Shields on the run in battle of Bunker Hill

Elsewhere in Shop Row, Philadelphia, it might have been the wash house or the scullery. Down the back yard at number four it was the police station - bikes and capes lined up against the wall outside, admonition within.

"Where the sergeant chowed your lugs off," says Colin Bertram, colloquially.

Sgt Newton is recalled, and Sgt Pratt and Sgt Atkinson. In those days you'd run away from the polliss even when you'd done nowt, muses Colin, and his friend David Tindale remembers how Newton's law worked, even when he was only five.

"I'd run across the road in front of a car and straight into the arms of Sgt Newton. He clipped me round the ear with his glove, then took me home. There was hell on - the police round OUR house."

The force is no longer with them, of course, the long arm keeping its distance in some supercharged sub-division, the Shop Row cop shop merely an inglory hole - "a terrible mess" - until David Tindale, born at number 16, moved into number four.

Now the little police station has been meticulously restored - wondrous solid-fuel fire in the corner, bench where the bobbies were briefed, sliding window in the wall on to the back street through which mischief and miscreants were routinely reported.

There are pictures of policemen, laughing and otherwise, David's father's Coal Board certificate for 51 years "loyal and efficient" service, the elderly desk where constabulary duty was to be done.

It's still not the size of a snuggery, but it was in that little palace that we gathered round the fire - Backtrack, David Tindale, Colin Bertram and Mike Hoban - to talk of the immortal afternoon of August 31, 1912, when Kellet Kirtley got cantankerous and the police really did have to get on their bikes.

Philadelphia, Philly to its friends, is a former mining village near Houghton-le-Spring. There was the Dorothea (known as the Dolly), the Elizabeth (otherwise the Betty) and the New Pit, which never got called owt else.

Shop Row was built in 1845, much the same time as Chapel Row but before Voltage Terrace and Electricity Crescent. Cricket was first played on the field not 100 yards from the police station in 1868.

It's called Bunker Hill, after a battle in the American War of Independence, though how Bunker Hill came by its name - or Philadelphia for that matter - not even the learned David Tindale can rightly explain.

Cricket and the collieries were closely connected, twopence a week docked at source to help ground maintenance and cushy numbers (it was said) for the capable.

Philly played in the Durham Senior League, had returned the league's lowest ever score - 11 all out in 37 minutes - at South Shields in June 1912, were definitely up for it (as a Dolly pitman might have said) when Shields made the trepidant return visit.

What happened that day is variously described in Clive Crickmer's superb 1985 history of South Shields Cricket Club as "frightening and grossly demeaning", "nauseous" and "fury on a scale never witnessed before or since".

Tom Coulson, the Shields skipper, simply described it as "more like a scene from a lunatic asylum".

Philadelphia, rough hewn, batted first. South Shields, silver spooned, were drawn from the professions. "There's no doubt it was seen as merchants against miners, a real battle of the classes" says Mike Hoban, the club secretary.

Forster Coulson, the Shields' captain's son, had walked the 50 miles home from Barnard Castle school because he didn't like it there. Not many Philly pitmen's bairns went to Barnard Castle school. Coulson sent him back.

"A powder keg of emotion," wrote Clive, the Mirror's recently retired chief reporter in Newcastle.

They'd struggled to 72-9 when Frank Harry squeezed a ball between bat and pad, a bail fell gently behind the stumps and umpire A W Linnett said the batsman appeared to have been bowled. The visiting fielders strode off, all hell broke loose.

Philly protested that wicketkeeper Ellis had himself dislodged the bail, the 3,000 crowd needed no convincing of the claim and chased them from the field - at the mob's head, Philadelphia's own wicket keeper, the beer swilling and belligerent John "Kellet" Kirtley.

Kirtley had played 84 times for Durham County between 1899 and 1908, claimed 116 victims - almost half stumped - and was reckoned so good that after playing against the South Africans he was invited to return with them.

"Only if I can gan yem every weekend" he said.

He stood up to everything - "I'm a wickie, not one of them long stops" - a curmudgeonly character who himself had earned a reputation for sleight of hand.

"A master of wicketkeeping duplicity," wrote Clive. "The wry irony of him leading a hue and cry against supposed sharp practice behind the stumps was widely appreciated." Not at Philadelphia, it wasn't.

He'd also contributed a piece on Kellet Kirtley to a long gone Wisden Cricket Monthly, in which the best of many stories concerned another match against Shields - 1920s - when the ball looped off the edge of his bat and was about to be caught by the wicketkeeper when Kirtley raced back and flat-batted it to the boundary.

An appeal was upheld, Kirtley standing his ground until his partner - the Rev Cecil Booth, a mild-mannered curate - gently explained the law about obstructing the field.

After a tense silence, Kirtley finally walked. "Ah'll gan fer thoo," he said, "but (glowering at the umpire) ah'm not gannin' for that bugger."

