There's a little triangle of land opposite Redcar sea front which locally was known as Titty Bottle Park, the place the young mums would sit in order to drip feed their offspring.

Now they call it Bog Island. It's where the public toilets are and, marooned next to them, the tourist information centre where former Middlesbrough and Darlington footballer Don Burluraux has just become part-time manager.

A coruscatingly cold December day, sand blasted 100 yards from the beach, steel sea shivering, may not be high season for tourism in Redcar.

In the two hours of the column's catch-up there are no tourists and just one telephone caller, wondering what was on at the pictures.

Too polite and too professional to suggest they ring the cinema directly, Don does it himself. "You'd be surprised," he says, "how many people come in here to ask where the toilets are."

It would be wholly mistaken, however, to suppose that at 51 the now grounded flying winger is washed up on Bog Island or that Redcar is a last resort.

Rather he is manifestly content, radiates his enthusiasm for the new job, admits that there may be easier places to sell.

"I can't promote Redcar as it was, I have to promote it as it is. I love the area, it's where I'm from, I don't mind where I'm promoting so long as it's around here. The real beauty of it is that I'm learning something every day."

In his spare time he also runs a North Yorkshire Moors website (www.northyorkshiremoors.com) which attracts 6,000 hits a month, 150,000 to date.

"We used to run up and down the Cleveland Hills at Middlesbrough, but that was work. You never got time to look at the scenery because you were always looking at your feet, to make sure you didn't break your ankle.

"My grandfather used to sell fresh fish from a horse and cart around the moors, but it's only in recent years that I began fully to realise how marvellous it is up there.

"The media love to give a bad image of this area. Whenever they televise a Boro match, or Redcar Races, the cameras always pan in from ICI, or the docks. Why don't they do it from Roseberry Topping?"

He was born in North Skelton, inland from Saltburn, scored 14 on his debut for Staithes Juniors against Goldsborough - "we won 32-1, I still don't know how they got the one" - wanted nothing more when pulling the Christmas wishbone than to be a professional footballer for Middlesbrough.

The chance came for the long-haired likely lad when a telegram arrived at Guisborough Grammar School from Boro assistant manager Harold Shepherdson, asking him to report for a youth match that night.

He signed professionally at 17, his debut a 2-1 over Luton Town in which Malcolm Macdonald scored for the Hatters and the itinerant Hughie McIlmoyle twice for Middlesbrough.

There were only four further first team matches, however, before a serious ankle injury against Blackpool. "This lad slid at me with both feet and wrapped his foot around my trailing leg.

"I thought I'd snapped my ankle but the trainer said I'd run it off. I lasted another ten minutes."

Ligaments were torn and the Achilles tendon damaged. "The specialist said it would have been better if I'd broken it," Don recalls.

Unable to regain his place, he played three or four games on loan at York City, scored his first Football League goal - "a header, I must have had my eyes shut" - signed for Darlington on his 21st birthday and married Jean, his childhood sweetheart from the next village, soon afterwards.

"It was a Thursday. Our honeymoon was one night in the Post House at Thornaby and then back in for training next day.

"On the Saturday against Northampton I scored from 20 yards. I can still hear this voice in the crowd - 'Burluraux, thoo should get married every week'."

He scored 12 more goals in 120 appearances, was named player of the year in 1972-73, still has the Frost Report video on life at Feethams.

The television programme coincided with a visit to the perennially struggling club of psychologist, self-publicist and general oddball Paul Trevillion, accompanied - smart move - by the singer Kathy Kirby.

"I thought it was a load of rubbish but he said he'd prepare us for the game against Cambridge, we beat them 6-0 and I scored the best goal I ever scored at Darlington."

Trevillion probably didn't know that Don was the only professional footballer to breed and show border canaries, a partnership with his brother. "We began with one pair and eventually had 110 cages," he recalls.

Whilst at Darlington he won a show at Newton Aycliffe - "it got in the paper, I took a bit of ribbing" - and in 1989 won the Scottish National. "Best in show - a bit like Crufts."

The ankle had continued to cause problems, however, treated at Darlington by the somewhat improbable method of alternate immersion in a bucket of hot water and a dousing with a cold hose.

