Citizen Honour hoping to reward City with success

One of three Albany Northern League teams in the last 16 of the Carlsberg FA Vase, they're at home to St Neots - Huntingdonshire way - with a team that includes former Sunderland players Richard Ord and Gary Bennett, until recently Darlington's manager.

"There are players here who've been at Manchester United and all over, but the tingle is every bit as real," says Brian Honour, the City manager.

"I've had 20 years in professional football and never known a better buzz around the place than this."

Honour, familiarly and diminutively known as Little Jackie, became a local lad legend at Hartlepool United and was acting manager until Chris Turner's appointment.

Durham may only be a managerial apprenticeship, he admits, but he is loving, and learning, every minute.

"There's no way I regard this as a step down. I believe that this club is as professional as it's possible to be in non-league football and I've always loved the camaraderie, the banter and the rivalry of the Northern League."

Blackhall boy, still just 37, he is a lovely, unassuming, talkative chap with a football brain reckoned as sharp as the wind off Hartlepool west dock.

Just about the only improvement, in fact, would be for him also to become manager of the Durham Jail team, thus justifying a headline about Honour Among Thieves.

He was an Aston Villa schoolboy, rejected for being too small, invited instead for a trial at Darlington in 1980.

They played in the South Park, out the back. After just 20 minutes he was told that Quakers manager Billy Elliott wanted to see him in the office.

"I thought here we go again," he recalls. "It seemed like another case of picking on the skinny, eight stone weakling, if you like."

Instead Elliott offered him a two year apprenticeship, followed by a two year professional contract, 86 first team appearances but a free transfer when Cyril Knowles took over in 1984.

He signed for Peterlee, close to home, in the Northern League and was trying to keep warm at Tow Law the following January when Hartlepool manager Billy Horner decided to take to the hills.

"For some reason Tow Law, of all places, was one of the few games that had survived the weather," recalls Honour. "Billy had heard I was doing OK, offered me a deal and I stayed 15 years."

The fans loved him, good stuff in a particularly small bundle. "I always tried to give 100 per cent and I think Hartlepool people appreciated that," he says.

"There were lots and lots of players with more ability than I had but they recognised that I was one of them and was prepared to roll my sleeves up for them.

"I enjoyed a good relationship, a bit of kidology with the Mill House stand. In a way it was a bit romantic; you can call it corny, but it was."

Though his playing career ended early - nine operations on his right knee, three on the left - he remained as a coach. "At first I'd go anywhere for a game of football, but even if I played for my local in Blackhall on a Sunday morning it would be Thursday before the stiffness went.

"Now even the gentlest of five-a-sides plays hell with my knees."

Stewart Dawson, the City chairman and visionary behind the handsome New Ferens Park ground in Belmont, spotted him coaching a group of youngsters.

"I'd known Jackie for years but I didn't realise how good a coach he was. "Even though the kids were coming off the field knackered, they had smiles on their faces because he'd made it so interesting.

"They probably didn't realise quite how much he'd taught them but you could see what a great coach he was. He has the same sort of rapport with the players here."

After two months of this season, however, Honour was ready to walk away. City had lost in the League Cup to Horden from the second division - "absolutely devastating, a mile up the road from Blackhall and all my friends and family there" - and them 3-1 at home to League champions Bedlington.

"I just felt that I'd gone as far as I could with the players. Some had been there since they were 15 or 16, I wondered if I was repeating myself. Maybe another man at the helm would help."

After a meeting with the senior players and another with the supportive chairman - "It was very good of him" - he agreed to stay. Honour switched to 4-4-2, brought wingers more greatly into play, recruited Bennett, still fit at 40, into central midfield.

Like 31-year-old Dickie Ord - "a Co Durham colliery lad, like me" - he has been fantastic, says Honour.

"They're my managers on the field, always urging, always encouraging. We don't ask Gary to train because he's still doing it with Darlington but he's never missed a game."

Ord, forced to retire from full time football through injury, is also eased through the week - "he knows best how his back and his knee are" - so that he can play on Saturdays.

"They're a joy to manage, no airs and graces of 'Look at me'. They came here for football reasons, I didn't have to beg them.."

