Billy Bell, among the most successful managers in North-East football - and sometimes one of the most argumentative - has died after a long illness. He was 71.

Billy was also the man who nurtured the talent of the young Chris Waddle, now Britain's most famous former sausage factory worker, the man who burned tyres on a frostbound pitch so that the game might go on, and over whom former Newcastle United hero Frank Brennan once emptied the contents of the trainer's bucket.

Don Revie and Bill Shankly were among those with whom he formed a mutual admiration society; one or two others were rather tardier with their subscriptions.

The most remarkable among his achievements was winning the Northern League championship in four successive seasons, 1969-73, with three different clubs.

The first and proudest titles were twice with humble Evenwood, his home village, the team for which he made his Northern League debut as a 16-year-old, with which he won the Durham Junior Cup and for which his mother made proggy mats in order to raise ever-needed funds. The others were Spennymoor and Blyth Spartans.

He'd won England and Durham County youth caps, had trials at Fulham with the young Bobby Robson, played principally for Evenwood and West Auckland and also managed Bishop Auckland, Tow Law - where young Waddle made his name - and Gateshead.

"Billy was passionate about a game he loved and cherished and that was the mark of the man," said Sir Bobby yesterday.

"At this level we're glamourised and that's nice, but it's people like Billy Bell who keep the game going."

Bill Gibson, a former Gateshead chairman with whom he remained close, recalls a good friend and agreeable companion but someone with whom it was easy enough to differ.

"We'd always be arguing about football. I'd never win, of course. Billy was one of those fellers who really should have had the kind of chance that Lawrie McMenemy had.

"His family was his first love, followed closely by football and then the horses. He said he had a system, swore he always bought his new cars out of his winnings."

Eddie Ross, one of the Evenwood side which for two seasons remained virtually unchanged, wishes simply that he had a pound for every time they'd fallen out.

"Billy was a smashing bloke but somehow you just argued, every other week. His secret was to drive you on to do things he'd told you could never be done, just to prove him wrong."

Tony Monkhouse, a player at Evenwood and later his assistant at Spennymoor, says that the Evenwood players worshipped him.

"We thought he was God, honestly. It didn't matter what Billy said, we'd do it, and we couldn't wait for the next training session to come around. I've never seen anyone more ambitious, or more delighted for the little place where he belonged. We might only have been on £3 or £5, whereas the likes of Bishop Auckland might have been on £20, but very few left Evenwood of their own accord."

Billy himself was simply ahead of his time, particularly in non-league football. "Most coaches think their job is just to get the players fit," he once said.

"It isn't, it's about being able to read the game, to handle people and to know where players are making mistakes."

In the matter of handling people, he also tried to ban sex after Wednesday nights. "We told lies," says Eddie Ross.

Billy's mother was also from Evenwood, his father an Ulsterman. The late Jackie Bell, his Evenwood-born nephew, made 118 Newcastle United appearances between 1957-61. Billy's funeral is at St Paul's church, Evenwood, at 11am next Tuesday.

He'd joined the re-formed Gateshead club in 1977, as coach to Ray Wilkie, left after 18 months to become manager of Tow Law and just weeks before the season began desperately rang Bill Gibson to ask if they'd any surplus players.

Bill could only think of a junior called Waddle, whom Ray Wilkie didn't rate. Tow Law took him; Bill Gibson recalls an introverted 18-year-old.

"Tow Law had a friendly, at Worksop, I think, and Chris was so quiet on the bus that Billy decided to give him a quarter of an hour and then bring on Stuart Leeming, one of his stalwarts.

"Chris mesmerised them from the start. After 20 minutes, Billy told Stuart Leeming that he might as well get changed."

Harry Hodgson, Tow Law's chairman at the time, recalls a conscientious man who always gave 100 per cent and expected everyone else to do the same.

Waddle joined Newcastle United at the end of that season. Though the rest is history, there are those up at Tow Law who still swear there's something missing from the books.

