IF you didn't find a centre forward when shouting down the pit shaft, it was probably a brass bandsman, black faced and beaming, who'd surface. Now both, ask Newcastle United, are endangered.

Silksworth Colliery Band, 131 years old, is the latest with the wind up. Last month's Durham Big Meeting may be the note upon which it finishes.

"I'm gutted," says Billy Calvert, tenor horn for 43 years. "It breaks your heart when you walk into the band room and see all those empty chairs with no one sitting on them.

"There are plenty of youngsters learning instruments but just not brass, not in Sunderland, anyway. It's desperate."

A blow? It's a tragedy, says Tom Moffatt. "We are doing all we can to sustain brass bands in the North-East because they're most urgently in need of it. Bands are disappearing almost overnight."

Billy's grandfather played with the band during the First World War, his father became miners' lodge chairman at Silksworth. He himself played piano as a four year old, was taken to the band room when he was seven and told to come back when he was eight.

"I just knew I wanted to play the trumpet," says Billy, now landlord of the Vane Arms in Silksworth.

"I went back on my eighth birthday, the bandmaster gave me a battered old brass cornet and said if I could get a sound out of it within a week I was in. I've been with them ever since."

Now Silksworth, officially the RMT Silksworth Band, is believed to be the only band in the Sunderland area - but with no conductor and too few members. Already the instruments have been dismantled, lubricated, await what may be the final score.

"We've attracted bandsmen from all over the North-East, right down to North Skelton," says Billy. "On paper we have 28 members, but when they sit down there might only be 14 or 15.

"We're waiting to see how many come back after the holidays, but I'm very anxious. We don't want to lose it, but it's a sign of the times. It isn't very nice for me at the moment."

Tom Moffatt also played with Silksworth's scarlet jacketed bandsmen in the early 1940s, travelling from Southwick - on the other side of Sunderland - with his father and their instruments on a tandem.

Now he's chairman of the region's best known band, the Tavistock Chester-le-Street Riverside, which competes in the national finals next month.

He has also attracted £11,500 sponsorship for a youth academy at the Riverside, home to Durham County Cricket Club. "It's not to raise youngsters for our own band, it's for all the bands and it's going very well.

"I'm doing it for my dad, and he's been dead 25 years. I just have this feeling that he's somewhere, urging me to keep on, to keep the brass bands playing.

"To lose Silksworth would be terrible for the region as a whole. I just know I have to keep on trying."

*Potential conductors or brass band musicians are urged to contact Billy Calvert on 0191-521-0261.