Talking of Harry Herring, and by now having exhausted every possible piscatorial pun, Friday's column pictured him in a Blackhall CW side of the 1960s.

Hails of Hartlepool recognised other faces, too. The chap in the top coat was the late Jackie Hather - born in Annfield Plain, hewed coal at Horden but legendary at Aberdeen, where he spent 12 post-war years on the left wing.

Aberdeen knew him as the Human Flying Machine, his father-in-law called him the Durham Heelander.

The chap clutching the ball, says Ron Hails, is none other than Five Goal Folland - and thereby hangs another tale.

It was April 15, 1961, Hartlepools v Oldham in the fourth division. Folland, a 20-year-old local lad, had recently made his debut alongside Barry Parkes, a Seaton Carew man a few months his senior.

"Folland goes nap" said the Echo headline the following Monday and just about said it all. Parkes, who'd scored hat-tricks in the two previous home games, helped lay on three of the goals in the 5-1 win.

Jack Fletcher, the Echo's long-serving man in the Victoria Ground press box, was duly impressed. "It seems increasingly likely that manager Bill Robinson has hit on exactly the blood transfusion Hartlepool needed," he wrote. "I feel the club are really on the upgrade."

Five Goal Folland is still in the Pool, spotted striding jauntily past the Hillcarter or having one in the Old Durhams. Wise man, he is also ex-directory.

The extraordinary thing is that, though many Hartlepool players have struggled to score five in a season, the feat passes unmentioned in Ed Law's history of the club.

Ron, who talks of Bobby writing his name in letters of gold in Hartlepool's somewhat lacklustre history, is pretty sure that none other before or since has hit five in a Football League game for Hartlepool.

Bobby Folland scored a total of 24 goals in 58 Football league appearances, Bobby Parkes hit nine in 27. Despite Jack Fletcher's upgraded optimism, United finished second bottom in 1961 - and second bottom the following year, an' all.

That Folland's feat made but a single column headline may have had everything to do with events that afternoon at Wembley - England 9 Scotland 3, young Jimmy Greaves scoring three and offered to Inter Milan for £100,000. A mistake by Sunderland goalkeeper Peter Wakeham gave Derby County victory at Roker Park, Boro went down 3-2 at Swansea and Newcastle United lost 2-1 at Blackpool in what the Echo's man termed a "Hitchcock-type thriller." Blackpool's right winger was a bairn of 46. Stanley Matthews, we added, was "canny."

The Britannia in Darlington isn't a particularly Philistine place at all - indeed the publisher and Everyman Library founder J M Dent was born there in 1849, ten years before it became a pub - but rarely can the Bible have more earnestly been discussed thereabouts than last Friday lunchtime.

We'd set ourselves the task of naming a team of professional footballers, past or present, who had the same surname as a biblical character.

When it was considered too easy, the teams were divided into Old and New Testament figures. Those who simply believe themselves to be God were not considered, nor Wise Men - Dennis or otherwise. Jesses were also excluded as, reluctantly, was Jimmy Goodfellow.

Remi Moses seems a perfect captain for one side, Arsenal's unforgettable Augustus Caesar (Luke 2:1) for the other.

After much scriptural debate, the BC brigade is Dennis Herod (g/k, Stoke City), Ray Daniel (Sunderland), Jlloyd Samuel (Villa), Joseph-Desire Job (Middlesbrough), Frank Lord (everywhere), Moses, Ian Benjamin (Northampton), Roger Eli (Crewe), Jim Adam (signed from Spennymoor by Luton Town), Francis Joseph (Brentford) and Jim Cain, Hartlepool's full back for 30 games in 1960-61.

The New Testament team should include West Auckland lad and England international David Thomas, undoubtedly, and former Newcastle, Hartlepool and Darlington outside left George Luke.

The chosen ones are: David James (g/k, Man City), Jimmy Gabriel (Everton), Ian St John (Liverpool), Roy Paul (Man City), Gus Caesar, Frank Saul (Spurs), Charlie Nicholas (Arsenal), David Thomas, Ian Philip (Crystal Palace), Jimmy Stephen (Portsmouth), George Luke.