But back to August 31, 1912. The Northern Echo reported the following Monday that Sunderland had won the Durham Senior League, that much confusion had been engendered by the FA's new rule about goalkeepers only handling the ball in the penalty area, that legendary Middlesbrough swimmer Jack Hatfield had won the ASA half mile on a lake in Surrey and that after the final practice match between the Reds and the Greens, Shildon looked like having a good football season.

They always do, of course.

Curiously, there was no mention of Philadelphia v South Shields until a single Tuesday morning paragraph reporting a Shields' protest after an "unpleasant incident".

Shields had fled to the dressing room, pursued by the enraged throng. The wretched Linnett, harangued, changed his mind and gave the batsman not out. Philly added another four runs.

By then the atmosphere was so ugly, the Shop Row polliss so helplessly outnumbered, that Coulson refused to continue. Amid much abuse and stone throwing, his team fled to Penshaw railway station.

Retribution was swift. Kellet, the ring leader, was banned from the league and for life from Bunker Hill. Linnett was removed from the umpires' list, Philly fined a guinea and had two points deducted and Shields censured for refusing to bat - though it was accepted that they had received "great provocation".

Colin Bertram, Philly's groundsman, is Kirtley's great nephew. He was born in Success, still has a Sunday Pictorial petrol advert photographed thereabouts - "something about the road to Success" - reckons there's still a bit of his Uncle Kellet in him. "I've had me moments, anyway".

David Tindale, retired organ builder for Harrisons in Durham, still plays the organ at Shiney Row St Oswald's, recalls what a wonderful football team they once had, would love to know what happened to Sgt Atkinson and his family.

Mike Hoban, also early retired but gainfully unemployed, is the chap who drew our attention to these matters - "a riot, no doubt about it" - and who loves Philadelphia Cricket Club. "A nice compact ground," he suggests, affectionately, "you can hear the batsmen's arses squeaking when they walk to the wicket."

They all recall that in 1913 the Senior League withdrew most of the penalties, and returned the guinea, in an attempt to diffuse the undiminished rancour between the two clubs.

It was to display the "true spirit of sportsmanship" said the league, but by the bright blazing fire in Shop Row police station they'll gather for many mellow nights yet to re-enact the second battle of Bunker Hill - and round there, at least, they're quite sure who was responsible.

Cockerton Cricket Club's last-day clinching of the Darlington and District League's second division on Saturday came only after major water works, we hear.

At 10am the square was flooded, not for the first time this season, 30ft across. If they were unable to play against Middleton-in-Teesdale, each side would gain one point.

If Spennymoor beat Brompton-on-Swale, however - at home on a less sticky wicket - they'd be the new champions.

A task force was assembled, a hole dug in the middle of the pitch, some water allowed to disappear down that and the rest carried in a bucket chain to the boundary.

Another wicket was marked, the original square remained covered, an emissary despatched to Spennymoor to report the opposition's progress. Cockerton had won by six wickets before it started to rain again.

Immediately afterwards, groundsman Steve Salmon drove on with the cutters whilst wearing his best three-piece suit, a matter about which we have tackled him. "I don't like going out in a clean suit" he says.

It's not that Scottish football is becoming predictable or anything, but The Observer's list of Premier division leading scorers last Sunday has a one-sided look about it (below). It appears thanks to a sharp-eyed reader on Tyneside - anonymous, but a good bloke, undoubtedly.

Bill Warby, gentleman of the turf and knight of the road, picks us up at Scotch Corner's interminable bus stop, the conversation turning to recent betting misfortunes (Backtrack, August 18) at Thirsk.

On the subject of certainties, Bill quotes Richmond trainer Mick Naughton: "There are only two certainties, death and nurses." Profound.

The column's dear old friend Brian Hunt, for 25 years Durham County Cricket Club's scorer and very much else, was awarded life membership at the club's annual dinner on Monday - the first since groundsman Tom Flintoff, eight years ago.

"It was a complete surprise and means a great deal. It's the kind of thing you can't buy," says Brian, otherwise the Bearded Wonder, from Bishop Auckland.

Though he won Eldon Lane Co-op's bonny baby competition, subsequent honours have been rare until this year - when they've appeared like London buses. He also won the Arthur Clark Memorial Award, the Northern Football League's top accolade, for work on the league's magnificent millennium history.

Ted Maguire, one of the heroes of Brandon and Byshottles about whom we were writing the other day, has died, aged 83.

Ted was on Wolves' left wing in the 1939 FA Cup final against Portsmouth, saw RAF service in France and the Middle East and later played for Swindon Town and Halifax.

Before Northern League football with Willington, his career had begun in St Patrick's school team at Langley Moor, near Durham, and it's at St Patrick's church that his funeral takes place at 10. 30 this morning.

the chap who played cricket for New Zealand and rugby for England (Backtrack, September 19) was Martin Donnelly, around 1950.

Readers may today care to consider the identity of the only player who last season scored in the Premiership and the FA, Worthington and UEFA Cups. We're on the mark again next Tuesday.