All change, it’s official (From The Northern Echo)

All change, it’s official

10:27am Tuesday 10th August 2010 in

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AFTER thirty years of being an exclusively male preserve – old habits, and all that – the ever-burgeoning Over 40s League had its first female referee on Saturday.

“I don’t think that it’s because they lose interest in women after reaching 40, just that we’ve never had the chance of a lady referee before,” says league secretary Kip Watson, 92.

The maiden appearance – Trimdon Vets v Darsley Park from Newcastle – was by Helen Conley, a 6ft blonde from Ferryhill who may well have fortified the Over 40s, nonetheless. They behaved like true gentlemen, she says.

“I really enjoyed it. They were as good as gold, no hassle at all – well, just the usual stuff, anyway. To be honest, I think they were just glad to have anyone.”

Already an assistant ref in the Northern League second division, she’d previously refereed in the Darlington Church and Friendly League, which folded in the summer.

“I wanted more experience in the middle, went to watch a colleague in the Over 40s and was very impressed with the standard. They don’t seem to have forgotten much at all.”

KIP, meanwhile, reports a flying start to the season for Paul Drenon of The Mill in Houghton-le-Spring.

Narrowly having escaped relegation last season, the Mill really put Redhouse CIU through it, winning 6-3.

Young-at-heart Drenon scored the lot.

NEWPORT County’s visit to Darlington this Saturday may be inversely epochal for the Quakers, rather the opposite for the County set – back in the Conference national division for the first time since the original club went bust in 1989.

What’s especially interesting, however, is that it was at Darlington that Newport recorded their lastever Football League victory – 2-0 on Monday, May 2 1988.

Quakers still had an outside chance of the playoffs.

County, already doomed, had won just five games all season – including the home match against Darlington.

What happened next was the stuff to which fans had become accustomed – though the crowd of just 1,645 alone suggesting that many had seen it all before.

Underdogs, the Welsh terriers bit hard.

“Newport murdered them, Steve Tupling ran the game from start to finish,” recalls Neil McKay in Lanchester.

Darlington manager Dave Booth was aghast.

“In all my years in the game, I’ve never seen a performance like it,” he told the Echo. “Quite frankly, I didn’t think my side could sink so low.

“I wanted to sneak out of the ground at half-time because I felt so ashamed of our display.”

The re-formed County, Conference South champions in 2009-10, had brought 300 fans in 1988.

Saturday’s Welsh vanguard is likely to be very much bigger.

Steve Tupling, now 45, came from Bellerby, in Wenlseydale and himself made 140 Quakers appearances in two spells, as well as 89 for Hartlepool.

Memorably hirsute, he was last heard of teaching PE in Whitley Bay.

THAT same bank holiday Monday in 1988, Sunderland celebrated the third division championship with a 3-1 win over Northampton Town in front of 29,454 “jubilant” Roker Park fans – Eric Gates the player of the year for the second successive season – while Middlesbrough won 3-0 at Barnsley.

“Bruce Rioch’s Boro will mark a sensational return to the first division if they beat Leicester at Ayresome Park on Saturday,” wrote Ray Robertson, while skipper Tony Mowbray supposed it “bigger than a cup final.”

They lost, of course – and the following season finished 21st in the second.

LAST Saturday’s column had also mentioned Ray Robertson, coming up 79 and for the first time in 50 years missing from the Boro press box for the opening match.

Perhaps it was a mercy.

Harry Mead also recalls Ray’s long-time former colleague Cliff Mitchell, the Evening Gazette’s man and, like Harry, a jazz fan.

“We once spent an evening together listening to his records of his favourite jazz guitarist, Eddie Lang. The Boro was never mentioned.”

Bishops’ financial tightrope

HAVING a clear-out – “enjoying” a clear-out may not be the apposite term – Malcolm Greaveson in Crook comes across The Northern Echo from January 31, 1964.

“It was sent by my father when I was stationed in Germany with the Royal Air Force,” he recalls.

Just seven years after the last of three successive Wembley triumphs, Bishop Auckland were in trouble – facing extinction, it was said.

Once again the alleged payment of amateurs raised its head – and plenty were anxious to put the boot money in.

We devoted a broadsheet page to it – an “exclusive”

article by club president Alderman Bob Middlewood, an anonymous and rather curious one by a “former player.”

No shamateurism for the Echo. We offered two guineas for the best letter – big money back then – to be addressed to “Soccer crisis”

and preferably on a postcard.

We also included the Bishops; balance sheet from 1962-63. Walking the tightrope, we shall return to that one shortly.

His article headlined “Why we’re in the soup”, 73-yearold Ald Middlewood – master of much that he surveyed thereabouts – claimed that part of the reason for plummeting gates was that better players were joining professional clubs straight from school.

“With the business that the club has brought into the town over the last 50 years, it would be catastrophic to let it die through lack of support.”

The former player appeared to be saying – somewhat disingenuously – that they weren’t paid but, even if they were, why shouldn’t they be.

“Even if an amateur does receive a regular income for about nine months a year, instead of just the kick of playing, they are not taking part in something immoral.

Principles have just collapsed a little, that’s all.”

The balance sheet showed that a surplus over expenditure was chiefly due to a £1,700 “realisation of investment” with Bishop Auckland council.

The £5,252 annual expenditure included £71 8s for coke, £161 2s 4d for pavilion and tea room, £82 3s for “attending meetings and seeking players.”

There was also £1,851 – wholly unexplained – to cover first team matches.

The Bishops played 30 Northern League games in 1962-63, finishing eighth in the 16-member competition.

Since “First XI” expenditure on league games was £1,257 3s – about £50 a match – the bus fares must have been rather higher than most of us remember.

And finally...

THE only side in the 20th century to win both FA and FA Amateur Cups (Backtrack, August 7) was Wimbledon. David Whitfield in Bishop Auckland, among many who knew, recalls that Eddie Reynolds scored all four goals with headers.

Today back to Newport County, 13-0 losers at Newcastle United on October 5 1946. “County were lucky to get nil,” it was observed – perhaps for the first time, by no means for the last – by the player who’d just scored six.

Readers are invited to name him. The column returns on Saturday.