Every dog has it's day . . . once again

IF EVERY dog has its day, as widely is supposed, a greyhound called Fawny is about to beat the odds yet again. Fawny is going to have another.

His finest hour came 30 years ago this week when, drawn in the trap they called the death box and thus opening at 10-1, he won the biggest prize in independent dog racing.

It made page one of The Northern Echo, the paper turning up in an old case when Geordie Pyle was having a bit rummage the other day.

"Geordie lives in a champion doghouse, " said the headline and the byline said Sam Hare, which was probably someone's little joke.

Geordie was trainer and coowner. "It was a wonderful time, " he recalls. "The president of the USA had been on the front page the day before, bit bother with the Koreans or summat, then the day after it was me."

The front page also reported that Big Daddy had married "Suicide girl Sarah" . . . a reference not to the effeminately named wrestler but to President Idi Amin and a 19-year-old member of the Revolutionary Motorised Suicide Unit of the Ugandan army. The back page was perhaps more predictable.

Malcolm Macdonald again denied a rift with Newcastle United, Alan Foggon was (like Gerald Ford) having another bit bother, Lillee and Thompson were skittling England and Tony Greig was assuring the nation that it didn't matter because we'd beat them, anyway.

GEORDIE lives in Wheatley Hill, racing greyhounds since he was 14, one of the few people never to have been barred out of that east Durham village's dog track by the late and legendary Norman Fannon.

"I don't know why he never bothered with me, " he says. "I just couldn't do owt wrong."

They'd not done that much right, either, until Geordie and his pal Jimmy Robinson from Brandon saw Fawny come second in a race at Leeds.

He was a nervous dog, terrified of women's voices . . . "I think one of the kennel lasses must have brayed him, or summat" . . . so they got him for £150.

Fawny, who ran as Big John . . . and probably one or two other things under the flapping track code . . . had won 11 out of 13 races for the pair when they entered him for the Blackpool Derby, one of 125 dogs in 25 heats.

It was billed as "The Stadium of the Stars" . . . Jimmy Clitheroe, Tommy Cooper, Candlewick . . . or, possibly, Camberwick . . . Green.

The prize money was £5,000, presented by red nosed clown Charlie Cairoli. The bookies weren't laughing, though. "Oh aye, " says Geordie, "we won a hell of a lot more than that five thoosand.

"Lads we knocked about with were professional gamblers. They made a fortune."

They were the days when Binns sold suede skirts for £3, shirts for £1.95, 21 piece tea sets with change from £4. The Echo, in which daily they were advertised, cost 5p.

Geordie paid off the mortgage of his bungalow in Shotton Colliery . . . "worth £100,000 now". . . Jimmy bought a new car. Jean Pyle, said the report, had already bought three-piece suite, colour television, fridge, freezer and cooker out of Fawny's earlier winnings.

"She didn't like that bit much, " Geordie recalls. "It made it look like we had to start wi'.

"To tell you the truth, it made my life easy. I says to Jean I'm going to pack up working and gan dog racing, "She says 'You are, as well'."

Fawny lived in a shed out the back . . . "lovely shed, mind, I had them designed special" . . . fed on eggs and steak, a drop malt at bedtime and a drop cod liver oil first thing.

"Money was no object. He was good to us and we were good to him."

What really changed the nervous dog into a fortune maker, however, was something that happened in the field out the back. "I'd let her loose and I heard this squeal, " recalls Geordie.

"Fawny had this stoat hanging from her mouth, dead like. It must have tekken Fawny on and got the worst of it. When we got him straightened out, there was nee stoppin' him."

Geordie was onto a stoat accumulator.

HE still has a nice little place in Wheatley Hill, no dogs save for a couple of pot models, a painting of Fawny on the wall and the derby trophy on the dresser upstairs.

He'd like another greyhound, worries that footballers . . . by which specifically he means Newcastle United footballers . . . may be pricing lads like him out of the market.

"They're paying daft money, £30,000 for dogs I wouldn't pay £100 for. We'd have no chance unless another dog like Fawny came along. He'd show them, mind, our Fawny."

Once they'd be racing seven nights a week . . . Coundon Spennymoor, Hartlepool ("Oh, lovely track, Hartlepool), Stanley, Stockton . . . now just three flapping tracks remain between Tyne and Tees.

"Flapping tracks are finished. I don't like to say it, but they are. People keep buying them up and selling them for supermarkets and things; it seems a funny way of gannin' on but they do."