City still wouldn't have been in the last 16, however, but for 38-year-old Michael Taylor - "Ah," says the chairman wistfully, "owld Mickey" - who not only scored a late winner at Warrington but came on against Mossley when Durham were 2-0 down with 15 minutes remaining.

"He wasn't fit, his groin was hanging by a thread and he'd just come off night shift, but it was half past four and I just thought there was nothing to lose."

Taylor scored twice to take the game into extra time and hit the winner when everyone expected to be at home in front of the fire. "It was at that moment," says Honour, "that I knew I was glad I'd stayed."

He also coaches 12 hours a week, and gets first pick, at the East Durham College football academy in Peterlee.

Nothing in his part time contract with Durham City, however, said that he should have been there at 10.15 on Wednesday morning, drinking tea with the ground staff volunteers - "tremendous people" - briefing the chairman, answering the telephone. (His mobile plays Blaydon Races; maybe they had nothing by the Monkeys.)

Last Saturday ("part of the job") he'd been down to watch St Neots. "There was a gale blowing and not much football played. I don't want to sound over-confident, but I think we can win. I learned what I wanted to learn."

Most nights he is either taking training, talking sport or watching other teams in action. "I book my wife in on Sundays," he says.

"She understands because it's football. Whether it's Manchester United or Durham City, I'd be awfully miserable without it."

Apropos of little, Tuesday's column recalled the days ("circa 1966") when team manager Brian Clough would drive the Hartlepools United bus.

Not so, says retired teacher Ian Whittaker - now in Durham - it was his successor Angus McLean, the man who also steered Pools to their first ever promotion.

(It was at the end of that season, perhaps as another economy measure, that they dropped the final "s". Hartlepools United reached the third division but never played in it.)

"McLean was always coming up with daft money saving ideas. It was a crew bus and couldn't have been very comfortable" says Ian.

"Cloughy was no doubt a bit eccentric, but Angus McLean was worse."

Ed Law's Hartlepool history mentions nothing of it. The Echo's library has a picture of the young Clough on what appears to be a Palm Beach bicycle, but nothing else.

The column's recollection remains that, however motley the crew, it was Brian Clough who drove them.

Clearly it is time to call in the intrepid Mr Hails....

Mark Simpson's fly-on-the-wall film about Bishop Auckland FC - Three Tony's, Two Blues, One Goal - won a highly commended at the Royal Television Society's northern awards.

For Mark - Peterlee lad, Sunderland grad, son of the organiser of the world egg jarping championships - things have just got even better. He starts on Monday as Hartlepool United's media man.

So who drove the bus then, Mark?

That little book about Blyth Spartans 1977-78 FA Cup run has now arrived, particularly memorable for club captain John Waterson's meeting after the fourth round win over Stoke with the local Conservative candidate.

Spartans, historically, had been drawn at Wrexham. "Well, at least you haven't so far to travel this time," said the band waggoned Tory.

Waterson asked why not. "Well, it's not that far to Hexham, is it?" said the Tory.

He lost by about three million votes.

Whatever the other reasons for remembering February 6 1952, Tom Peacock was watching Middlesbrough's 4-1 FA Cup hammering by Doncaster Rovers at Ayresome Park.

"Peter Doherty was incredible that day, just seemed to wave his finger at the ball and it did what he wanted," recalls Tom, from High Coniscliffe, near Darlington.

Years afterwards he was a North Riding polliss, on duty at Thirsk races, when a trainer ("chap called Adams from Northallerton, I think") offered the usual horse's mouth information.

A few minutes later the same Peter Doherty, capped 16 times for Northern Ireland, asked PC Peacock if he knew of a good thing. It won at 7-1.

"I'd had £1 on which was just about a week's wages in those days," says Tom. "Mr Doherty stopped by to thank me, but the only tip was the one I'd given him."

Rotherham United's 1991 claim to FA Cup fame (Backtrack, February 5) was that they became the first side to win on penalties.

Brian Shaw, again: who was the first knight to become a Football League manager when he joined Birmingham City in 1977?

More knight shifts, and some definitive Lewes ends, when the column returns on Tuesday.