Groundsman Tommy is top dog

Turned 70 in the summer, the former farm worker retired as Sunderland's head groundsman five years ago and now nurtures the real grass roots at Albany Northern League club Durham City.

Though his hearing's going a bit ("all that machinery") and his elbows won't straighten ("all that bending") he has lost neither his enthusiasm nor his appetite for a six day week. On his day off, he looks after his greenhouse and his three gardens.

Famously outspoken in Premier Passions, the five part fly-on-the-wall television documentary about Sunderland's last season at Roker Park, he was the only person for whom a bleep test seemed unnecessary.

Manager Peter Reid, conversely, managed 15 f-words in one sentence. "It made Roy 'Chubby' Brown look like an advert for Blue Peter," observed the fanzine A Love Supreme at the time.

"Every time Tommy Porter came on the screen we listened and nodded," ALS added.

At City's handsome but altogether humbler stadium, Tommy swears he's never been happier in his life - but as well a good groundsman might, calls a spade a spade, nonetheless.

"In my opinion Peter Reid was a nasty piece of work. They were unhappy days and I didn't like him at all to be quite honest.

"I've had more respect here than I ever had at Sunderland.

"It became strange. They didn't seem to like me working. I've never been with better people than the chairman and the lads here."

The darkest cloud over the Stadium of Light came after a 1998-99 match with Stockport County, played on a covering of snow and ice.

Though Tommy, not allowed a boiler room key, had been at the ground since 5am, Reid blamed him for the frozen patches and threatened to sack him.

"I had him by the collar. Bobby Saxton, the assistant manager, had to drag me off," Tommy admits.

"John Fickling, the chief executive, tried to tell me that it was all a bit of fun but at my age I didn't need fun like that. Sunderland was just no good."

He joined Durham City, where Sunderland's reserve side play most home games, three years after the New Ferens Ground was opened in 1995 and has transformed the pitch from waterlogged wasteland to manicured perfection.

"The potential and the facilities were amazing but the pitch was horrendous, absolutely bloody horrendous," he recalls. "We had a massive water problem, it just wasn't draining and it was getting worse.

"It turned out that among much else the pipes weren't even laid square across the pitch.

"The bloke who laid them must have gone out on a tractor and closed his eyes. You could never in a million years dream that anyone could do a job like that."

City chairman Stewart Dawson is overwhelmed by his down to earth approach. "Tommy more or less lives on that field, we should pitch him a tent there.

"The FA judged the competition not at the start of the season but the end when we'd played 70-odd games on it.

"Thanks to Tommy, it was as immaculate then as it had been on the first day."

A lifelong Sunderland fan, Tommy recalls sitting on his father's shoulders at the Roker End, trying to avoid decapitation from the swirling rattles.

Childhood favourites included goalkeeper Johnny Mapson and Welsh forward Trevor Ford - "my sort of player, honest and fearless" - though Charlie Hurley remains his all-time hero with Kevin Ball close behind.

"Sunderland daft and an absolute gentleman," he says.

After working on the farm, in the shipyards and on the buildings - as still they say on Wearside - he answered 20 years ago an advert for a groundsman at the Charlie Hurley centre in Whitburn.

Fred Bailey, then the stadium manager, told him if he didn't put his back into it and in doing so was preaching to the converted.

"My father was a great believer in working as much as you could, giving it everything, and I just followed him.

"He was a fantastic man who wouldn't hurt a soul, and he believed that if you did a job you did it right.

"If I only want to put a screw into the wall it has to be done properly. That's the way I was taught by my father and that'll be the way until my dying day."

Without formal training - "I just kept my eyes open and my mouth shut until I'd worked out what was what" - he did so well at Whitburn that he reluctantly accepted the head groundsman's position.

"I knew the basics and I thought that grass was a football club's number one asset. Hard work, common sense and dedication did the rest."

Denis Smith, his first manager, remains his favourite - "people said he was arrogant, but he appreciated what you did". Reid, unequivocally, is the one with expletives deleted.

At Durham, Thursdays off, he can be found at all hours on the ground, more lines than an errant schoolboy.

His wife sometimes get a bit upset, he says, amends "sometimes" to "most days" and adds (as well he might) that he'd never find a better woman.

