Best wishes to Spout House’s groundhopper (From The Northern Echo)

Best wishes to Spout House’s groundhopper

12:26pm Saturday 6th February 2010

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Best wishes to Spout House’s groundhopper WILLIAM Ainsley, secretary for 60-odd years of the vertiginous Spout House Cricket Club, is having a spell in the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton and is to be wished a speedy recovery.

Never a man to lie idle, William – also a farmer and landlord of the adjacent Sun Inn, between Stokesley and Helmsley – has been counting the number of different grounds on which he’s played competitive cricket.

Open and shut case, he’s also been counting the number of gates on his farm – 52, one for every week.

The cricket total’s 62, which combative readers are invited to challenge. “Sixtytwo?”

muses the enduring J M Watson, “do you mean grounds or leagues?”

William’s first game was for Spout House at Duncombe Park, Helmsley, in 1939. He was nine. “I think they gave me a single,” he recalls.

Nearly all the others have been in the Stokesley or Ryedale areas.

Many grounds have gone.

Some of the settlements – Baxtons, a farm above Helmsley, or Snilesworth, a dot of a place near Osmotherley – may be pretty invisible, too.

The 62 grounds represent 48 clubs. Rievaulx hold the record. They’ve had five.

Sadly, familiarly, 20 of the clubs have folded – teams like Hutton-le-Hole, Bransdale and Low Farndale.

Spout House, happily, slope on.

THE Darlington and District 5s and 3s League website appears to be carrying a paragraph that on Monday I lost to a woman. Readers must imagine the truth of that allegation for themselves.

A WEIGHT off his mind – and much of the rest of him, too – the extraordinary Charlie Donaghy yesterday over the proceeds of his sponsored slim. Others have shed £3,353.

“When I sat down to total it up, I thought there must be something wrong with my maths,” he says.

Charlie’s a Tow Law lad, involved with all manner of games league in Co Durham, fills great chunks of the Local Heroes supplement with their news.

Supervised by the local surgery’s practice nurses – “unbelievably brilliant” – his weight dropped from 19 stones 1lb to 16 stones 7lbs.

“I’d not been eating four meals a day, I’d been eating one continuous meal,” he reflects.

The money will provide a garden and outdoor play equipment at Tow Law primary school.

A NICE little PS to Tuesday’s story on the splendid Stephen Harmison, helping to promote the skilltrainingltd Northern League’s Just Give it a Go initiative.

Ray Gowan, Ashington FC’s manager at the start of 2008, recalls how Harmy would still train with the players – and with his dad Jimmy, Ray’s assistant.

One particularly wintry January night, the test series in Australia just days away, the session finished with a seven-a-side on the outdoor artificial pitch.

“Being of a sophisticated cricket culture,” says Ray – a former Normanby Hall wicket keeper – “I was concerned that the future of the Ashes was in my hands and that I need to protect the Big Feller on the ice and snow covering the Astroturf.”

That’s when he saw a gentleman who’d best remain nameless – “but if you gave him a cricket bat, he’d beat the wife with it” – winding up for a tackle in England’s great hope.

Ray hurled himself between them, took the hit on one of his hips – the plastic one, a bit like the pitch – and was thus gratified to see Harmy prepare to open the Ashes bowling.

It was the ball that went straight to second slip.

“Maybe,” he mused, “I should have allowed the hit.”

Fond memories of Old Nic

GORDON Nicholson’s passing (Backtrack, February 2) aroused widespread sadness and many memories.

The long-serving and greatly admired former Northern League secretary and Bishop Auckland cricketer could be a belligerent beggar, too.

The recollection from Jim Sayers in Spennymoor that his wife had nicknamed Gordon “Tyres” – “because when keeping wicket he looked like the Michelin Man” – may best be served posthumously.

Eric Henderson in Marske, who became president of the Football League Referees’ and Linesmen’s Association, recalls a long-gone match at Shildon United when Gordon was club secretary.

Eric had taken his young son, then eight, with the hope that they could share the somewhat limited referee’s hut. Gordon had other ideas.

“There’s only one person will fit in there,” he said.

“Either you change in it or the lad does. You can’t both.”

Scared the life out of him, says Eric. Bark and bite, they become good friends.

GEORGE Romaine, the former Tyne Tees Television singer who hits 80 on Monday, recalls playing cricket for Bishop Auckland at Guisborough in the 1950s.

Gordon was behind the stumps, George at first slip, Bill Proud the old school skipper.

Proud suddenly halted play, claiming they were one short. The umpires counted; so they were. The missing link was legendary footballer Bob Hardisty, also a capable cricketer.

“Bob had a bet in the 4 15,” George recalls. “There was a row of houses alongside the ground at Crook and he’d nipped over the fence to see how it had got on.

“Gordon went absolutely crackers. Whatever the game, whatever the occasion, he wanted it played properly.”

Arnold Alton remembers Gordon as a master of the one-liner – not least when Old Vinovians, Arnold’s team, reached the Durham Amateur Cup final – “a big competition in those days” – in 1962. “If you win it,” said Gordon, “you’ll be the first amateur team to win the Durham Amatuer Cup.”

Gordon’s funeral is at Bishop Auckland Methodist Church, opposite the general hospital, at 11am next Wednesday. His son Stuart asks us to say that all will be most welcome at Bishop Auckland Cricket Club afterwards.

