Football cards most definitely worth a packet

The attraction wasn't the gum, it has to be said - some of us were never awfully adroit at forever blowing bubbly - but the football cards which came, "free", with every purchase.

There were two sets, 24 in each. The first was drawn, the second photographed; in both cases, the players usually looked like they were rehearsing for the national hokey-cokey championship.

You wouldn't swap them for anything, though - not now that "fag cards" are increasingly worth a packet.

J E Doig is responsible for this most recent reverie. Sunderland's long serving goalkeeper around the turn of the 19th century, he was featured - as last week's column noted - on the card that earlier this month brought a world record £1600 at auction.

We'd called him Ned. Black Cats fan John Briggs not only e-mailed to insist that he was known as Ted and that at 41 years and 165 days became Liverpool's oldest player, but subsequently - by way of early Christmas present - brought round to the pub a 1989 publication called The Illustrated Footballer, about cigarette cards and their like.

Chic bubble gum was "unpalatable", it says - blow that for being mealy mouthed - though the authors liked the cards a bit better.

Cigarette cards have been flicking around since the 1890s, initially intended as stiffeners for a soft packet, though other card carrying companies have ranged from Wayfarer raincoats to Barratt's sweet cigarettes, from Subbuteo to the National Spastics Society.

Early issues featured men with real footballers names like Parsonage and Puddefoot, Oxspring and Wedlock, and some - like J H Peddie of Newcastle United - pictured in stiff collar and tie, as if told by their mams that weren't having their photograph taken looking some common footballer.

Published by Breedon and compiled by Tony Ambrosen, the book not only includes two cards of the enduring Mr Doig but former North-East heroes like David Halliday, still Sunderland's record scorer in a season, George Camsell, the Esh Winning lad who hit 59 in a year for Middlesbrough and Charlie Roberts, who played for Cockfield before Manchester United and became a combative early chairman of the players' union.

They were issued by brands like Flag and Front Bench, Scissors and Egyptian Sunbeams and - not many people may know this - Ogden's Tabs. Tabs, in this neck of the necropolis, they remain.

John Sinclair Ltd, a Newcastle-upon-Tyne cigarette company, even produced in the 1930s a set of 50 Well Known Footballers (North-East Counties) with photographed heads on caricature bodies.

Ardath, whose cards still occasionally turn up - as good dabbers should - issued team pictures of everyone from Shiney Row St Oswald's onwards.

The Chix cards vanished with youth's first flush. - bubble memory, no more.

DAMMIT, if All The Lads - Garth Dykes' and Doug Lamming's complete biography of Sunderland footballers - didn't also thud yesterday onto the overcrowded desk.

J E Doig first played for them in September 1890, after which the club was fined £25 and became the first Football League club to have two points deducted after he was found still to be registered with Blackburn.

The wrong 'un proved the right man for the job, however, making 456 appearances in 14 seasons and hardly ever missing a game.

His cap was a semi-permanent fixture, worn - it was said - to conceal his rapidly receding locks. In one match, it's reckoned that after a melee he was far more interested in finding his cap than defending his goal.

"Apocryphal", say the authors.

He won five Scottish caps, was 42 when he finished his career at St Helens Recreation and was known throughout his Sunderland career as Ned.

ANOTHER coincidence, another purple package, a video called "Raw Power - the Art of Destruction" arrived yesterday. It's Christmas, isn't it?

The coincidence is that it stars John Robinson - once one of the Timothy Hackworth termagants, though his greatest prowess was at marbles. Now he is among Britain's leading martial arts exponents.

Still in Shildon, John goes around breaking things - wood, bricks, concrete, coconuts - usually with bare hands or feet and often in multiples. "The techniques are extremely dangerous and should not be attempted without proper training and supervision," it warns.

The video - featuring both action film, including record attempts, and tips on training and conditioning - is dedicated to his 84-year-old father Joe, a jungle fighter and Burma Star veteran with whom John featured in last month's Local Heroes awards.

