Beijing booster for holy Murton

After the huge crater appeared overnight in Murton FC's pitch - when an underground culvert collapsed - officials from club, parish council and Murton Welfare looked into it from every angle.

Tabloid newspapers had already dubbed them Britain's unluckiest football club after a series of misfortunes culminated in Black Friday, a fund raising match abandoned on Friday the 13th because someone forget to put enough diesel in the floodlight generator.

The culvert collapse, in June last year, appeared a final drain on scant resources. "We approached everyone we could think of, but to be honest I thought we were banging our heads off a brick wall," admits Welfare Association and Parish Council chairman Ernie Robinson. "I really believed that the end was nigh for the football club."

Even a BBC television programme on the appliance of science to Murton's footballers - and to the hole - proved markedly more successful with the former.

Then finally luck changed. They had reckoned without the Great Windfall of China.

In his role as a GMB trade union official, Ernie went on the trade mission last September. So did Tom Pendry, former middleweight boxing champion of Hong Kong and at the time the Labour MP for Stalybridge.

Lord Pendry, as now he is, was also chairman of the Football Foundation and the linked Football Stadia Improvement Fund - formed just two months previously.

"I'd never even heard of it. We just sat talking about Murton's problems one night and he wondered if they might be able to help," says Ernie. "It was an extraordinary coincidence; he even had the information brochures with him in China."

Just days later, ironically, the visiting MP and Stockport County fan went down with a serious case of food poisoning and spent several days in hospital.

Back home, work has finally begun on the £85,000 scheme to go the hole hog - with £80,000 coming from the FSIF.

"We are delighted that we could play a significant role in what has been a particularly difficult time for the club," says Lord Pendry. The Fund has allocated over £30m in its first year.

Murton now hope to be back on their own ground on September 22 - after ground sharing throughout last season - and to win another £20,000 grant for further ground improvements.

"It's been really difficult for us but we've been going nearly 100 years and weren't going to give in without a fight," says club chairman Tom Torrence. "I have to say, though, that the chances of something turning up in China seemed quite remote."

Murton Welfare, who lease the ground from the parish council for a peppercorn rent, had approached everyone from Lottery Board to Water Board, even considered legal action against Easington District Council - successor to the local authority which laid the culvert in 1926.

"With us being a registered charity we certainly hadn't that sort of money and the football club had been run on a shoestring for years," says Ernie.

"A lot of people have loved Murton Football Club over the years, but it was beginning to look as if they'd had it."

We gathered in the former colliery village on Wednesday - Tom Torrence, Ernie Robinson, Mike Overton the Football Foundation's surveyor, Welfare secretary Ann Cowell, Albany Northern League chairman - to watch men at work.

They've even discovered long buried beer bottles from Nimmo's in Castle Eden, patent potion containers marked "Do not take" in large letters and an old fashioned ginger beer bottle said to be worth up to £200.

Mike Overton imagined it unique in their short history - "It was very important to ensure football continued in Murton but we've never helped fund something where people won't be able to see where the money's gone."

There was talk of the grass roots days of the 1950s when Murton's pitch was so good that Sunderland wanted to buy it, of a Grand re-opening and of how the vandals, and others, might yet be deterred.

The Welfare even laid on a nice bit lunch, an occasion marked by yet another attempt by the magnificent Tom Torrence to bite the hand that fed him.

"Excuse me," he said to the chap from the Football Foundation, "but you couldn't get me two tickets for England's match in Germany as well?"

Denise Robertson - author, agony aunt, fixture on Channel 4 - tells of her passion for Sunderland FC in the summer issue of the London and Southern England supporters; club branch magazine.

Embryonic in 1973, it extended nonetheless to knitting Wembley scarves for her sons - since every shop in Sunderland was out of red and white wool, they were orange, instead. "Terrible stuff," she says.

These days she's more fervent, not least after last November's still strutted victory at St James' Park when a video from Magpies nut Robson Green arrived at the Channel 4 studios.