THEN there was the occasion when Nic, by then Evenwood Town FC’s dedicated chairman, sold Northallerton referee Barry Sygmuta a quid’s worth of half-time draw tickets even though the match had just been called off half-an-hour earlier.

The following week, Siggy was preparing to take charge of a big FA Vase game at Bedlington when there was a knock on the ref’s room door.

It was Gordon. “I’ve bought you a quid’s worth of halftime draw tickets,” he said.

He still win nowt. In the clubhouse afterwards there was a domino card. Siggy didn’t win that, either.

Gordon did.

STEVE Moralee, the man who wants to install solar panels in the stand roof at Tow Law, texted excitedly on Tuesday afternoon. Their match at Bishop Auckland was on.

A 6pm telephone call confirmed that the pitch had passed muster. An hour later the game was called off again, a particular frustration for the poor chap who’d travelled from Edinburgh and for the Lawyers, who’ve not played football for eight weeks.

Today, they’re at home to Bishops and, coincidentally, Steve Moralee was at Anth Lowther’s funeral. Prospects of player? “How many different ways can you spell nil?” said Steve.

All this again recalls Gordon Nicholson. Back in 1966-67, his first season as Northern League secretary, not a single match was lost to the weather.

In those days, of course, they’d play in two feet of snow. It was better than facing Old Nic’s fire any day.

Big send-off for a Hartlepool legend Newton

JACKIE Newton, one-third of a nearpermanent Hartlepool United half-back line in the 1950s – they were Newton Stamper, Moore – has died, aged 84.

He was a Willington lad and content always to be so, made 361 first team appearances and scored 19 goals. None was more memorable, nor more remembered, than the equaliser against Manchester United in what Sir Matt Busby reckoned the finest football match he ever saw.

It was the FA Cup third round, January 5 1957, the first division champions 3-0 after half an hour and seemingly on cruise control.

Frank Stamper’s 35th minute goal seemed little more than consolation but soon after half-time Kenny Johnson, bandaged and limping, made it two.

Jackie, a gentle and a generous man, scored with 15 minutes remaining.

“Twenty-five yards out, two foot off the ground all the way and I’ve still got the Daily Express photo to prove it,” he once told the column.

So he had, proudly among his souvenirs, still in Willington. The 17,000 crowd all but beside themselves, Bill Whelan hit a late winner for Busby’s fledgling Babes.

Jackie had joined Newcastle United while still in the army, never made the first team, played for Blackhall CW before moving down the coast to Hartlepool under long-serving manager Fred Westgarth.

Top whack, they finally paid him £18 plus £4 for a win. “George Eastham got everything changed but he went a little bit too far, it skinned a lot of clubs,” he’d recalled.

“Football was straightforward in those days. Now you need a maths degree just to read the league table.”

Nor, he added, had there been any agents. “The only agent we’d heard of was Dick Barton,” said Jack, unforgettably.

He later managed Spennymoor United and Stanley United (“a great little club”), occasionally got down to watch the locals.

“Hartlepool folk were always very good to me. I was glad to have been part of it, and to go home every night to Willington.”

His sons Brian, David and Malcolm all made a big mark in the Northern League, especially at Bishop Auckland. Jackie’s funeral is at 1.45pm on Monday at Lydia Street Methodist church, inevitably in Willington.

Tears shed for Anthony Lowther

ON DECEMBER 12, the last football match before the unscheduled winter break, I watched North Shields lose 5-1 at Stokesley.

Anthony Lowther played for North Shields, told the manager that he knew he hadn’t done well, asked not to be considered for a few weeks until he got his fitness back.

On Thursday I attended his funeral, a bitterly poignant occasion, at St Bernadette’s church in Wallsend. Anth was 33, married to Sheila and with an 11-week-old son, Hugo.

He’d played for the celebrated Wallsend Boys Club and in America, for Blyth Spartans, for several Northern League teams north of the Tyne and for Tow Law over yonder.

Barely a fortnight after the Stokesley match, he was diagnosed with leukaemia.

The requiem mass, they asked, should be a joyous celebration of his life.

Around 500 must have been in the church, as many again unable to squeeze inside. “Come in if you can, you’ll freeze out there,”

said the priest. They froze, nonetheless.

Christopher, his brother, recalled the time that baby Anthony came home from hospital. “It was just so amazing. I sat beside that Moses basket for three days. We’ve been side by side ever since.”

The priest talked of a man with a joy and a zest for life. “Anthony was the life and soul of the party. A party wouldn’t be a party without Anthony.”

On the way out they passed round collecting buckets in his memory. For Anth Lowther, great lad, many cried them, too.

...and finally

TUESDAY’S column sought the identity of the seven clubs presently in the Premiership against whom Darlington have played bottom division football since 1980.

They are Bolton, Burnley, Fulham, Hull City, Portsmouth, Wigan and Wolves.

Mention of Radio 5 Live presenter Gabby Logan in last Saturday’s column prompts Norman Robinson in Annfield Plain to recall her father, Terry Yorath. Which country other than Wales, asks Norman, did Yorath manage?

Today, weather permitting, we’re off to Sussex to watch Marske United in the Vase. More Brighton lines on Tuesday.