Tales of Tow Law and beyond

He was Tow Law's goalkeeper in the legendary 1967-68 FA Cup run in which they froze out Mansfield Town 5-1, drew 1-1 with Shrewsbury Town and had they won the replay would have faced Arsenal at the Ironworks.

Now 63, he's written a history of football in the villages around Greenside, his birthplace west of Gateshead. It was an area which produced NorthEast heroes like Bob Stokoe, Pop Robson, Howard Kendall and Frank Carr Hudspeth, who began with Clara Vale Juniors, was capped by England and made 471 appearances for Newcastle United.

They were the days when 3,000 and more would watch Crawcrook Albion play Chopwell in the Northern Alliance, when Stella Colliery band would be turned out to march Newcastle Reserves to Albion's humbler home at Kingsley Park, when proceedings were followed by a reception at which Mr Joe Bell sang Canny Wylam on the Tyne and was gratefully appreciated.

Mike recalls men like John Grant, known as Slasher in High Spen but as Jackie during a long career at Everton, like Derek Craig who played for Spen Black and Whites and against Pele for San Jose Earthquakes, like Ginger Davison.

"The most cleverest player on show, " wrote the Hexham Courant's man in 1929, his enthusiasm exceeding his education.

There's even a page devoted to Ingoe in goal, at South Shields and Blyth Spartans before going way up in the world and signing for the Lawyers in 1962.

The first match against Mansfield had to be abandoned at half-time, the wild excesses of Tow Law's mutinous microclimate having all blown in at once.

"They were literally screaming it was so cold," he tells the column. "Dave Hollins, the Mansfield goalkeeper had stood there all the first half with everything blasting into his face.

"As we came off he told me to ensure that our lads got the game called off, because it was the only chance we had."

Several feet of snow were cleared before the replay. Today they wouldn't have left Nottinghamshire. Shrewsbury didn't get through until mid-January, Frank Clarke's late goal earning the Football League side a replay. They won 6-2 at Gay Meadow.

"It was a lucky toe poke, end ofstory," says Mike.

He wrote the book - excellent value, evocatively illustrated - after attending a local history class. "I thought about writing something but there wasn't much left for me to pursue.

"Everyone had done farming and mining and all that side of it. Football was the obvious answer, it's amazing how it all came together and how all those sides have now folded."

He's retired but works as an academy scout for Sunderland and took Ben Alnwick, the present first-choice goalkeeper, to the club.

This weather permitting weekend he plans a nostalgic return to Tow Law. "It never gets any warmer, but I might sell one or two books."

The Final Whistle Blows by Mike Ingoe chronicles football history in Crawcrook, High Spen, Clara Vale and Greenside.

(The People's History, £9 99).

The Best bits are worth recalling

IT was an October evening in 1987 when George Best blew, blithely and on time, into the Barnes Hotel in Sunderland.

"Hands up all those who thought I'd never turn up, " he demanded. Two hundred hands went up; 201 including his own.

Brian Murphy, then the Rolls Roycedriving landlord of the Barnes, had been so uncertain he'd opened a book on it. He lost.

It was a fund-raising evening for 13year-old David Stephinson, seriously injured the year previously in a road accident near Chester-le-Street, still unable to walk or speak and resident at a special school near Durham.

George was blarney brilliant, insisted he had no regrets - "only that I missed a penalty against Chelsea" - asked that we didn't include full details of his talk.

"Suffice, " said the column, "that Brian Clough, Terry Venables and Mary Stavin are among the people he likes, that Bobby Charlton, Paul Reaney, Jimmy Hill and Marjorie Wallace wouldn't make the top few thousand and that Leeds were the dirtiest team he ever played against."

They got £300 for an autographed football, £158 from the raffle. George immediately pulled out another £100 from his wallet.

The twinkling Irishman the garrulous centre of attention, we drank and talked until an hour when most of us would normally be thinking of getting up and George may have been getting his second wind.