Billy had by then become manager of Wallsend sports centre, among the first in the country, but returned to his native south-west Durham on retirement.

He'd also been a Freemason and remained a Rotarian. It was after speaking at Bishop Auckland Rotary Club six or seven years ago that we once more bumped into him.

Most other members had been perfunctorily polite about the talk; Billy, as ever, preferred to call a spade a blunt instrument and to wield it accordingly.

"That was bloody rubbish," he said, and may think much the same of his obituary.

He will be remembered with the utmost affection for all that, a legend beyond argument.

Willie Smith's snooker club opened in Darlington on February 26 1915 and, after a break for bingo, potters cheerfully on.

Then as now, the world witnessed graver events. The opening's prominence on the front page of the North Star may not have been unconnected with the fact that Willie's father was the sports editor.

"That the building will be a great asset to the architectural beauties of the town cannot be denied," the Star unashamedly insisted. It can be now.

Inside, however, it's remarkably pleasant, ten tables numbered 2-11 for a reason we didn't quite work out. "It's like playing snooker in your sitting room," said Rita Everett, the owner's mum.

Smoking's allowed, mobile phones aren't. There are even two real ale pumps. "They said it wouldn't last a week, that was two and a half years ago," said Peter Everett, who can keep beer but wouldn't know a cue from a cucumber.

We'd looked in on Monday evening to present the Darlington Snooker League's annual awards, principally to the Railway Institute and the RA Club. None may yet emulate Willie Smith.

Born in 1886 in Darlington, the town which feted him, he was twice world billiards champion and twice lost to Joe Davis in the world snooker finals. Willie had also worked on the North Star, four bob a week as an apprentice linotype operator.

Once described by The Northern Echo as "ever a frail lad", he died, aged 96, in 1982.

The other great sporting moment of Monday evening was that the Britannia A team clinched second place, and promotion, from D division of the Darlington and District 5s and 3s League. The champions are the Britannia B team, with whom the column has had a long and largely fruitless association. Whatever the alphabetical order, it is good to see that the A team know their place.

Former Darlington and Hartlepool United goalkeeper Phil Owers came on as a 75th minute sub for Shildon on Saturday - the fourth decade in which he's played for his home town club.

Now very much the eminence grise, Phil made his Shildon debut as a Beatle cropped 16-year-old. He will be 47 this month.

For a quarter of an hour at Consett he kept another clean sheet. "There's not an ounce of excess weight on him," says Shildon secretary Mike Armitage. "He looked as good as ever."

In reporting Bishop Auckland cricket club chairman Keith Hopper's worries about modern youth, we quoted him two weeks ago as saying that they wanted instant sex. What he apparently said was that they wanted instant success.

"I used to do Pitman's, I know the outline's almost the same," Keith sympathises.

Mind, he adds, they probably want instant sex, an' all.

Happier days for Sunderland, the latest football auction from the sages at Methusaleh includes lots of memorabilia from the 1937 FA Cup final, from the song sheet to the LNER menu card.

Programmes predominate, tickets also feature strongly - £100 or so for a well-used 1966 World Cup final ticket, almost as much for the Fulwell End ticket for the qualifiers.

There are stamps and first day covers, trade cards and Typhoo tea cards, cigar bands, headscarves and the usual honest admissions of scuffing, grubbiness and spine wear which from time to time afflict us all.

There's also a book on football's legal tussles, rather neatly entitled Get Your Writs Out For the Lads.

The auction's at the Marton Country Club, Middlesbrough, on April 24 but without the star attractions of previous sales. Whilst entirely understandable, the guide price of £30,540 for a photograph of Arsenal's 1971 double winning side must reluctantly be considered a mistake.

the feat which in the third Test against the West Indies in 2000 Alex Stewart became only the fourth cricketer to achieve (Backtrack, April 8) was scoring a century in his 100th Test match.

Readers may today care to suggest how Charlton's Keith Peacock set a Football League first in August 1965 - though it's been repeated thousands of times since.

First among equals, the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: ??/??/2003