Time almost up for Kingsway

There are those who will not only recall Sharratt building snowmen on the goal line, but the length of Sharratt's carrot and that it came from Cockton Hill Co-op.

There are Bishop Auckland folk with vivid memories of the majestic Hardisty, who still hone the precision of Bradley's left foot, who not only know that cast iron Nimmins liked a couple of pre-match pints in the Sportsman but swear they could smell it 20 yards away on his breath.

All I remember is getting beat.

There will be those who not only helped swell the record 16,000 FA Cup crowd against Coventry City in 1952 but who saw someone peeing in the next bloke's back pocket; they will still picture the barefoot Nigerians or the bare headed Bobby Charlton; they will have seen the FA Amateur Cup held high so often around that lopsided old ground that it became almost an annual occurrence, like the club trip or tonsilitis.

They will recall Paisley, precocious, Lewin, lethal, McMenemy, flattering to conceive.

All I remember is getting beat, and that Kingsway always did a very good pie.

If old age sidles up as they say, that you can remember what happened 50 years ago but not what you had for tea, my recollection will be like a black hole. There will be nothing there at all, and the ears will implode in the middle.

If not the most handsome, Kingsway was without question the most famous amateur football ground in the country and Bishop Auckland much the most successful team.

On Wednesday, the Bishops made their penultimate appearance there. The match was appropriately forgettable.

They played Marine, named after a hotel in a Liverpool suburb, a bit of a relegation scrap in the UniBond premier division.

"Can you get the council to do something about my wheely bin?" asked a feller with a grey beard and a two-blue, true blue hat. It was the most exciting thing that happened.

There was also a chap who'd playing for Marine at Kingsway in the second round of the 1946-47 Amateur Cup, the days of purple prose Bishops like the diminutive Jackie Washington, Harry Teesdale and Ken Twigg.

He still had the programme, price one penny, lucky number 1717. Bishop Auckland won 4-0, watched by 6,000 on a snow storm surface, reached the semi-final and once again won the Northern League.

On Wednesday the crowd was 186, the programme £1, the grass growing where ten thousand pit boots once trod. The thousands have gone now, and not just to graveyards; they have gone to armchairs and to superstores and to place bad bets.

A notice outside the better-days ground announces that "due to relocation" its 1.2 acres are for sale, though its disposal to a sheltered housing charity is expected to be confirmed next week.

The cricket club, whose proximity makes it virtually a two sided ground, will remain on their own side of the boundary.

The stand, once grand, is tottering now. Among its 23 inhabitants is an old man in a young hat who's talking about former glories and about Rossi's caf, which may possibly have been synonymous.

The press box has nothing, and no one, to report.

Only the advertising hoardings seem greatly to have changed since the war. There are camera marts not cattle marts, electronics and ear piercing clinics, United Office Systems.

Once all that was ear piercing was the Kingsway cacophony. Once the United was a bus company, sevenpence return from the King Willie in Shildon and only to see us get beat.

A group of fans by the dusky Dellwood end is singing "We've got the worst floodlights in the land". In the luminous old days it didn't matter, not even about the shilling in the meter.

The match ends 0-0, goalless gore, a couple of kids seeking distraction by peering through a chink the clubhouse shutters at Man United on the television. A bloke in a blazer closes the gap, officially.

Billy Bell, Bishops' manager in the early 70s, observes 20 players within an eight yard radius. "We used to play like that at school," he says.

Afterwards, ever hospitable, club chairman Tony Duffy talks of plans to build a new ground - Conference standards, something to talk about - a couple of miles up the road at Tindale Crescent. Cloth and coat may force a reduction in the intended 10,000 capacity, however.

The final match is against Bradford Park Avenue on Saturday April 20, part of a "gala" weekend. There will be familiar faces, a few tears, though many will be glad to see the back of the blighted old place.