Away from the action, of course, they're both truly gentle men. The video, price £13.50, will be available over the Internet in the next few days - www.breakingtechniques.com

THOUGH the match itself could not be defrosted, the crack in West Auckland's clubhouse on Tuesday evening turned again to 65-year-old George Elliott, still refereeing (Backtrack, December 4) after all these years.

Alan Oliver, West's mercurial manager, recalled a Sunday morning match at Bishop Auckland between Cockton Hill and Newton Aycliffe WMCs in which George - "like a little egg on legs," said Alan, memorably - had drawn the goal line in favour of the visitors.

Cockton Hill, cut up, followed him all the way back to the centre circle. "How Geordie, man, that was never a goal" they protested.

"Read tomorrow's Northern Echo," said George, and continued serenely on his way.

SINCE it is from little bean sprouts that giant bean stalks grow, pantomime practitioners may wish to note the story of Sunderland nut Sean Landless, aged 15.

Last Christmas, Sean played one of the title roles - Jack, not the beanstalk - in the school panto at Southmoor comprehensive in Sunderland.

His drama teacher thought him so good she put him forward for a leading role in Gabriel and Me - a film co-starring Celtic fan Billy Connolly. He got the part and was hailed as the next Billy Elliott, the most exciting thing to happen to a Sunderland fan since nineteen seventy... long gone.

Sean, who watched from his dad's shoulders in the Clock Stand, played Jimmy Spud - a Newcastle supporter's son - and then had to explain himself before the world's media at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

The role first required him to wear a Newcastle United shirt and then turn himself into an angel to save his cancer stricken father.

"I had to dress up in a sort of feather dress, but wearing a Newcastle shirt was far worse," he said.

He is interviewed by Colin Randall, Shildon lad, in the Christmas issue of Sunderland's southern supporters magazine Wear Down South. Since Gabril, however, he has had just one part - in something called Danny and his Amazing Teeth. He faces 11 GCSEs in the summer and dreams of becoming a pilot. The next Billy Elliott is presently between engagements.

THE Sunderland fanzine 'A Love Supreme', incidentally, carries a letter from Stephen Meldrum, a medical student, who has discovered a proper poorly condition called Newcastle Disease - "an acute, highly contagious viral disease carried by birds and first observed in Newcastle."

Stephen makes his own prognosis. "As everyone has always suspected, it is now officially inadvisable to approach a Geordie lass."

THE Spennymoor Boxing Academy lads are back from Chicago. Inevitably, reports Hodgy, they were a hurricane through the Windy City.

As well as winning 6-4, they did the Sears Tower, saw the Chicago Bears play ("nowt for the Premiership to worry about"), ate like hyenas and went in a stretch limousine to watch the Muhammed Ali story. Sadly, the theatre proved so great a culture shock to 13-year-old Kyle Ellis that his snoring kept all the others awake.

The Spennymoor gang also visited the grave of Alphonse Capone - Chicago's most infamous son - where our photograph shows chief coach Robbie Ellis doing whatever seemed appropriate at the time.

The American boxers make the return trip in April - Durham cathedral, Beamish Museum and the Metro Centre already on the itinerary.

"And if we can find out where Mary Ann Cotton's buried," says Hodgy, "who knows...."

THE reason last Friday's column had to pay £6 for a decorous Darlington RFC calendar was that David Gardner ("Fix sec. and past pres.) pleaded poverty.

"I lose all my pension on the golf course to early retired bank managers," he said.

The fix sec, however, is in danger of landing in a bit of a pickle himself. "He can obviously ill afford to send you one of the club's calendars if he does lose all his pension since he plays for 30p a round and 10p for birdies," writes fellow golfer Tony Gray from Barnard Castle.

Since it's Christmas, however, Tony also offers the benefit of the doubt. "Perhaps David is being a trifle hyperbolic, as he is now an OAP with all the wealth that that brings."

THE only man to fight for the world heavyweight boxing title in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (Backtrack, December 11) was Larry Holmes.

Today, a question pinched from the ever excellent programme of Darlington Greyhounds FC, to whom compliments of the season - who is both the youngest and the oldest footballer to play for Leeds United?

It may little avail to add that today is his birthday. An answer, at any rate, on Tuesday

Published: 14/12/01