"I was expecting his normal clowning, but instead it showed him saying: 'If you want to know how I feel about the result, Denise . . .' Then he starts to cry, and disappears beneath the camera."

Much time and effort was expended hereabouts a few months ago in trying to prove that the Rev William Jordan, Vicar of St Cuthbert's in Darlington from 1935-43, had kept goal for Aston Villa.

Little wonder the Villa historians grew frustrated - Jordan was centre forward for West Bromwich Albion, scoring a "delightful" hat trick on his debut against Gainsbrough Trinity.

A splendidly informative history of St Cuthbert's exhibition, running in the church until September, also records the "gratifying" attendance at Jordan's Sunday afternoon "sportsmen's services".

The exhibition also includes a distinctly displeased letter to Jordan from the Bishop of Durham, the fearsome Herbert Henson, after the Bishop - preaching in St Cuthbert's - had noticed the Lord's Prayer conspicuous in absence.

"I need not point out to you the special importance of not tampering with the communion service. Such grave individualism has occurred and, I fear, does still occur in some churches. We are all bound to be very rigorous in this matter."

As a West Bromwich Albion might say, it was a spectacular own goal.

Danny Hinge, himself the son of a retired vicar, rings to shed light onto another little area of darkness.

Danny's captain of Etherley Cricket Club. Yesterday's paper, most editions anyway, recorded that they had conceded a Randall Orchard Cup semi-final against Evenwood the previous evening after bad light stopped play.

"We didn't concede, it was awarded against us," says Danny. "I don't want people going around asking what the hell that Hinge has done now."

The competition, played at Richmond, is 25 overs a side. Before Tuesday's game, both captains pointed out the improbability of finishing a 50 over game. The organisers insisted the rules stand.

Evenwood hit 153-8. Etherley were 99-4 after 18 overs when the skipper led them off - "neither batsmen nor fielders could see the ball, it wasn't safe to continue.

"We have no falling out with Evenwood and we abide by the decision, but it was a foreseeable problem. To lose a semi-final that way is very disappointing."

Back from holiday in Canada - a silver wedding present to themselves - Martin Birtle in Billingham sends news of Toronto's failed Olympic bid.

"We were among 10,000 people in Front Street for the free pancake breakfast and street party. Then Beijing got the Games and end of party...."

Things may not have been helped by the insistence of Dick Pound, Canada's senior IOC representative, on batting for the other side.

Giving the 2008 Olympics to China might accelerate social change, said Pound, and on another occasion admitted that it might be hard to come to Canada for the third time in 30 years when China had never played host.

The Toronto Sun ran a distinctly unhappy column with much play on the gentleman's first name. It was headed "With friends like these."

A letter from Mr Owen Smith in the Daily Telegraph gently upbraids their sports desk for overlooking Peterlee Howletch School's finest sporting hour.

Reporting Eton's five wicket win over Little Lever High School in the Lord's Taverners' Colts Trophy last week, the Telegraph claimed that Little Lever had been the first comprehensive to reach the final.

Not so, says Mr Smith, and he should know - he was Howletch headmaster when they won it in 1981, still the only comp to do so.

We have tried in vain to discover more, if any of the side went on to still greater things or, indeed, if they still play cricket at Howletch.

Not even Roy Simpson - Peterlee cricket legend, egg jarping impresario and member of the 1970s Durham County League Psycho XI - is presently able to help, though his enquiries continue. Further information - comprehensive coverage, even - would be appreciated.

THE footballer who in the space of seven first team appearances played in all four Football League divisions (Backtrack, July 24) was Shildon lad John Hope.

John played for Darlington at the end of 1966-67, when the Quakers were relegated, made four fourth division appearances the following season before being transferred to Newcastle. kept goal once in the old first division and in 1970 went to Sheffield United, in the second. Perhaps he's still best remembered, however, for being at the wrong end of George Best's most memorable goal.

Brian Shaw today invites readers to identify the Olympic sport at which Britain remains champion - its having been discontinued after 1920.