Substitutes welcomed. Both teams would seem to have a prayer.

News of Kevin Shine's appointment as England's bowling coach reminds Stockton Cricket Club stalwart Richard Thurston of Somerset's visit, against Durham, last summer.

Said to be an expert in biomechanics, Shine - 249 first-class wickets at an average 36.09, 564 runs at 9.55 - was Somerset's coach and asked Richard if he could fix up a video camera behind the bowler's arm in order to analyse his lads' actions.

Since the pavilion is side on to the wicket, a camera had to be strapped to a ladder and that, in turn, fastened to the sight screen.

Things went OK until the bowler changed from round to over the wicket. The camera on the re-positioned sight screen didn't capture him at all.

"Mr Shine had to run around the ground to adjust the whole thing and it went on like that for four days," says Richard. "He was first on the ground to set it all up and last to leave at night after taking it all down.

"He didn't even stop for a beer, but none of them do nowadays."

Candid about the camera, he was distinctly unimpressed. "In the past people just played the game, there was no need for coaching and having everything analysed. I just hope he has a better system when he's in charge of England."

Five years after a Christmas Day fire gutted the clubhouse, the aptly-named Brewery Field at Spennymoor is licensed to sell alcohol again.

The former players' and guests' lounges are now open for general consumption - as it were - on match days, Friday evenings and all day Saturday and Sunday.

Better still, Spennymoor Town will be the first Arngrove Northern league club to sell real ale. Best of all, the beer will be the new renowned Amos Ale from the Wear Valley brewery in Bishop Auckland.

"It's a gesture of the high esteem in which we hold the league chairman," said Ken Houlahan, Town's director of football. That's what he meant to say, anyway.

Mr Brooks Mileson, who once had a baby ostrich called Amos - it keeled over after five months - reports double delight last Tuesday.

Just hours before his adopted Gretna side's famous Scottish Cup victory over Clyde, one of his monkeys gave birth to triplets.

"They're just the size of mice, lovely little things," says Brooks, happily resisting the temptation to call any of them Amos.

"We're keeping the name for when the capybaras give birth," he says. A capybara is the world's biggest rodent, like a giant guinea pig.

Brooks Mileson, an English cross country international when with Billingham Marsh House Harriers in the late 1960s, returns with a Gretna side to Billingham's Synthonia stadium tonight.

It's a match against an Arngrove Northern League XI as a benefit for the dependants of Steven Tierney, the 18-stone goalkeeper who died from leukaemia last October. He was 32.

We're hoping for a huge turn-out. Houghton-le-Spring pipe band will play before the match and at half-time, the teams will be led out by 14-year-old Michael Atkinson, son of Steve's partner Dottie and inseparable companion.

Steve, a man who lived and played with a huge smile on his face, was also goalkeeper for Hartlepool Lion Hillcarter when they won the FA Sunday Cup, saving three penalties in the shoot-out.

Admission's a fiver, £2 concessions. Gates open 6 30pm, kick-off an hour later.

Out in the perishing cold, we reported last week on Newcastle Benfield's FA Vase match at Squires Gate, Blackpool. Last Saturday, Squires Gate were at Glossop - smallest town ever to support a Football League top division side - and had three players sent off in the first half. At the start of the second, they lined up with ten men. "Mistaken identity," said the ref, having somewhat surprisingly reinstated two of them. The Non League Paper put it succinctly: "It wasn't one of the referee's better days."

...and finally

The five former Sunderland players presently managing clubs in the English 92 (Backtrack, February 17) are Sam Allardyce (Bolton), George Burley (Southampton), Colin Todd (Bradford), David Hodgson (Darlington) and John Cornforth (Torquay.)

Ian Watson in Ryhope, Sunderland, sent a list of another five Sunderland men who've been sacked this season. Unfortunately it appears to have been mislaid.

Fred Alderton, among those who knew the famous five, invites the identity of the player who scored twice in the same one-leg European Cup final, but on different days.

Same day as usual, we return on Friday.

Published: 21/02/2006