Diminutive Joe looks back at a packed night at Feethams

It recalled, too, the career of Joe Rayment, Darlington’s diminutive outside right. “I was five foot four-and-a-half and about eight-and-a-half stones,” he insists. “I wouldn’t care, all I ever wanted to be was a centre forward.”

It was the Football League Cup third round. Little Joe had scored in the first, a 2-0 win over Crystal Palace before a near-10,000 crowd and hit the winner in the second, when 17,057 saw the 3-2 victory over West Ham.

Though he also scored in the third, Wanderers won 2-1.

Wanderers had Lofthouse. “A pity,” Joe reflects, “it cost us a £2 win bonus.”

The ground record remained. “I remember standing like sardines on Spratt’s corner,” says Alan Cooper, still in Darlington.

“Even now it seems extraordinary that they got 21,000 into Feethams. It would certainly never have been allowed today.”

Rayment and Lofthouse were also on opposing sides in a game that may equally be remembered by those at Burnden Park. Joe, then 18, was a part-timer with First Division Middlesbrough while serving an electrical engineering apprenticeship at the Central Marine Engineering Works in Hartlepool.

It was 1953-54. Boro led 2-0 at half-time, Bolton won 5-3.

Joe scored twice, Nat Lofthouse completed a hattrick.

“I know,” says Joe, “but he was an England international. I was an apprentice at the Central Marine.”

JOSEPH WATSON RAYMENT was born in Hartlepool – West Hartlepool back then – on September 25 1934. His father, from whom he inherited both Christian names, had played 21 games for Hartlepool United in 1927- 28.

They chased him, says Joe, though he continued to play for Hartlepool Gas and Water, one of the leading local sides. A team picture still hangs in Joe’s hall, next to those from his own playing days.

“It mightn’t sound like very much,” he says. “but Gas and Water had a tremendous side back then.”

Among his problems, that and being a bit lightweight – “those heavy footballs sometimes weighed more than I did, the best thing they ever did was bring those white balls in” – was chronic travel sickness.

“I suffered terribly, don’t know where I’d have been but for the tablets. I really put my faith in Kwells. In the end I’d just sit in the front of the bus and stare at the road.”

Might heading those old lace-up caseys now explain a few worries about memory loss? “I wouldn’t know,” says Joe. “I only ever remember heading it once.”

A disease now disappeared from big-time football, he also suffered from parttimeitis, but we shall return to that one in a moment.

He’d joined Boro as a kid – good, quick, intelligent – started his 18th year in the fourth team and within months was making his first team debut against Charlton when injuries opened the way.

“When craft was needed, they sent for Rayment,” says a cutting in his scrapbook. “A bright gem on the horizon.”

His first Middlesbrough contract is among the cuttings, too – £5 a week, £2 if in the first team, think again if he went full-time.

He never did, not at Ayresome Park, anyway. Boro pressed him to commit, Central Marine urged him to make up his mind – not least when a midweek game at Plymouth caused him to miss another two days work.

“You never worried about money then, but I find it disgusting when players are on £60,000 a week and then go round asking for more. I suppose if they can get it, good luck to them.”

He’d done four years of a five-year apprenticeship, scored four goals in 24 League appearances for the Boro when the company sacked him, He followed his old dad to Hartlepool, who paid £500, insisted on finishing his apprenticeship with a firm at Ferryhill Station.

“I stayed with the parents of Alec Greenwood, the Darlington player. He was a left back – I wouldn’t care but I hated left backs and there I was living with one.”

While at Hartlepool he also did National Service with a Royal Engineers bomb disposal unit in Sussex, frequently returning – at his own expense – for matches.

“I’d go back on the Sunday and then do guard duty at night. I was a very tired soldier,” he says.

After 17 goals in 63 games for his home town club he moved to Darlington, at last to full-time football, and is still remembered with huge affection. The scrapbook has a cutting about that, too, the club announcing that their new signing was 5ft 7ins and ten stones and thus building him up a bit.

“It’s the sort of thing they did in those days; I’ve never been 5ft 7in in my life.

“No one bothered in those days about a Hartlepool lad playing for Darlington,” he says. “I’m not sure they do very much today.”

