Celebrity Siggy flies by seat of his pants

(The B*****d in the Black is presently Mr Jeff Winter. There'll be much more of him in Friday's column.)

The splendid Siggy, Arngrove Northern League referee and Premiership assistant, was on duty at Bolton v Wigan when the ball came hurtling down the line, two players in hot pursuit.

What happened next is likely to be replayed on television for many years to come.

"It was like something from the Dying Swan," reports Steve Moralee from Tow Law, a theme echoed by the Elderly Secretary of the Bishop Auckland Referees' Society. His subsequent e-mail to Barry was headed "Bolton Ballet Company."

For pas de deux read A over T.

"It was like Paul Alcock and Paolo di Canio all over again," recalls Siggy, from Northallerton. "Gary Lineker commented that, like all good linesmen, I had my eye on the ball.

"One guy ran into me and I knew that I was going to fall over. Seriously, it was like my whole life flashing before me in a moment.

"I tried to throw myself sideways to stop landing on my back and for some stupid reason I'm sitting there on my backside giving the signal for a throw-in. The video will be worth a fortune."

Referee Steve Bennett was quickly across. "I know it's a throw-in," he said, "just take a couple of deep breaths."

Lineker made it his "golden moment"; Lee Dixon was so helpless with laughter he couldn't make anything of it at all. Siggy's unsure about being a backside-first celebrity.

"I'm even being stopped by women in the street," he reports. "I think I'm going into hiding."

Dinner on Friday with the ever-enterprising Brooks Mileson, headed the following day for Gretna's Scottish Cup tie at Clyde.

That Saturday's stalemate puts them into the quarter-final draw will worry him only because he's promised star striker Dr Kenny Deuchar an Aston Martin if he scores in the final and they lift the trophy at Hampden Park.

"That's the real problem," says Brooks, "everyone's going to want one now."

More memories of former England fast bowler Alec Coxon, sometimes abrasive, who died a couple of weeks ago. The story, coincidentally, also involves Keith Hopper - who'd stirred memory's pot on Friday.

Jack Watson, another former Durham County man, recalls that he'd taken a benefit match team to Craghead, Stanley way, when Keith was professional there around 40 years ago.

Coxon, a Tyke-it-or-leave-it Yorkshireman, was among them. So was Mel Robinson, one of Jack's team mates at Shildon BR (and whose son now plays left back for West Bromwich Albion.)

Alec was on good form. "Tha's junior pro," he told young Robinson. "Thy job is to get my beer in."

"So far as I can recall," says Jack, "Mel did as he was told."

Not just referees get it wrong, as Arngrove Northern League match official Graham Smith has been discovering.

Since there are quite a few of them around, the FA now prints the relevant post code after each Smith in the officials' list.

It didn't stop Fisher Athletic, usually based in London Docklands but now ground sharing with Dulwich Hamlet, from not only confirming his appointment but sending a map of how to find the ground.

Smith NE28 was somewhat surprised. He lives in Wallsend. "I feel my expenses may be prohibitive and could bankrupt the club," he replied.

"If possible, could I also have a map showing Kings Cross station, as my sense of direction is akin to my interpretation of the offside law."

He heard no more. Smith BN26 has been appointed in his stead.

Excitement mounts at Crook Town, who are at Arnold in Nottinghamshire on Saturday in the last 16 of the FA Vase and with dear old Bobby Davison as their special guest.

Bobby, an amateur international, was Crook's victorious centre half and captain in the twice-replayed Amateur Cup final against Bishop Auckland in 1954 and was a familiar Co Durham cricket professional. Now 82, he lives just 20 miles from Arnold.

We've also heard from Mr A Bainbridge in Crook, whose father in those heady days of the 1950s made a wooden corncrake so big it had to be turned with both hands.

When Whitley Bay had a successful spell in the 1960s, he loaned it to someone up there. Now that the tide's turned, Mr Bainbridge would love another shake of the corncrake. Anyone know where it is?

