Getting by with a little help from his friends

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

Within 48 hours, they said, he'd be feeling fine again.

Within 24 hours of being discharged from Hartlepool General Hospital, Jon Robert Collingwood was in the high dependency spinal unit at Middlesbrough, his neck broken and his spine irreversibly damaged.

The youngster considered so outstanding a goalkeeper that he had England schools trials will probably be in hospital for a year and will never walk again.

"We just want to know how the doctors at Hartlepool could have missed it," says Janet, his mother, quite simply.

The accident was on Saturday June 24 this year. A week later Jon Robert was due officially to sign with Hartlepool United's school of excellence. Pen to paper, he would automatically have been insured for up to £250,000; his mate driving the car wasn't insured at all.

Before he can even think about coming home, the family's house in Blackhall - between Hartlepool and Peterlee - needs major structural adaptation.

"If they get owt from the health authority it'll take between seven and ten years," says Tommy Miller, Pool's youth development officer. "We have to do something now."

It is as bleak a beginning as ever has launched a Backtrack column. From it, however, emerges a story of Jon Robert's extraordinary resilience, of Hartlepool's huge heart and of his true mates back home, Blackhall rocks every one of them.

"He has a right mixture of friends, some good and some bad, but they've all proved their worth when it mattered," says Janet.

Inspired by Tommy Miller, former Shotton polliss and old friend of the column's, United had before this week raised over £13,000 to help a youngster who technically wasn't even on their books.

"Oh smashing lad, though," says Tommy. "Very good goalkeeper, too."

On Tuesday night, in the Victoria Lounge at the ground, they held a fund raising event centred on an Internet auction of football gear - more shirts than Marks and Sparks' sale rail, more balls than...well, complete the metaphor as appropriate.

Even H'Angus the Hartlepool mascot was in generous mood, atonement no doubt for the supposed sexual simulation in Scunthorpe which ten days earlier had forever redefined the term "monkey business".

"I've spent the past week and a half trying to keep him out of the papars," said Paul Mullen, Pool's part time press officer. He had, he added, failed miserably.

H'Angus, suspended sentence, said nowt.

Jon Robert couldn't be there, of course. Though occasionally allowed out for a couple of hours, he'll be in the spinal injuries unit at Hexham until well into next year.

"I could have filled the Borough Hall twice ower for this night," said Tommy, forever re-appearing with cheques in envelopes and footballs in Hartlepool United carrier bags, yet more grist to the Miller.

Tommy, in truth, is the sort of chap who, given the chance, would have auctioned the carrier bag as well.

East Durham and Houghall Community College, a long name but the emphasis these days very much on "community", gave £5000 and promised building help from their construction unit; the North-East branch of the Football Writers Association signed a cheque for £1000; two bands played fingers to the bone without so much as seeking the price of a pint.

Bob Cross, a Hartlepool fireman, had even offered his services as a slave for the day and may have been slightly alarmed that the only bid was from his wife, who declined a carrier bag in which to carry him home.

Though unsure how to run an Internet auction - "I can't even mek a computer gan", he insisted, colloquially - Tommy had written to all English and Scottish League clubs seeking their assistance.

Replies ranged from a Reading programme ("signed by the manager") to David Seaman's World Cup jersey, given by a Brighton supporter. Brighton fans also passed the bucket round their ground and raised £572.

Mostly the clubs sent signed footballs, the deflated old joke - "You can tell it's a Sheffield Wednesday ball, it's going down" - reserved for the unfortunate Owls.

There was even a ball from Darlington, the old enemy - "comes complete with six inch nail", someone said - and from Quakers' skipper Martin Gray the shirt he'd been given by Bradford City's Dean Windlass after the Worthington Cup tie earlier this season.

"Martin's a lovely feller off the field," said Tommy.

There was a ball from the Auto Windscreens final ("genuine Wembley mud still on it") and others from the three play-offs, each reckoned to be a limited edition of 120. They must have gone to extra time.

Janet Collingwood watched with tears in her eyes, and by no means alone in her emotions. Jon Robert, she said, had been football daft from the age of eight, still loved the game, accepted that he could never play it again.

"He's absolutely unbelievable, he really, really is. He just says he's had 16 good years with his legs and now he's been reborn without the use of them and he has to get on with it.

"Obviously he has his bad days, but he tries not to let us see it. He's a fighter our Jon Robert, always has been, and so grown up for a 16-year-old." Hartlepool United had been brilliant, she added, Tommy Miller the best friend any of them could have wanted.

Two Rochdale fans had bid against one anther over the Internet to raise £175 for a shirt signed by Trevor Ford MBE, David Seaman's raised £200, another from Peter Beardsley £150.

H'Angus, who seemed quite pleasant as oversexed anthropoids go, even donated the number 99 shirt off his back and pulled in another £50.

