A far from spotless affair

Welcome to the Trimdon and District Dominoes League - as was - where on a crucial night there might have been more lip-reading than the average hard-of-hearing club and more money passing hands than on the last race at Wheatley Hill dogs.

"Some of them were very good players, of course, but you wouldn't trust them as far as you could throw them," says John Burton, Tony Blair's Trimdon-based constituency agent. That was another thing, "throwing" dominoes.

"Accidentally" dropping them on the floor, anyway. That, the false knocks and the soft Mick shuffle.

The best tale, more legend perhaps, concerns a gentleman known as Fish Jack, who went to hospital to have the pot on his broken arm changed and expressed surprise at finding the double six in there.

"I wondered what had happened to it," he said.

This domino school of thought began, it may be recalled, when Peter Hamilton in Croxdale picked up all seven doubles - at odds of 1,184,040-1 - depending, said Robert Bacon who'd played in the Trimdon League, on whether the doms were picked from board or bag.

The bag was meant to prevent cheating, to nullify the marked domino.

It didn't prevent the chap holding it from clutching key dominoes, however, so eventually they'd to appoint a neutral bag holder, too.

In an attempt to beat the cheats they'd play key matches in a private room, each player allowed a second. Memory suggests a list of rules, spotted in the Duke of Welly in Pittington, which also authorised a screen across the table.

"I've seen respective pub champions playing for £100 a time in the 60s, their mates clubbing up to meet the stake," says John Burton.

Luke Grimley, 69, recalls a £20 challenge at Chilton Club in the early 1950s in which his friends could only raise £6 10s and he stumped up the rest - and lost. "I won most of it back on the dogs that night," he insists.

Luke also admits winning an important match by lip-reading "He's got all the sixes," from a colleague looking over his opponent's shoulder and playing his own with impunity.

After drawing from a bag they would also, security reasons, keep their dominoes in their caps.

"If you didn't like the look of one you'd shove it in the peak and see if you liked it better next time," says Luke.

Things, they insist, have changed for the more honourable - as above board as befits the Prime Minister's constituency.

In Trimdon Labour Club on Monday evenings, John Burton and friends play for just 20p a corner. "I think," he says, "that that's probably quite enough."

The way it is in non-league football (part 3,241). Invited to send two representatives to last Monday's FA Carlsberg Vase semi-final draw - 5pm at the new FA headquarters in Soho Square - Marske United delegated club treasurer Les Holtby and his son Moss, who helps produce a superb programme.

Paired with Hertfordshire side Berkhamsted - should they have beaten Albany Northern League colleagues Bedlington in the quarter-final replay - father and son were asked by the Berkhamsted brigade what they were doing afterwards.

"Trying to find a hotel," said Les.

Berkhamsted, of course, proved far more accommodating. Officials took them back to their homes - and, it should probably be said, their Herts - fed and watered them, gave them a bed, laid on a conducted tour of the ground next morning - "wonderful, right next to the Grand Union Canal," says Moss - and set them on their way with sandwiches for the return train journey.

"It's precisely why so many of us love football at this level," says Holtby senior though, sadly for Marske, it may be the last they see of Berkhamsted for some time.

Quarter-final replay: Bedlington Terriers 4 Marske United 0.

In an earlier Vase round in Leicestershire, it may be recalled, a Marske fan had attracted considerable interest by photographing a tree instead of watching the match. On Saturday he took consolation from the fact that he had added a picture of Ashington telephone exchange ("a prefab with curtains") to his collection of outposts of the BT empire. He's a gentleman called Neil - or to all in that part of Cleveland, Surreal Neil, of course.

The national photographic corps, meanwhile, have been flashing it round Hartlepool. "I thought it must be me and our Patch, but it was Peter Mandelson round the corner," reports Ron Hails.

Thus stirred from his hibernation, he sleepily contemplates our search for hymns with a cricket theme. What about "Thank the Lord for frail umpires" he suggests.

It also affords the chance for the wonderful old lad to recall a passage in one of John Arlott's books on former Middlesex quickie Mike Selvey, capped three times by England in 1976, but with no great success.

Arlott asked him about his final bowling figures. "1-352," said Selvey immediately, and was asked how he could be so sure.

"Easily, 352 is my favourite hymn in the Westminster Hymnal," replied Selvey. "Art thou languid, art thou weary, art thou sore distressed."

Still with the 365-day (formerly the summer) game, Richard Thurston in Stockton wonders if last Sunday - when Sri Lanka played England, New Zealand played Pakistan, India played Australia, West Indies played South Africa and only Zimbabwe and Bangladesh were unoccupied - was the first time in history that four Test matches have been played on the same day. Of course, he adds sagely, your readers may know better....

Nearing publication, the eagerly-awaited history of Crook Town FC - five times Amateur Cup winners - won't have the launch intended.

The first Amateur Cup victory was exactly 100 years ago, a replay triumph over Kings Lynn in April 1901 before a crowd of just 1,500 on an Ipswich Town ground being used for the second time that day.

Club secretary Alan Stewart, co-author of the 500-page history with Michael Manuel and John Phelan, wrote to the Norfolk club suggesting a friendly to mark the centenary - and to launch the book. They haven't even replied.

"It's rather disappointing, but we hope to do something else for the launch," says Alan,

Crook had also been drawn at Kings Lynn in the last 16 the previous season but, unable to afford the train fare, conceded the tie - and after travelling to East Anglia for both the final and the replay in 1901 were so close to bankruptcy they didn't even defend the cup the following season. It's all in the book, come Easter.

Checking 1901 details in the Northern League's millennium history - still available, wonderful, £8 99 - we came across Darlington St Augustine's 4-0 Northern League victory over fellow church team Stockton St John's.

The Echo had little to observe - relishing more greatly the dismissal of two players "at loggerheads" in the Bishop Auckland-Crook derby - others were less circumspect.

"It would help matters greatly if all who were playing in a match would recognise the authority of the referee. He is, while the game lasts, an absolute monarch and for each member of the team to oppose his decisions, when not quite agreeable, turns a good game into a very creditable imitation of the parrot house at the zoo."

The source? Stockton St John's parochial magazine. The message? Eternal.

Sometimes, of course, it's enough to make even St John swear. The latest newsletter from Stockton West End FC reports that in an under 10s match at Newton Aycliffe, the referee sent off a home player for a reckless tackle on the goalkeeper and then allowed him to be replaced by a substitute.

"There were only two minutes to go," said the ref. "No wonder there are problems with the so-called top- flight referees," says West End manager Chris Gibbons. "If this is the standard at the grass roots, what chance has the game got?"

THE last Sunderland player before Kevin Phillips to have been leading scorer in the top division (Backtrack, March 9) was Dickie Davis - later of Darlington -with 25 goals in 1949-50.

Bill Moore (again) today seeks the identity of the last team to win the FA Cup on a ground other than Wembley. More cards, if not dominoes, marked on Friday.

Published: Tuesday, March 13, 2001