Following our report on Crook's win over St Blazey in the last round, we've also heard from Alastair Milroy, now working in Aberdeen and essaying a couple of rounds of Thai boxing.

"I'm battered like a fish supper, I'm afraid," reports Ali, whose brother Jonathan scored Crook's first goal and who himself played football for Cockfield and cricket for Evenwood.

He also sends a 1961 cutting of Willington's 1-0 Amateur Cup final win over Crook in which "brilliant" goalkeeper Alan Milroy stopped everything which Crook threw at them.

It's the same Alan Milroy, good bloke, who was Shildon's goalkeeper in their record 12-0 defeat at Whitley Bay - but that's another story.

Scout master Ray dies at 97

Ray Grant, the man who gave true meaning to scout's honour, has died peacefully at the age of 97.

"He was just a lovely gentleman," says Hibs manager and former Middlesbrough captain Tony Mowbray, discovered by Ray as a nine-year-old schoolboy in Marske.

"Mr Grant meant the world to me," says former Sunderland Middlesbrough star Stan Cummins, now recovered from his heart attack - it's the wrecked knee that's the problem - and again playing for Ferryhill Greyhound in the Over 40s League.

"He helped give me a chance and I never forgot that. We still kept regularly in touch."

Ray was a Middlesbrough teacher, and later headmaster, who also spotted the potential of the likes of Brian Clough, Alan Peacock and Mark Proctor.

"I reckoned to find Middlesbrough a good player, a quality player, every year," he told Backtrack shortly before his 97th birthday in December. "There was a first team match with five of mine in the side."

Ray Grant, in truth, was the scout master.

Brian Clough had been playing for the village side at Great Broughton, near Stokesley, self-assured even at 17. "I always sat with the new boys on the bus, tried to ease some of the tension out of them," Ray once recalled.

"Brian was different, there was nothing tense about him. With most of them I thought they were a bit thankful, but he was confident right from the start."

Mowbray and Cummins were both genuine "finds". In both cases, Ray had been sent to look at someone else entirely.

"I remember the day vividly," recalls Tony. "I was two years young for the school team but we knew he even looked like a scout - brown Allegro, sheepskin coat, flat cap.

"He wrote to Middlesbrough about me, things developed from there, but Ray never lost interest. It was a bit like Sven in the early days, every match you went to, Ray seemed to be at, too, with his wife Nancy sitting in the brown Allegro, knitting or reading a book."

Stan Cummins, never much more than 5ft 4in when he grew up, was an 11-year-old at Ferryhill Comp. Ray was supposed to be looking at a 6ft 2in centre forward ("that big, even then" says Stan) called Gordon Hodgson.

"Gordon scored a hat-trick but Ray noticed that it was me putting them on a plate for him. I was just a little midge but he told me he thought I had the know-how. Sunderland paid £300,000 for me; he'd earned them that."

Ray lived with his niece and her husband at East Rounton, near Northallerton, where his funeral will be held at 2.45pm on Thursday. Registered blind, he'd stopped watching football on television when we met him in December.

"I've watched football for 90-odd years," he said. "Probably I've seen enough."

Hibs' win at Rangers on Saturday means that Scotland will have its first non-Old Firm final since 1997 - and that the Edinburgh side still has a chance of lifting the trophy for the first time in 104 years.

"I was amazed when I discovered that," says Mowbray. "When you think of some of the great teams we've had, you'd have supposed we might have won it once or twice."

They're away to Falkirk or Ross County in the next round and the boss added: "At least we avoided Hearts. An all-Edinburgh final would be wonderful."

And finally...

Friday's column sought the identity of the two men who had managed both Darlington and Hartlepool and appears seriously to have miscounted.

Mick Tait and Alan Murray certainly did the double but what - as several readers have pointed out - about Cyril Knowles, Billy Horner and Ken Hale, manager at the Vic and caretaker at Feethams?

Bill Moore in Coundon today seeks the identity of the only club to have won both the FA Cup and League Cup only once.

One-off, the column returns on Friday.

Published: 07/02/2006