"We called it H and C; the facilities were deplorable, no treatment room or anything.

"One time we were training in South Park, the manager saw that I was limping and made me sit with my foot in the river. That was medical treatment at Darlington."

In November 1975 he finally gave up the battle to play full-time football. "I remember thinking how unfair it was. I'd seen so many players reach their peak around 27 and I was finished at 24.

"I'd been so fit I could catch pigeons, never carried any spare weight. I was just a natural athlete, not like so who play well into their 30s."

Like his father and grandfather before him he eventually signed for Whitby Town - "they called my dad Battleaxe, right-back, hard as nails" - but gave up football three years later.

After several jobs around North Skelton he spent 14 years with ICI and its successors, was made redundant earlier this year, has been back in training for the tourism job.

Working part-time also gives him the chance to walk and photograph the North Yorkshire moors, more strands for his website.

"I don't make money out of it, in fact it costs me for more web space. It's not a five-minute job, I'll tell you, but I just love it."

Coats collared against the north wind, Redcar scurries past. Wherever they're paying a call, it's not the tourist information office.

Don Burluraux goes back to sorting brochures. For him it's the island of dreams.

Nev's bowling lacked punch

Another three minute round with Neville Meade, the British heavyweight boxing champion (Backtrack, December 10) who played Durham County League cricket for Tudhoe in the 1970s.

Jamaican by birth, Meade was based at RAF Catterick, lived subsequently in Darlington and was taken to Tudhoe by a friend. His reputation as a boxer may have been greater than his prowess as a cricketer, however.

"His run-up was reminiscent of Charlie Griffiths and Wes Hall, but unfortunately that's where the similarity ended," says John Davies, a teammate who still plays for Tudhoe.

His waywardness is also recalled by Charlie Walker, the Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme, who played several times for the village side against RAF Catterick - very fast, says Charlie, but had difficulty in keeping the plane on the aircraft carrier.

"The ball used to go all over the place, especially difficult on a ground like Eryholme's."

While Mr Meade was clearly not a man with whom to argue, his batting may also have been unexceptional. John Davies remembers him as "typical lower-order cavalier Caribbean, without much success."

In other words, says John, he was a slogger.

Neville, who at 34 became Britain's oldest first time champ, was last heard of in Swansea. A nice young lady from the South Wales Evening Post is presently pursuing enquiries in the principality .

Bulldog Billy Teesdale, that other ineffable all-rounder, rings about a sponsored walk planned by Evenwood Cricket Club members on January 18.

It's principally in aid of the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle and of cystic fibrosis research, a charity further boosted by £320 at an Evenwood function last weekend and another couple of quid when the Bulldog was fined for "looking like a tramp."

It was his work clothes, he says, and then - remembering the ladies and gentlemen at the Nash - pleads the umpteenth amendment. "I'm not supposed to have any, am I?"

Denis Adair in Meadowfield, near Durham, boosts the always incomplete list of North-East players who went to Norwich (Backtrack, Tuesday) by recalling former Browney Junior and schools international Tom Halliday, who went from Sunderland to Darlington - 127 appearances between 1928-32 - and thence to Carrow Road. Tom died in 1975.

His brother Jim - "a heart 87-year-old," says Denis - still lives in Langley Moor.

Remember the little story in Tuesday's column about Jackie Traynor, the keen young referee from Stanley whose plans for a good night's sleep before a big match were threatened by his wife's amorously alternative agenda?

Jackie was also assigned the other day to a first time appointment as assistant ref at Blyth Spartans, a further difficulty arising when he rang the referee to announce that he was lost.

"There's a sign that say 'Alnwick 17 miles'," he added.

Redirected but still unable to find the ground, he stopped at a garage, where a friendly polliss suggested he follow her.

"I've occasionally heard of a ref getting a police escort from the ground," says our informative man in black.

"It's the first time I've known of him getting a police escort to it."

And finally...

The remarkable thing about the Newcastle United team which beat Leeds on October 6 1928 (Backtrack, December 10) was that there wasn't a single Englishman in it.

Brian Shaw in Shildon today invites the identity of the only team to have played an FA Cup final on five different grounds.

The final word, once more, on Tuesday

Published: 13/12/2002