In February there'll be a match between the Pool and Middlesbrough's first team - Jon Robert was five years on Boro's schoolboy books - and in March, Hartlepool supporters plan to walk to the game at York, entering the city side by side with home fans.

On Tuesday evening, the total raised in just over five months for the courageous Jon Robert Collingwood was increased to £24,522. The band in the corner played I'll Get By With a Little Help From My Friends, and nothing in the world could ever have been more appropriate.

CHRISTIAN Bassedas, Newcastle United's 26-year-old Argentine international, signed for £3.5m from Velez Sarsfield - and on the back of that, Norman Coleby in Middlesbrough sets an intriguing rabbit away.

Around 1950, Norman worked for Shell-Mex and BP at Thornaby where a colleague's brother who'd emigrated to South America had formed his own football team in a bid to popularise the game.

The colleague was Arthur Sarsfield. Norman, another brother, not only became Mayor of Durham in 1964-65 but was Britain's Olympic swimming manager and the ASA's first full time secretary.

It's the third man who's the mysterious one, of course.

Attempts to discover if the wheel has turned in a 10,000 mile full circle have temporarily been thwarted because the club's website is in Spanish.

As assiduously as ever, enquiries will continue over the weekend.

Other information would also greatly be appreciated - don't just say Velez, say Sarsfield.

CASTING round for something to talk about after the disappointing draw with Southampton, Paul Dobson and other Sunderland supporters fell to taking the piscatorials.

"Well, Mark Fish had just been transferred from Bolton to somewhere down south," explains Paul, from Bishop Auckland.

So here - hook, line and whatnot - is their team of fishermen's friends:

Bert Trautmann (Man City), Martin Ling (Southend), Mark Fish (Bolton), John Scales (Spurs), Mike Salmon (Blackburn Rovers), Geoff Pike (West Ham), Nick Sharkey (Sunderland), Steve Guppy (Leicester City), Jamie Pollock (Man City), Andy Flounders (Grimsby), Harry Haddock (Clyde). Subs: Alex (Sting) Rae, Brett Angell (fish), Tommy Sword (fish), Steve Stone (fish).

The side would be managed by Barry Fry and served, of course, with a giant helping of Youssef Chippo.

Master Dobson prudently excludes Ray Whale, of Stockport County. A whale, as every nine-year-old knows, is not a fish but a mammal.

TUESDAY'S column correctly claimed that Baron Boycott of Fitzwilliam is the only Englishman to have knocked up a three figure seasonal batting average, but was mistaken to suppose that he only achieved it once - in 1979. Ted Scotter in Darlington points out that our Geoffrey also averaged 100.12 in 1971. Apologies, your lordship.

DAMMIT, if the great name of Boycott doesn't again arise in a call from Alf Hutchinson, also in Darlington.

Alf had just watched Graham Thorpe's century against Pakistan yesterday, an epic that contained only one four. Has anyone, he wonders, hit a test match century without a single boundary?

Alf's own digging reveals that Geoffrey amassed 77 without the ball crossing the rope - there was an all-run four - though even that attempt to keep it on the flight deck was exceeded by Bill Lawrie, another of stoical ways, who hit 84.

So has anyone, in any form of cricket, hit a hundred both fearless and fourless? Like Lord Boycott, this one could run and run.

INCLUDED in Whitby Town's programme on Tuesday night, the Unibond League's weekly newsletter embraced an almighty number of printing errors - items like "Mice vindfall for Barrom", "Waddle im league represmtative squad" and "Bamber Bridge to meet Prestom Reserves".

By far the best news, however, is that much travelled Seaham lad Nigel Gleghorn - now manager of Witton Albion - has been back home to solve his long-term goalkeeping problem.

It's all there in the headline - "Gleghorm gets his mam".

IT MAY by no means be the greatest disaster of the monsoon season, but spare a thought for Hartlepool postman John Dawson, ground hopper extraordinary.

Two Saturdays ago, the start of a week's holiday, he watched the Northern League derby at Billingham, confident of crowded hours ahead.

On the Sunday he'd planned Barnsley on his motor bike, rose at 7.30, viewed the deluge, thought better of it and went back to bed.

Thereafter, a combination of the weather and ructions on the railway, he didn't see another match until last Saturday's 12 hour round trip to knock Peterhead off his Scottish League list.

"I only got out of the house once, and that was in desperation to the pictures," he reports. "It feels like a week has been taken out of my life."

He has never, ever, gone seven days without a football match. The seasonal total stands at a meagre 107.

the four men who since 1985 have managed the FA Cup winners after previously playing in a Cup winning side for the same club (Backtrack, November 14) are Terry Venables (Spurs), Kenny Dalglish (Liverpool), George Graham (Arsenal) and Gianluca Villa (Chelsea).

Steve Salmon in Darlington today invites readers to name (preferably without checking the table) the only unbeaten team in the Albany Northern League second division.

If it's any help, they're 13th. Get lucky again on Tuesday.