgefield.

It's called Can You Get Bobby Charlton? Thereby hangs a story as well.

Steve's the chap who last year wrote the no less memorably named One Dead Ref and A Box of Kippers, potted biographies of the Sedgefield district's post-war Football League players.

Among them was long time Middlesbrough full back Gordon Jones, Crook's manager at the time of that Indian Spring. He mentioned to it in passing.

"It rather tickled my fancy," says Steve, as well it might have done.

The key to it all was Dr Orun Kumar Banerjee, then a Crook GP - now retired - and the club's medical officer since arriving in the town in 1972.

"Someone mentioned a tour of India in the clubhouse one night," Dr Banerjee recalls. "They thought it was a joke. I said 'Why not'?"

They also thought it was a joke when the doctor suggested packing formal evening dress, and took Crook casual wear instead.

"There were a couple of maharajahs, the chief minister, all sorts of people," he recalls. "Some of our players even had to ask me to lend them a tie."

Their hosts were Mohun Bagan - "the Manchester United of India" - for whom Dr Banarjee's father had played before the war. The Calcutta club paid all expenses but asked if a member of England's 1966 World Cup team, preferably Bobby Charlton, could be in the squad.

The deal was agreed in a Manchester hotel.

"Don't worry, I'll not let you down," Charlton told the Co Durham delegation. He did, crying off two days beforehand with a knee injury.

Mohun Bagan offered him £1,000 just to step onto the pitch. Charlton declined to fly.

Crook eventually persuaded Terry Paine, who'd played once in the 1966 finals, to fly over for the last of their six games in 13 days.

Good Northern League lads like Charlie Gott, Terry Turnbull and Charlie Morrison - whose long throw amazed the Indians - were joined by third division professionals like Colin Sinclair, Clive Nattress and Eric McMordie.

FA Cup final referee Pat Partridge, up the road in Cockfield, agreed to referee all the games.

"The reception at the airport was incredible, thousands of people and press awaiting us and all our players garlanded," remembers Dr Banerjee.

Crook lost just once, to the Indian national side, drawing four of the matches 1-1. One game was played in the mountains of Darjeeling, four others at Eden Park, the Calcutta cricket ground.

Crook thus became perhaps the only football team to have played on two test match cricket grounds - the Oval had staged a 1958 Amateur Cup replay against Corinthian Casuals.

Dr Banerjee - "really helpful" says Steve - also has a silent 70s video dubbed with music from that era. Crook run out at Eden Park to the theme from Hawaii Five-0.

The book will be launched at Crook Town FC ("there seemed a certain logic to it") at the end of November. They're not trying to get Bobby Charlton.

Backtrack briefs...

Shildon's biggest game for 42 years - the FA Cup fourth qualifying round tie against Stocksbridge Park Steels a week tomorrow - won't be promoted in the hugely successful way that the last round was.

Club chairman Gordon Hampton, boss of a company that makes road signs, had put 40 free standing signs around the town before the replay with Frickley. The theme was "Football fever"; it left the council feeling hot under the collar.

"We had a really officious letter from them telling us not to do it again or else," says team manager Ray Gowan, who also works for the firm.

"They say that it pays to advertise, but we could end up being fined for it."

Further incentice, Gowan and Hampton both laid substantial 100-1 bets before the season began that the Railwaymen would reach the first round proper.

Possible disincentive, Ray's due to fly to South Africa on holiday the day after the first round's played. "I'm definitely going," he insists, "but if it goes to a replay, I'm definitely coming home again next day."

Yet more excitement, Shildon not only feature on the FA's Road to Wembley (or wherever) website but as part of the promotion will be hosting the Cup at Dean Street next week.

We'd mentioned the possibility last Friday, recalled that the Road had started at Stone Dominoes in Staffordshire, wondered how the club came by its singular name.

David Armstrong in Barnard Castle picks up the Staffs bonus. His grandson's in the Dominoes' under 9s, his son lives three doors from Gordon Banks - keeping canny - in Madeley.

"I bumped into him sweeping his leaves. We've a bit in common now Stoke and Sunderland are in the same division," says David.

Stone and a Madeley team had amalgamated in 1994 - "brilliant set up, great facilities, loads of youth teams," he adds.

