Hopper still in full voice

Save for the corn not being as high as an elephant's eye, "Oh what a beautiful morning" would have been every bit as appropriate.

"It'll be hossing down in June," says Keith Hopper.

A Durham County man at both cricket and football, Keith turned down Chelsea, averaged almost 40 with the bat last season and was also in the amateur operatic society.

April 5 should be a pretty wonderful day, too - the dear old fellow hits 70 not out. Two weeks later, keen of eye and fleet of foot, he'll happily be back at the wicket.

He was a Shildon lad pre-nationalisation, played cricket at 12 for the LNER II, but only managed a game of football at Timothy Hackworth juniors on delirious days like Wednesday. If it wasn't lovely out, he regrets, they'd have a story instead.

Originally a fast bowler, he became a formidable bat; once a left-back, he ended up on the right wing. "Perhaps they just wanted me out of the road," he says.

He wears wonderfully, skis regularly, has a cricketer's well-creased hands, but few of the athlete's aches. "I've looked after myself well enough, but I still enjoy a couple of pints," he says.

For the past 21 years he has also been chairman of Bishop Auckland Cricket Club, insists that he'd happily put his feet up in the pavilion if enough youngsters wanted to play.

They don't, an ever larger cloud on a bright Spring horizon.

"Unfortunately the young 'uns are more concerned about their love lives, about how much beer they had down their neck on Friday night and how much they're going to get down on Saturday night," says Keith.

"They're reluctant to play in the NYSD League because it finishes quite late. They want to be finished at six and down the town drinking by seven.

"We've maybe had 1,000 juniors through the club since I became chairman and I doubt if a dozen of them are playing cricket now.

"They want everything instant - instant coffee, instant sex, so little concentration that even a half hour television programme has to have a break in the middle.

"If things don't improve there'll be no local cricket at this standard in five years. It's as bad as that."

His fears are much the same for local football, in which he was a prolific scorer for 20 years.

"The costs of running a team at Northern League level are horrendous and there's neither the interest nor the ability to support it.

"It's all about money and the money's just not there. I watched a team last week, maybe £60 or £70 a man, and some of them couldn't kick the back door and run."

We are old friends and he should not be misunderstood: far from curmudgeonly he is simply concerned, far from reactionary, realistic.

As a footballer he rarely strayed from south Durham - Shildon, Evenwood, Crook, West Auckland - though there was a seaside break with Whitby Town and an African tour with the illustrious Middlesex Wanderers, the only non-international on the trip and the highlight of a distinguished sporting career.

He also had a couple of manager's jobs, with no great success. "It was hard work, you were dealing with duck egg directors," he says.

As a cricketer he had three spells with Bishop Auckland, was professional with Crook and with Craghead, played four times for Durham county in 1960 - hitting 63 against Yorkshire II on his debut - and was recalled, at 43, 16 years later.

He blames politics for the interruption. "The county was run from the north in those days. I was kept out by a feller called Charlie Lamb - good batsman, didn't bowl, couldn't field if hell had him."

His scrapbook, down dusted for the impending celebration, follows him from a snake-belted youngster in the Bishop Auckland Grammar School cricket team, through RAF days to county call-up.

In the RAF football team he's pictured alongside Bryan Douglas, a year his junior, who two years later won the first of 36 England caps.

"He was inside left, bloody useless. I remember telling him he'd never be an inside left as long as I lived," says Keith. "I was right, he got his caps at outside right."

The pages recall stylish centuries and handsome hat-tricks, the 13 goals he scored in a school match at Helmington Row and the seven for Shildon, against Stanley United.

"It should have been eight. The ball rebounded off the post and me and Jim Ramshaw kicked it into the net at the same time. I told Jim I'd scored seven already so he could have it; that's how daft I was."

Mostly the cuttings are of the old home town - 1950s FA Cup ties against Scunthorpe and Oldham and the occasion in 1959 when the Railwaymen reached the Amateur Cup quarter-final for the second and last time, drawn at home to Walthamstow Avenue.

"Cup fever hits Shildon," said the headline and some of us still remember suffering. We lost, alas, after a replay.

"It was funny playing for your home town team because everyone seemed to know you. I remember going to sing in the choir on a Sunday and people would cross to the other side of the road, like in the Good Samaritan, because I'd had a bad game the day before."

Though both Chelsea and West Ham chased him, he had a promising career with the Trustee Savings Bank before training as a PE teacher. "My parents advised me against," he says.

"There was no money in football in those days."

These days he lives with the heroic Helen in Middleton St George, near Darlington and plans a belated family party in July - by which time there should be several hundred more runs on the board.

After a Backtrack birthday pint he headed back to the sun-blessed square, singing, seventies songs, as he went.

Great moments in sport: after years of knocking around the nether regions of dominoes, the Brainless Britannia B team has at last been promoted from Division D of the Darlington and District 5s and 3s League.

It's possible we may even be champions: the Grey Horse, dark horse, need to win both their remaining games to take it on points difference.

Promotion was assured by victory at the Railway Tavern on Monday night, despite a protest by the home team that one of the Brit awards boys - who perhaps needs little identification - persistently sang Peter, Paul and Mary's greatest hits during play.

One problem remains: rumours that the league is to be reorganised from four divisions into three could mean that despite promotion we shall still be on the bottom rung. We'll sue, of course.

Stan Cummins, tipped to be the first £1m footballer and transferred from Middlesbrough to Sunderland for £300,000 in 1979, is on the move again.

After a bit of a snarl-up at Ferryhill Greyhound, as Tuesday's column suggested, Stan has joined Billingham Wanderers for £3.

"That was the cost of the transfer form. I expect he's worth it," says team manager Ray Morton, a Cleveland police inspector.

At the Wanderers he joins 46-year-old Ged Forrest, veteran of almost 500 Football League games for Rotherham United and Southampton, and former Middlesbrough player Charlie Bell, another senior polliss.

Stan's a bairn of 44. "His legs might be getting on," says Ray, "but his brain's as good as ever."

Another rite of Spring: the handbook of the Darlington and District Cricket League, now sponsored by cricket ball manufacturer Oxbridge, has arrived.

Charlie Walker, Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme, is listed among the umpires.

An anxious e-mail follows to league president Brian Dobinson: could it be that after 50 years with the village club on the south bank of the Tees, Charlie has finally hung up his cricket boots?

Brian's reply is mercifully quick - "you must be joking, Charlie will never hang up his boots," it says.

PS, adds Brian: he's a very good umpire as well.

The piece in Wednesday's paper about Eva Askquith, the fast track motor bike rider from Bedale, stirred memories for Ken Griffin. He saw her dirt tracking at Leeds in 1930.

Among Ken's friends were the speedway riding Langton brothers, Oliver and Eric, who often competed against her.

"The trouble is," Oliver would remark, "that if you beat her you're considered a cad and if you didn't you're thought a cissie."

Ken's in Harmby, near Leyburn.

It means, he translates, that with women you just can't win.

Tuesday's column sought the identity of 11 England football internationals since 1993 whose surname has four letters. Though most discerned Coles to Newcastle, and elsewhere, no one managed the set.

Apart from Ashley, Joe and Andy Cole they are Paul Ince, Michael Owen, Dennis Wise, Nicky Butt, Michael Gray, Kieron Dyer, David Dunn and Ledley King.

Readers are today invited to name the player who in 1991 and 1998 finished on the losing side for different clubs in the FA Cup final.

The column returns on April 8.

Published: 28/03/2003