A team-mate of the late Bob Paisley shed light yesterday on the North-East-born football great's younger playing days.

Ken Twigg played with Paisley in the Bishop Auckland team that became the first to win the treble of the Northern League, Durham Challenge Cup and FA Amateur Cup in the same season, 1938/9.

Paisley was soon signed by Liverpool, starting a 44-year attachment to the Anfield club, culminating in a trophy-laden nine-year stint as manager.

He died in 1996, aged 77, but is to be the subject of a feature in Liverpool's official publication, the LFC Magazine.

Reporter Alan Jewell is gathering information on Paisley's formative years, growing up in the colliery community of Hetton-le-Hole, between Durham and Sunderland, and playing at Bishop Auckland.

Yesterday, he held an open day in Hetton-le-Hole to hear anecdotes from Paisley's contemporaries.

Among the visitors to Hetton Library was Ken Twigg, outside right in the Bishop Auckland team of 1939. Mr Twigg, from Stockton, who celebrates his 88th birthday today, took along his FA Amateur Cup winners' medal of 1939, and shared memories of the 3-0 extra-time victory over Willington, at Sunderland's Roker Park ground.

"Bob was a good player. He was left half and, though you wouldn't say he was a player with a lot of finesse, he was very strong," he said. "After we won the Amateur Cup he only played with us a couple more weeks before the end of the season, and then he signed for Liverpool.

"I saw him the following year, when he came back on embarkation leave from the Royal Artillery, and it was another 30 years before I met him again."