He made 173 appearances, scored 28 goals, earned a benefit match. The archives still have a photograph of him with the likes of Stan Anderson, Jim Iley, Bill Harris and Ken Furphy.

“Feethams was a perfect little ground, I loved it and it’s a great shame what happened to it. I remember before the Bolton match crowds right around the cricket ground next door.

We were the players and even we struggled to get in.”

He had a year with Gateshead, contentiously relegated from the Fourth Division, before going to sea for eight years as third engineer with a Scottish merchant line.

“I was the only Englishman in the Scottish navy,” he jokes. “I could have done better than third engineer but you had to take exams and I was never very good at those.”

The funny thing was that it cured his travel sickness, a case of all swell that ends Kwells. “I had to run away to sea to do it,” says Joe.

Married for the third time – “Jean’s lovely, still working, I’m a kept man” – he’s still in Hartlepool, lives in peace with his pipe, enjoys the occasional half but sees nothing of former teammates.

“It’s part of my life that’s gone. I’m 76, still pretty fit in myself, still fancy a game at centre forward. When you get this far, you just wake up happy to be alive.”

Matthews’ whole new ball game

TUESDAY’S note on Chris Matthews, the only cricketer to represent Shildon BR and Australia in the same year, reminded Willington CC stalwart John Coe of the night that Matthews nearly put them out of business.

It was 1986, Willington struggling for survival. “lost ball” already called three times as the Shildon pro set about the bowling.

“There was no housing or fencing round the ground in those days and he was smashing it all over,” says John. “After the third one, I told the umpire that we couldn’t play on because we couldn’t afford to lose any more balls.”

News conveyed, Matthews – “a decent sort of lad” – ran off to the pavilion and returned with a ball of his own.

“The funny thing was,”

says John, “that once we were playing with his own ball he seemed content just to hit ones and twos. They hammered us, anyway.”

Willington died, were resurrected and have since won many trophies and awards. A whole new ball game, as it were.

JOE DUMIGHAN reports the death at 84 of John Ritchie, another canny cricketer – “opened the batting for Langley Park, that night they got Seaham Harbour all out for 11” – though it’s for football that John’s best remembered hereabouts.

A former referee and official of Langley Park FC, he became the Northern League’s acting secretary in 1990 and then had a year as registrations secretary before moving to Devon, where he died.

Tony Golightly, Northern League secretary for 20 years, remembers him affectionately. “He was a great help to me; a true grassroots sportsman.”

THE passing of Darlington 5s and 3s League chairman Alan Stainsby, also reported on Tuesday, recalls a piece back in 1996 in which we’d wondered if Alan Tindall’s 91-27 win was some sort of record.

It wasn’t, as the following column noted. Someone had won 91-26 the same night.

The biggest Alan could remember was a 91-22. “With luck like that you might just as well show the other feller your hand,” he said.

The new, perhaps all-time, record may be Jim Carroll’s 91-16 win over Kit Pearson – and poor Kit didn’t show his hand at all.

Alan Stainsby, a lovely feller, was 68. His funeral is next Friday at 2pm at St John’s church, Darlington.

MARTIN BIRTLE offers further memories of the Isle of Man football tournament of 1991, in which Sunderland reached the final and Nat Lofthouse presented the prizes.

The final, however, was interrupted by the unscheduled arrival of a labrador, which took its place between Sunderland’s two central defenders.

Commentary was provided by a very large spectator in a red-and-white striped shirt. “Leave the dog on and take Bennett off,” he bellowed.

The crowd laughed, the Sunderland bench laughed.

Only Gary Bennett, says Martin, appeared not to be amused in the least.

And finally...

TUESDAY’S column sought the identity of the Scottish League club managed by former Sunderland players Ralph Brand, Harry Hood and Joe Baker. David Munday, himself north of the border, was first to know that it was Albion Rovers.

Richard Jones in Darlington today points out that former Liverpool player Steve Finnan is one of only two players to have scored at all five top levels of football – including the national Conference.

The other has strong local connections. Readers are invited to name him. In the meantime, the Railroad to Wembley heads for Bristol, Cadbury Heath v Spennymoor Town. More, weather permitting, on Tuesday.