After a year and a day in hospital - but a year and two days since the car crash that broke his neck and shattered his life - Jon Robert Collingwood is finally back home.

He'd kept goal for the school, the district, the county. He'd had England schools trials, spent five years on Middlesbrough schoolboy forms, was a week from joining Hartlepool United's school of excellence.

For never walk alone, read never walk again.

Whatever his desperately changed circumstances, however, it may never be called a sorry state because Jon Collingwood - a truly remarkable young man - doesn't feel sorry for himself at all.

"I wouldn't say there was any time when I was down," he insists. "You don't realise how many people it happens to until you're in that situation yourself.

"I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, really."

He was in the back of an uninsured friend's car near the family home in Blackhall, on the Durham coast, when it crashed through a wall and ended in a field.

Jon managed to get out through the back window, somehow struggled home, remembers little of it but was taken to Hartlepool General Hospital.

It was just a bit of whiplash, they said, and sent him home. It was just shock, they said, when his legs kept giving way beneath him and he had to be taken in a wheelchair to his father's car.

A day later he was in the high dependency spinal unit at Middlesbrough; for much of the past 12 months he has been in the spinal injuries unit at Hexham. "The worst thing about it is the boredom," he says. "It's a poor do when going to physiotherapy is the highlight of your day."

Now he's permanently back home, the house hugely altered thanks to the £30,000 raised by Hartlepool United and the club's supporters and several thousand more by friends and neighbours in Blackhall.

The balance goes into a trust fund, the claim against the health authority continues.

"It was the least we could do, especially since there was no insurance," says chief scout Tommy Miller, the man who helped put the heart into Hartlepool.

Jon says he just liked flinging himself about; Janet, his mum, reckons he was without fear. Ironically, since one of the reasons Middlesbrough released him was that he was a bit small for a goalkeeper, he gained four inches in hospital.

Though there are obvious differences, he is still much like any other 18-year-old making the most of a high old summer

He lands back at all hours, keeps his room like a corporation midden, gets shouted at by his mum - "she says she does" - no matter how overjoyed she is to have him back.

"It's just having all the family back together again," says Janet and is interrupted firstly a Rington's tea man wearing shorts - Rington's would sell more tea if they dissuaded their employees from showing their knees - and secondly by Jon's young niece who's broken several fingers while cartwheeling.

"Accident prone lot us Collingwoods," he says.

In September he plans to start A levels - sport, computers, business, perhaps - at East Durham and Houghall College, which already has given £5000 towards the trust fund. That may be the hardest bit of all.

"I'd never thought about a job. All I ever wanted to do was be a professional footballer and go as far as I could and I can't get my head round the idea of having to work for a living."

"He's going to have to use his brains for once," says Janet.

With a little help from his friends, his parents and the daily district nurses, he'll make it, of course.

"I'm still the same person despite what's happened," says Jon. "There's only two ways of looking at it now, you can spend all day being miserable or you can get on with life.

"I prefer the second. It's not quite the same, but it's still great to be back home, and, honestly, to be alive."

The 20th anniversary of Botham's test at Headlingley fast approaches and also - as Martin Birtle in Billingham points out - the centenary, next week, of a Leeds match almost as remarkable.

That the Echo made little of it was simply because - then as now - we weren't much given to sensationalism. Yet sensational it proved.

Yorkshire, unbeaten in the county championship for almost two years, played Somerset, who could scarcely raise a side.

Palairet and Braund, the visitors' celebrated openers, both left without scoring. Despite Sammy Woods' 46, Somerset subsided to 87 all out and eventually followed on 238 behind. Schofield Haigh struck 96 for Yorkshire.

Like Messrs Marsh and Lillee, Sammy Woods was a betting man. They gave him 10-1 against a Lionel Palairet century in the second innings, longer - but sadly unspecified - odds against a Somerset victory.

Palairat hit 177, Len Braund 107, Freddie Phillips 122. By the end of the second day - second day, mark - Somerset were 549-5 and some West Riding bookmakers were looking distinctly apprehensive.

