HALF a century after they gathered in a chicken cree – new meaning to the phrase about being back in the hutch – Bishop Auckland’s cricketers have toasted the opening of impressive new dressing rooms.

Back then there was a communal bath, shared with the footballers, though probably not at the same time, and a stove in the middle of the floor. “I can tell you that it was very often needed,” recalled Clive Leach, Durham County Cricket Club chairman and himself a former Bishop player.

Now, thanks chiefly to a £54,000 grant from Sport England and to others from local councillors and from the Scotto Trust, changing is much changed.

Keith Hopper, another former Durham County player, recalled that in the absence of fertiliser, club captain Ernest Proud would treat the wicket with a barrow-load of cow muck, matured in his garden at third man.

“In the 1960s we’d be batting with swarms of flies around our heads. No wonder the communal bath was popular,” said Keith. (See also thoughts on Newcastle United: opposite page and below.)

The hen hut has long been replaced by impressive all-day social facilities, these days styled “café bar and sun terrace.” The second bit may be optional. Ubiquitous signs promote Illy, but that’s not the Blessed Raymond. They’re the folk who make the coffee.

STILL with cricket, we reported a fortnight back that the dear old Feversham League in deepest North Yorkshire will be down to just three teams this season. Fellow columnist Harry Mead, himself a Feversham stalwart, points out that it won’t deter them from holding the “top four” cup competition at season’s end. No 1 will meet the winner of a play-off between second and third. Harry’s impressed: “Emblematic of the grass roots of the grass roots of cricket, our wonderful league is prepared to work miracles – or at least to defy logic – in order to keep going.”

LEE Clark, one of Newcastle United’s “entertainers” from the Keegan era, joined Steve Watson and Darren Peacock for a question and answer at Heaton Stannington’s sportsmen’s dinner. None was greatly optimistic of the Magpies’ Premiership survival.

“How many of the players in that dressing room would run the extra mile?” asked Watson.

Clark, now manager of Kilmarnock and previously of Huddersfield and Birmingham City, had been the subject of a Backtrack interview when he was 15 – he’s now 43 – in the days before even teenage footballers had three agents, four PR men and an armed guard.

Incredibly, he remembered it. “You said I had loads of promise,” said the man who went on to win 11 Under-21 caps. “I wonder what went wrong.”

THE May issue of Four Four Two magazine devotes five pages, on and off, to Mike Rayner, a retired Darlington solicitor who these days is almost a full time non-league football enthusiast.

When there’s not a programme Mike produces, and sells, his own. He’s 59, lives in Middlesbrough, admits that he hasn’t thrown out a programme since his first match more than half a century ago and adds to them, as they say, exponentially.

“A one-man programme making machine,” says Four Four Two, “one of football’s most worthy cottage industries.” If material’s short, he’ll write about the town as well as the team. “Wikipedia is my god,” says Mike.

They’re all printed at home. “Printer ink in this part of Middlesbrough lasts about as long as a Theo Walcott injury comeback,” it concludes.

LAST week’s notes on Sir Bobby Robson and the Great Wall of Langley Park said that Sir Bobby had been born in that County Durham village. As John Waddleton points out, the future England manager was actually born in Sacriston, a couple of miles away – “a fact to which Sacriston folk are proud to lay claim.” John lives in Scholars Path, Darlington. Very appropriate.

The same column recalled Jackie Mordue – Witton Gilbert lad, Sunderland and England winger and world handball champion. Martin Birtle remembers an early Andy Capp cartoon in which the lad had come over all nostalgic. “Those were the days. Mordue slingin’ them across and Buchan noddin’ them in.” So why did old Andy support Hartlepool, then?

….and finally, last week’s column sought the identity of at least six England international footballers whose surnames included the letter X. Most came up with Graham Rix, Graham le Saux, Kerry Dixon, Lee Dixon, Jason Wilcox and Mike Duxbery. Some remembered Albert Quixall, too.

Fred Alderton, who set the question, added another six to the X-factor – J Cox (Liverpool), J D Cox (Derby County), R W Dix (Derby), J A Dixon (Notts County), F S Fox (Millwall) and G Molyneux (Southampton).

George Cram, encountered at the cricket, today invites readers to name Sunderland FC’s first substitute – a man who also played first class cricket.

Unless rain completely stops play, the column returns next week.