Originally they were Stone St Dominic's. "I don't think they wanted to sound like a church team," says David. The Domino effect it was.

Still with the dominoes, yet more success for the remarkable lads at the Grey Horse on Bank Top, Darlington.

National singles title winners in three of the last four years, they also won the "combinations" - pairs and singles - last weekend after semi-final defeats in 2001 and 2002.

Now they're seeking a singles hat-trick, in Bridlington on November 22. "It's still a lot to do with what you pick up," insists team captain Derrick White, who dropped himself from the pairs.

"My legs were playing up," he says, cryptically.

The others were Alan and Colin Stainsby, Tony White, Mick McMain, Maurice Binks, Wilf Parkinson and Tommy Corrie. Derrick offers a club to their consistency.

"Some of the lads who get to the final spend all their time on the lash. It's not the way to prepare. We might have a few drinks, but we do our celebrating afterwards."

Our friends at the Doghouse Cricket Club, meanwhile - "meanwhile" is a specious journalistic term connecting two generally unrelated items - have sent the past season's meticulously collated statistics.

David Cross averaged 77.12 and hit 55 sixes, Mark Symington - formerly with Durham - topped the bowling averages. Tommy Stafford, Yarm newsagent and long time Arsenal man, still gets down behind the wicket.

It's to the also rans that the column's eye is particularly drawn, however, though Ray Gowan didn't run very often.

The 59-year-old former captain played twice, scored once and averaged 0.5. It's the same Ray Gowan who manages Shildon; you can't be good at everything.

Tuesday's poser sought the last time that Sunderland had played non-league opposition in the FA Cup. Several recalled that it was Gravesend and Northfleet in the white clad winter of 1962-63; Steve Smith puts flesh on history's bones.

The Kent side had played eight Cup games before drawing Sunderland, at home, in the fourth round - though it was weeks later that they played the six times postponed third round tie at Carlisle.

As the whistle finally blew on Gravesend's shock 1-0 win, recalls Steve, the club secretary at once handed over 3,300 tickets to the watching Roker delegation.

A record 12,036 packed the Stonebridge Road ground for the 1-1 draw, Sunderland winning 5-2 in the replay six days later through Fogarty, Mulhall, Sharkey and John Crossan's first two goals for the club.

A 29,659 crowd paid £ 5,620 and were this entitled to their slow handclapping. "No joy in Sunderland win" read the Echo headline next day, and less still in the fifth round when they lost 2-1 to third division Coventry City.

February 18 1963? Darlington football referee Tom Langdale, 44, missed his first ever game - an Irish Cup tie - because of an injured thumb, England were (again) losing the Ashes, former Stanley United player Tommy Cummings was leaving Burnley after 434 Football League appearances to become player/manager at Mansfield and the FA announced a sub-committe to discuss "shamateurism." Eleven years later, they did something about it.

Fred Hall, described in one of the Sunderland histories as "a pivot of weighty proportions" - a stout centre half - was clearly something of a hoarder.

Great boxes of his memorabilia - from Sunderland contract to pigeon racing medal, Sunderland Shipowners' Cup to England selection letter - go under the hammer in Middlesbrough next Thursday.

Born in Chester-le-Street in 1917, Fred made 224 first team appearances, scoring but once. He died in Stanley in January 1989.

The old boys at the Methusaleh auction house also have their hands on the 18 carat gold medal which Boro's Mickey Fenton accepted, in place of match fee, on his England debut in 1938. It's expected to realise around £700.

Among hundreds of programmes, other items on offer at Marton Country Club range from a Tom Finney toby jug to World Cup Willie beer mats. Viewings on Wednesday 11am-4pm, Thursday 10am-1pm. Details 01642 317141.

Listening to the Sunderland v Cardiff match on Tuesday, John Briggs was caught by a reference to Jimmy Goodfellow, City's sponge man - and the same Jimmy Goodfellow, we can confirm, who played for Bishop Auckland and Crook in the early 1960s before a 479 game Football League career with Port Vale, Workington, Rochdale and Stockport County. Jimmy, accent intact, was 60 last month.

And finally...

Brian Shaw in Shildon invites readers to name the three Football League clubs which Tommy Docherty managed in 1968-69.

Doc's orders, the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 17/10/2003