In the meantime, Bishop Auckland have signed a two year ground sharing agreement with Shildon where once more they'll be made to feel at home. Shildon, memory whispers, do a very good pie.

The respective managers in the 1982 Wear-Tees derby (Backtrack, April 9) were Alan Durban and Bobby Murdoch.

As a parting gesture to Kingsway, readers may today care to name as many as possible of the 16 post-war players who gained England amateur international honours while with Bishop Auckland.

The caps, and a view from the upper tier at Old Trafford, on Tuesday.

The day that Tow Law Town played at Wembley, May 9 1998, Harry Dixon stood in front of the much missed stadium surveying the thousands thronging up from the Underground.

As usual he wore several more woolly cardigans than strictly was necessary in 70 degree Springtime; as usual he said next to nothing.

Had Wembley still held 100,000, however, had the FA Carlsberg Vase final commandeered every sling-back seat in the place, it could never have been as full as Harry Dixon was.

As usual, his eyes said everything.

He had lived and loved Tow Law, and not just its fabled football club. On Monday his funeral takes place there. He died this week after a long illness, aged 81.

His father had been sub-postmaster at Eldon Lane before buying Tow Law post office in 1932. Harry took over from his mother in 1959 and thereafter nothing changed a jot, not even when the Post Office sent him on a computer course.

"Harry would go home and work the sums out for himself to see if the computer had got it right," recalls John Flynn, the football club's present chairman.

"The computer might not necessarily have been wrong, but Harry would never have got it wrong, either."

The back room at the post office resembled something from Beamish Museum, the serving area little more up to date.

Harry, who never swore, would periodically be heard muttering about "confounded modern devices" - by which he usually meant the telephone.

"You just can't get anything done for it," he'd protest, though "confounded" and "modern" also extended to Yale-type locks. Tow Law post office worked on the sneck.

Betty Deacon, who worked with him for 51 years, won the MBE for services to Her Majesty's mail. Harry was quietly delighted. "He was always right to the penny, everyone knew that," says Norman Deacon, Betty's husband and Harry's close friend.

"I don't think there has ever been a more genuine man walked the streets of Tow Law. I never heard him speak ill of anybody."

He'd become the Lawyers' treasurer in 1962, initially to help out for six months, and stayed until ill health forced his retirement from both football club and post office in 1999.

"If it hadn't been for that," says Norman, "he'd have been behind that counter still."

For almost 40 years the club's three principal officials remained the same - Harry Hodgson, chairman and now president, Bernard Fairbairn, secretary and still in office, Harry Dixon, treasurer.

"One of the most honest men I ever met," says Harry Hodgson, who after being invited to join the committee in 1961 went on holiday and ret urned to find himself chairman.

Tow Law post office, he recalls, was the football club office, too. "Lots of people who'd never have gone near the football club were persuaded to buy draw tickets by Harry and Betty. We lost a lot of business when they retired."

Unknown to most people, Harry - who never married - also gave thousands of pounds to club funds.

If the books didn't balance - that is to say, when expenditure inevitably exceeded income - he would ensure, from his own pocket, that they did.

When the club won the Northern League championship in 1995 - for the first time in 70 years - the treasurer's personal donation is believed to have exceeded £10,000.

"I was on the committee in those days and you didn't get to find out an awful lot, but I'm sure he was very generous," says John Flynn.

"If we were short we'd go to Harry," confirms Harry Hodgson. "He had his own ways and we were happy to let him get on with it. He was the most honest man alive."

Harry, as much flesh as a corner flag, had also been one of General Wingate's chindits in Burma - he didn't say much about that either - had been a Freemason for 53 years and was a member of the former Tow Law Urban District Council.

"He was very proud of Tow Law. Bad publicity used really to upset him," recalls Norman Deacon.

Harry's funeral is at 2.30pm next Monday in Tow Law parish church, after which we shall adjourn back to his beloved football club and toast the cherished memory of a truly unique man.

Published: 12?/04/2002