IN the not bad old days, Northern Echo sports writers had to hide their light beneath a pseudonym. There was Ranger and Nomad and, long dead and inexplicable, there was Chittabob and his daily jottings.

These multi-faceted columns would have appeared under the aegis of Micawber, not Mike Amos, a reflection of the intact but oft-tested belief that something will turn up.

Even that ever optimistic Dickensian, however - "mercurial and impecunious" says the Oxford Dictionary of English Literature, by way of further parallel - would have been dumbfounded at the serendipity with which today's offering was unearthed.

The alcohol influenced story of how William McReddie went from superstar to scrapheap, from pre-eminence to prison, precedes by 100 years the wilder excesses of today's hyperbolic heroes but mirrors them exactly.

It owes its exhuming to the opening of a new Methodist chapel at Castle Bolton, in Wensleydale, on Monday October 14, 1901.

The At Your Service column was up there on Sunday for what was probably the chapel's final service. Seeking meat for the ecclesiastical bone, we down dusted the Edwardian back copies.

That same mid-October day, 13 ponies had suffocated in a fire at Ouston pit, near Chester-le-Street, four Thornaby lads had been fined a shilling apiece for trespassing on the railway while ferreting for rats and there'd been a free fight, we reported, at Barnum and Bailey's circus.

Beneath the headline "Old footballer in trouble", the small print also recorded McReddie's jailing for two months for stealing potatoes worth 1/3d from a garden in Ormesby, Middlesbrough.

The defendant, the court heard, had been a professional footballer for 15 years, earning £7 a week - the David Beckham of his day.

It was colossal money for a working class lad. You could sail to Australia for 14 guineas, buy ten Homeward Bound cigarettes for threepence or (should the need arise) print 10,000 hand bills for 10/6d. Like the beer, fame went to McReddie's head.

He'd played professionally for Middlesbrough Ironopolis, three times Northern League winners in the 1890s, scored the first ever goal against Newcastle United, hit four in Manchester City's record 11-3 win over Lincoln in 1895 - City were then called Ardwick - and also played for Stoke City and Bolton.

He was also the North-East's top baseball player of the day, when crowds were said to "exceed the principal games of football" and the noise was "enough to hurl down the walls of Jericho."

Most extraordinary of all, however, was that we knew him - or if not Willie McReddie, who'd be around 140, then his grandson, who's 56.

"Ah yes," said Bernard Day cheerfully, "that sounds like my grandad, all right."

Bernard, who lives in Middlesbrough and played football for Shildon among others, had written of his grandfather in a 1996 volume chronicling baseball's brief blossoming on Teesside.

There was nothing, of course, about McReddie's downfall - that, as Wilkins Micawber might almost have said, really would have been a turn-up for the book.

Willie was the comprehensive catcher for Middlesbrough Pioneers, uniquely won three gold medals worth nine guineas each and could almost name his price in diamonds.

He was also a No. 1 docker, a near alcoholic and a thief. "I remember tackling my mother about him before she died," says Bernard, an early retired ICI manager.

"For all his achievements, she would only say that he wasn't one of us. Clearly he must have become a bad lot."

The story is salutary, but by no means solitary. A century later such things warrant rather more than the eight and a half lines the Echo afforded poor William McReddie. Clearly there is nothing new under the sun.

MANCHESTER City's 11-3 victory over Lincoln on March 23, 1895 remained the club's biggest winning margin until a 10-0 defeat of Huddersfield Town, managed by Malcolm Macdonald. In the North-East on that late Victorian day the principal action was at Wingate, where a race between Wingate Wheelers and Station Town Brothers Cycling Club had to be called off "due to the interference of the local authorities" and 500 spectators watched a football tournament for 12 silver medals. Wingate Egg and Spoon beat West Hartlepool Rangers but Wingate White Star had a bye. West Hartlepool Perseverance failed to show up at all.

SIGNED "David Gardner, Fix Sec & Past Pres", a teasing e-mail has arrived from Darlington Rugby Club.

They have a calendar for 2002, one of those which makes the most of what might be termed local talent - "so tastefully done compared to those Women's Institute calendars," says Mr Gardner, though he feels unable to proffer a buckshee copy.

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

Instead we plodged off on Wednesday lunchtime to the club's headquarters at Blackwell Meadows, noted the great lakes on the first team pitch and that draymen now drink coffee - William Hague has much for which to answer - paid £3.75 for a "Fat boys burger" and £6 for 12 months of sunny days.

Though the female models are all members of Darlington's ladies squad, it may not be said that they have been getting their kit off for the lads.

Still, the new year offers a rather fetching blonde called Tanya, who's said not only to be an exceptionally able rugby player but to sup some of the lads under the table, ladies' captain Helen Large makes a couple of summery appearances and there's a rather bewitching pic for Hallowe'en.

And in the matter of space filling, it has to be said, these rugger huggers do it amply.

WE couldn't make Maurice Cullen's overflowing funeral at Shotton yesterday but British Boxing Board of Control man Dave Ogilvy's moving eulogy spoke for everyone, anyway. It also noted that when Maurice won his Lonsdale belt in the sixties there were eight weights and eight world champions. Now there are 17 weights and 68 world champions.

JACK Surtees, one of the men who helped keep cricket alive in Willington, has also died.

"But for Jack we wouldn't be here at all," says John Coe, who also played a key role in the survival operation.

Cash strapped and uncompetitive, the club had left the Durham County League in 1989, were refused admission to the Darlington and District and were accepted into the North East Durham just days before the season began.

Now they're back in the County League. "Jack must have been involved for 40 years and simply wouldn't see us die," says John. "He will be very sorely missed."

LAST month, it may be recalled, a "unique" fag card of Ned Doig, Sunderland's goalkeeper from 1890-1904, was sold at auction in Warwick for a world record £1600.

The subsequent paragraph particularly interested Dave Hastings' neighbour in Shotton Colliery, to whom the card seemed somewhat less singular - he had one, too. ("And Harry," added Dave's e-mail, "fancies a new rig-out.")

Sadly, his hopes are up in smoke. What made the Warwick card so special, the column's researches reveal, is that it was issued by Rutherford's Cigarettes and was the only example ever found.

Harry's was Ned Doig, all right, but produced for Wills Woodies - which, if not ten a penny, could certainly be had for a threepenny bit.

Dave returned warily. "Harry has an axe, pronounced 'aches' in Shotton, by the back door so I wasn't looking forward to it.

"He took it well, but I didn't hang about. He still has his old bayonet in the loft."

Instead we have been electronically exchanging memories of the Baldasera boys' east Durham ice cream emporia and the time that former Darlington FC manager Eddie Carr took Denis Compton down to Balders in Wheatley Hill.

"The line of kids behind them stretched all the way to Thornley," says Dave - but that's another story, isn't it?

WEST Auckland's Carlsberg FA Vase tie with Nantwich tomorrow is being filmed for a documentary planned for screening next autumn. Darlington-based media company Gig-a-Bite also plan interviews with principal sponsors Bill Moody, of Rushlift, and John Wotherspoon of Lipton's - the "World Cup" people - and will shortly record another World Cup song. Called Not Bad For a Bunch of Miners, it will feature Teesside-based folk singer Eddie Walker. They're also seeking an interview with the Northern League chairman. A five figure fee is under negotiation.

THAT ubiquitous Scottish goal scorer (Backtrack, December 4) was - of course - A Triallist, a cloak and dagger conspiracy still allowed by the Scottish League.

Readers are today invited to name the footballer with a North-East club who scored a hat-trick on his debut, against Liverpool, in 1996.

Mercurial if impecunious, the column turns up again on Tuesday.

Published: 07/12/01