"My life has had lots of challenges but there was never a bigger one than getting Durham City right. That award's fantastic, it means everything.

"I think the pitch is probably 99 per cent right now, but we'll have to see what the winter throws at it."

Whatever it brings, whatever the storms, Tommy Porter will be grafting away in the middle - a septuagenarian blissfully out to grass.

Backtrack briefs...

The prolific Hunter Davies has a handsome new book called "Boots, balls and haircuts", sub-titled "An illustrated history of football from then to now."

On page 78 there's a picture of Barnsley FC's mascot in 1910, astride which unfortunate beast sits a gentleman who, some might say, looks an even bigger ass.

Davies also draws attention to the "National telephone number" - 320 - on the wall, though it is for other reasons that we reproduce the photograph here.

The poor dumb animal saddled with the responsibility of bringing good luck to Barnsley answered to the name of Amos.

Davies's carefully researched tome (Cassell, £20) also notes that The Northern Echo Football Guide - which in 1914 had 178 pages and cost but a penny - was concerned all those years ago with transfer fee fiddles.

Our man wrote of sops to players, of illegal back handers and of "backsheesh."

One player, he added, demanded a "preposterous amount" for the removal of his furniture. Some things, says Hunter Davies, never change.

Unexpected excitement at Marske United v Jarrow Roofing on Tuesday evening when word arrived that Michael Skelton - one of Great Britain and Ireland's Walker Cup heroes last weekend - would probably be among the crowd.

The 19-year-old is a Marske-by-the-Sea lad, frequent twelfth man for the village cricket team, answers thereabouts to Tilty - a nickname several times picked up by the television cameras on a Ganton banner.

The official explanation, they said at the football, was that young Skelton is so laid back he's almost horizontal.

The truth, they whispered - for the hour's hero didn't make it - offered a different angle altogether.

A little sunny period, Tuesday's column told how Tyne Tees Television weatherman Bob Johnson had witnessed Berwick Rangers fans throwing sticks of celery at visiting Stranraer supporters. John Briggs in Darlington digs a little deeper into the vegetable patch.

It happened, reports John, when two supporters ran out behind the teams and started lobbing celery into the Stranraer section of the stand.

Though they were ejected by stewards, the police couldn't make anything stick.

"I drove 200 miles only for some fat bearded git to bombard me with celery," complained a Blues fan on the Berwick website.

"Vegiman" replied that it was a satirical protest at something which had happened at Stranraer. Border line barmy, more like.

Still with the Scots, Tuesday's report from Inverness Clachnacuddin reminded veteran scout Jack Watson - 83 and still patrolling the North for Bristol City - of the time in the harsh winter of 1977 that Middlesbrough signed David Shearer from Clach.

"I was with the Boro at the time and there were problems with the paperwork.

"Harold Shepherdson, the assistant manager, said that if we didn't get it sorted out I'd have to get myself to the top end of Scotland.

"Luckily it was resolved at the last minute. That night it started snowing in Inverness and never stopped again for a week."

Shearer - Duncan's brother, not Alan's - hit 23 goals in 97 League appearances before several years with lower league teams. Now 44, he is believed still to be in the Billingham area.

Jack's also a bit apprehensive about tomorrow, last of the cricket season, when Shildon Railway - bottom by a main line length of the Durham County League - take on Crook, one above them.

The Railwaymen, of whom Jack's chairman, haven't won a match of any sort for two and a half years. "If we're going to do it, it would be a great way to bow out," he says - and next season they're contemplating a professional.

An e-mail from John Armstrong, meanwhile, notes that Witton-le-Wear will retain their place in the top division of the Darlington and District with three grandfathers regularly in the team.

Old, old story, of course, but is it - John wonders - some kind of a record?

And finally...

Newcastle United's seven Premiership goalkeepers (Backtrack, September 9) have been Given, Harper, Hislop, Hooper, Karelese, Srnicek and Wright.

Since we've been talking about Durham City, readers are today invited to name the future England international - a goal in each of his nine internationals - who played for City in Third Division North days in the 1920s.

More memories on Tuesday.

Published: 12/09/2003