Some time after midnight, he'd volunteered to visit David and his football daft friends at Trouts Lane special school that same afternoon. Vainly a minder protested that he had something else on in a different part of the country.

"My little boy's six, " said George. "I try to put myself in David's dad's position and can hardly even think about it."

He was on time at the school, too. The column was transferred to the front page - usual fee - in order to tell the story that the self-effacing superstar insisted went only in the Echo.

They all said how much they'd loved him. George said he'd loved it, too. "It's to be hoped that when the definitive George Best story is written, " we said on October 10 1987, "that they don't miss out the good bits."

The same applies today.

KENNETH Robson, outside right in one of the most extraordinary teams in Northern League history, has died.

Having gone all season without conceding a goal at home, Billingham Synthonia hosted Bishop Auckland - League champions and Amateur Cup finalists - in the last match. It was Monday, May 7, 1951.

Synners led 3-0. Near the end, however, Bishops were awarded a penalty. The great Bob Hardisty stepped forward to take it; the highly able Harry Armstrong held it, his 13th spot kick save that season.

"We were just kids but we went crackers," recalls Synners' stalwart Peter Lax. Clean sheets to the wind, the adults celebrated long into the night.

Ken was a shipyard welder - known, they recall, as Bro. His funeral is at 2.30pm today at St Peter's church, Thornaby. From that impregnable side, Harold Chesser, Ted Lowe and Jack "Biffer" Smith still survive.

MAY 7 1951? Yorkshire's Johnny Appleyard was skittling the South Africans, Huddersfield Town's Vic Metcalfe was chosen to make his England football debut because of Stanley Matthews's gammy knee, Russia were allowed into the Olympics, Hartlepools United announced 35 shilling season tickets on tick and, next door to the Victoria Ground, 7,000 crowded the dog track to watch local favourite Teddy Gardner further his claim for a British title shot with victory over the Moroccan Charles Boubot.

ANOTHER death in the Northern League family - former Brandon United chairman Norman Green, aged 71.

Norman had been with the club since its formation in 1968, helped steer them to a triumphant FA Sunday Cup final in 1976, remained an enthusiastic committee member and dressing room attendant.

"The word that best describes him is tenacious, " says present chairman Neil Scott. "He was a tremendously hard worker, the first person the players got to know and a Brandon man through and through."

Norman's funeral is at St John's church, Meadowfield at 11am on Monday, followed - perhaps inevitably - by a bit of a wake at the football club.

Cup full of ice cream

THE Baldasera facts (continued). Recollections in Tuesday's column of the Baldasera family - ice cream makers to east Durham - prompt a note from Bob Greener.

We'd reported that the Baldasera Cup, donated by Arissimo Baldasera to mark the Queen's coronation and reckoned a crown jewel among school football trophies, had turned up in the back of a cupboard and been bright burnished back to its former sheen.

Bob, Thornley lad who's now in Darlington, was in the Thornley Junior Mixed side which won it in 1955-56, the obverse of his medal inscribed "Thornley JM All Stars, outside right."

"I think, " he says, "that it was my mother's doing rather than the school's."

We'd also recalled that after Wheatley Hill junior school lifted the cup in 1981, Aris filled it with champagne before they returned in triumph to the school.

In 1956 it was filled with ice cream - though no ice cream, says Bob, was finer. "The Thornley ice cream shop later became a regular haunt, where we impecunious teenagers could spend hours talking and listening to the juke box at minimal expense."

Gary Anderson, who tracked down the cup - "like finding the holy grail, " he says - reports that they've now contacted Alan Jackson, the teacher who led them to such knickerbocker glory.

Maybe he'll also be able to explain the mystery of faith, why Thornley RC School suddenly stopped competing.

"We're hoping so, " says Gary.

A CHAP rings from Blackhall, another bet to resolve. A Blackhall CW player, he says, scored a hattrick in the first four minutes against Wingate, 1958-59.

It's true. The four-minute smiler was Maurice Nicholls, now a long-serving Durham County councillor for Thornley, a few miles up the road.