He himself will remain independent minded to the last. "You get a better class of people at flappin' tracks, working lads like us.

"People buy a shop, gan NGRC racing, think you should get out of their road."

Fawny had retired soon after Blackpool, arthritis in the back end. Though he went to stud for a bit, speed didn't run in the family. Nowt, as Geordie says, like their father.

Thirty years on, he still loves to talk about the night a Fawny thing happened. "We'll never see another like that. To me that dog was a miracle."

BACKTRACK BRIEFS

FAVOURITES all these years, Crook Town plan to change their famed amber and black shirts to replicas of multimillionaire Graham Wylie's racing colours.

Happily, the Sage group founder races in amber . . . some say old gold . . . and black, too.

Wylie not only has most of his horses in training with Howard Johnson in Crook but plans a stud farm at Stonechester, on the other side of town.

"We'll probably be the first football team ever to play in racing colours, " says Crook committee man Michael Manuel. "We sought Mr Wylie's permission and received a really nice letter back."

The only problem may be getting under starter's orders. They'd like the new shirts pretty quickly: so far they haven't found a manufacturer.

FOUR months after a road accident threatened to end his career, referee Russell Tiffin will again be up and running when the Arngrove Northern league season kicks off tomorrow.

Russell, from Houghton-leSpring, broke two vertebrae and two ribs, twisted his sternum and suffered whiplash in the accident, between Durham and Sacriston.

"I've had to work really hard. I even ran throughout my holidays instead of going to the pub, " says Russell, also in his 15th season as a Football League assistant referee.

One of the column's spies reports seeing him in a friendly at Esh Winning on Tuesday. "It's brilliant that he's fit and well again, but I'm sure he only played 44 minutes in the first half, " he says.

"Obviously he's easing himself back in gently."

MENTION in Tuesday's column of Eaglescliffe newsagent Tom Stafford's appearance behind the stumps for Yorkshire Over 50s, reminded Stan Wilson in Thirsk of Cecil Parkin, another cricketer from those parts who played for Yorkshire just once, in 1906.

"Ciss" Parkin was born in Egglescliffe, the next village . . . by about 20 yards, in his case, in Co Durham.

When the Yorkshire committee realised its border line mistake, Parkin . . . described in one of Bill Frindall's books as "conjuror, juggler and comedian" . . . was never asked again.

He had several seasons with Durham, joined Lancashire and made ten England appearances before being apparently critical of Arthur Gilligan, the skipper.

In 1919 he took 14-23 in the Roses match and five years later bagged 8-53 in the second innings. The comedian had had the last laugh.

TOM Stafford's efforts notwithstanding, Yorkshire Over 50s went out of the Over 50s trophy in Wednesday's quarter-final, beaten after the scores were tied because Warwickshire lost one wicket fewer.

"They had three West Indians, smashing lads, " says Tom. "One looked like Clive Lloyd, the second like Wes Hall and the other like Gordon Greenidge. We're considering a stewards' inquiry."

THE question a couple of columns back featured John Taylor, a well known musician who played for both Bishop Auckland and Crook Town . . . and whose amateur international career, it now transpires, was cut short by the headmaster.

Alan Adamthwaite's wonderfully nostalgic book on the Bishops' glory days, officially launched this lunchtime, tells how Taylor's third cap was due on the first day of term at Spennymoor Grammar School, where he taught.

The head refused to let him out to play. Poor Taylor was never asked again.

Alan Adamthwaite, Crook lad originally, will be signing copies of Glory Days at the Bishops' annual reunion, at the town's cricket club, from 11.30am-3pm today. The launch price is £15 99. It's also available from bookshops or for £17.99, post free, from The Parrs Wood Press, St Wilfrid's Enterprise Centre, Royce Road, Manchester M15 5BJ.

THE Arngrove Northern League season kicks off a little later today when Darlington RA play their first NL match since 1926, against Spennymoor Town on the Brewery Field (7.30pm). Since it's also the first Northern League game in Spennymoor since 1990, the league chairman (as we noted) has a two pint bet with Spennymoor managing director Ken Houlahan that the gate will top 400.

Readers are urged to prove me right.

AND FINALLY . . .

THE cricketer who scored in a world record 119 successive test match innings (Backtrack, August 9) is David Gower.

Since we've been promoting the Brewery Field at Spennymoor, readers may care to ponder on their way to tonight's match the sport for which it was known 100 years ago.

We return, two pints better off, on Tuesday.

Published: 12/08/2005