They finished next day on 630, England all rounder George Hirst returning the distinctly improbable figures of 1-189 off 37 overs. Yorkshire needed 392 to win.

Having led by 238 on first innings, they lost - all out 113 - by 279 runs, though their fans remained sporting in defeat.

"It was one of the best matches I have ever lost," observed Lord Hawke, the captain, whilst the Echo noted that "the visitors received an enthusiastic reception at the close."

Yorkshire swiftly recovered. Unbeaten for the rest of the season, they won the county championship by a furlong.

Even handed as ever, the Echo's cricket coverage 100 years ago also included teams like Close House, Harrowgate Hill, North Road Methodist Guild and the Peristics, who played Mr J P Allix's XII at Feethams.

We also reported that Darlington St Augustine's, second in the Northern League, had made a profit of 6/11d on the football season, that Catterick Bridge had beaten Edinburgh at polo and that a 2,000 crowd at the Victoria Ground, Stockton, had seen local man Patsey Haley stop Willie Gill of Liverpool ("a pretty boxer") in the 15th round of their contest for the 7st 4lbs championship of England.

If the cricketers went briskly about their business, the wheels of justice turned more quickly yet.

On the day of Somerset's stupendous victory, the Lord Chief Justice sat at Durham Assizes to begin the case of the Crown against John William Carter, a West Hartlepool herbalist said to have murdered a 37-year-old woman by way of a failed back street abortion.

The Echo reported much of the trial, and the subsequent guilty verdict, verbatim. Though the jury retired for almost two hours, the judge had donned his black cap by the end of the first day, after which all except the unfortunate Mr Carter went home to have their tea.

Though his playing career soared little beyond Peases West Albion - above Crook somewhere - Alan Watson's football management record is extraordinary.

The Durham police sergeant has been involved with England's National Association of Boys Clubs' team since 1984, the manager for the past five seasons. In those 17 years, they have remained unbeaten.

On Sunday (11am) the side that has included the likes of Michael Carrick, Alan Shearer, Paul Gascoigne and Don Hutchison and Ugo Ehiogu kicks off this season's four nations tournament - these days the National Association of Clubs for Young People - against Wales at New Ferens Park, Durham.

Durham chief constable George Hedges, chairman of the County ACYP, will be host, Sgt Nigel Miller - a Premiership assistant ref from Witton Gilbert - will be referee and the Durham constabulary sky divers will drop in with the match ball. Nine of the squad are from the North-East.

Alan, a founder member of Glenholme Youth Club in 1963 ("I still have me little badge") is just back from a two match visit to the USA, the squad's £8000 costs met by one of the parents.

All six games in the tournament, Sunday to Tuesday, are at Durham City's ground. The big one, perhaps, is England v Scotland at 7pm on Monday.

Our boys might just be favourites, then? "No way," says the unbeaten manager, "you'll never get me to admit to that."

St Aidan's in Hartlepool was stowed out for the funeral of Berry Brown (Backtrack, Tuesday) who'd kept goal for Manchester United and for Pools in 125 League games in the early 1950s. Among the throng was Ron Hails, who'd played cricket with him for the Paragonians, and Uncle Albert Kelleher, who'd been his football deputy.

Berry, recalls Ron, used a Len Hutton cricket bat rapped in 40 yards of differently coloured adhesive tape. They called it "Clicky ba", a name with which - Hails of Hartlepool assures us - readers of the Old Wizard Book for Boys will still be familiar.

He still has his copy. "I dug it out yesterday and fondled it, shamelessly."

Berry was also a keen swimmer, gardener, bike rider - everywhere on his bike - and local league football man. "He was truly," says Ron, "a man of Hartlepool."

THE only England manager to have won the PFA Player of the Year award (Backtrack, July 3) is Glenn Hoddle.

Brian Shaw in Shildon today seeks the identity of the first footballer to win League championship honours as player and manager with the same club.

The column doubles up again on Tuesday.

Published: 06/07/2001