"I was near the touchline when this feller came in five minutes late, asked the score and was told 3-0. He told his mate to hadaway to hell.

"I wouldn't care, I'd just been transferred from Wingate.

They weren't best pleased."

Maurice had also played for Cassop Victoria when the goalkeeper was big Peter Willis, later an FA Cup final referee, and for Ludworth All Stars - a stellar bunch in east Durham - alongside future Sunderland forward Ralph Goodchild.

Canny lad, Goodchild scored 21 goals in 44 appearances between 1956-61 before spells with Brighton, York City and Darlington, was last heard of as the Littletown postman and may have earned a few bob more from football than did Maurice Nicholls.

"I might have got a hat-trick in four minutes, but I never get nee mair money. You might sometimes find 30 shillings in your boot, but it wasn't very often."

While we were on, of course, we asked him about the imagined mortal sin committed by the Catholics in the Baldasera Cup. If he did, rights and wrong 'uns, he wasn't letting on. There's confessions and confessions.

SO was Maurice Nicholls the quickest off the mark in football history. The Football League's fastest hat-trick was James Hayter's two minute 20 second effort for Bournemouth against Wrexham last year, but he didn't even come on until the 84th minute. Robbie Fowler scored three in four minutes 32 seconds against Arsenal in 1994-95 but that was also well into the proceedings. Has anyone ever been quick enough to beat County Councillor Nicholls?

THE invitation last Friday to name a team of "best uncapped" cricketers didn't get very far. Hats off to Don Clarke in South Shields, however, for suggesting North-East lads Ken Earl and Micky Walford.

Earl, reckoned after the war to be England's fastest bowler, was born in Low Fell - this side of the water - but played all his county cricket for Northumberland, between 1948-65.

He took 282 wickets at 22.73, but made just two first-class appearances, majoring for the Minor Counties.

Micky Walford was born in Norton-on-Tees, won Oxford blues at cricket, hockey and rugby, captained Great Britain's hockey team in the 1948 Olympics.

"(It's best to search under 'Micky.' Google's best bet for "Michael Walford" is a chap who appears to be the world's leading authority on Tippex. By now, of course, the entry may have been erased. )

Walford made seven Durham appearances between 1935-37, became headmaster of Sherborne School and between 1948-53 played as an amateur for Somerset - usually only in August, when education didn't get in the way.

Don Clarke reckons that between 1947-48 his average was nearly 60, though it settled back to a more modest 33.71.

He died, aged 86, in 2002, an obituary confirming Don's faith. "He would almost certainly have played for England had he been able to turn full-time."

THE year's first Christmas card has arrived from Paul Hodgson, distinguished secretary of Spennymoor Boxing Academy and British and All Comers Dole Drawing champion. It contains the suggestions that Hodgy has changed his tune, licked his wounds and is working on an ice cream van. Can it really be true? It chimes, anyway.

LAST Friday's column reckoned that whoever allowed a racehorse to be named Who Gives a Donald had little knowledge of Cockney rhyming slang.

Colin Hobson in Morpeth suggests that Weatheralls (for it is they) may not know much about spoonerisms, either.

The examples he quotes - and one was Henry Cecil's - had best not be repeated in a family newspaper, though the Rev William Archibald Spooner may be gurning in his trave.

Perhaps the most printable example of eccentric naming came in 1999 when Malton trainer Tim Easterby simply called a four-year-old The Wife. "She sweats a lot, but she's game and very tough, " he helpfully explained.

AND FINALLY . . .

EVERYONE knew that the football club which plays at the Madejski Stadium (Backtrack, November 22) is Reading.

Slightly more problematically, John Irvine in Fishburn recalls that when the bottom four Football League clubs applied for re-election in 1977-78, York City got 49 votes, Rochdale 39 and Hartlepool 33. Two teams tied on 26, Southport losing to a newcomer on a second vote.

Who, asks John, was the lucky team - and where are they now?

We'll be hereabouts on Tuesday.

Published: 25/11/2005