SAM GORDON’S funeral faced fearfully and full frontally the terrible reality that he had hanged himself. Suicide, we were reminded, is now the single biggest cause of death among British men under 45.

Sam, who was 30, died on March 25 – the day that the clocks went forward. “I offered my life to God if only they could go back,” said Jon, his dad.

Some of us best remembered Sam as Tow Law Town’s plucky mascot, initially denied the chance to lead out his team in the 1998 FA Vase final at Wembley but reprieved by the intervention of FA chief executive Graham Kelly.

Others more recently recalled him as a big friendly giant, a large and lovable rugby player at Consett, for whom he’d turned out just hours before his death.

Some compared him to a bear – “big and hairy without, soft and lovely within” – others to Simba, the lion king. Sam, on the verge of achieving his dream to join Durham Constabulary, loved Simba, and Star Wars.

The non-religious ceremony was in a marquee at the rugby club, where he was very much one of a family – “the muddy mafia,” said John O’Connor, who gave a eulogy on the club’s behalf.

Asked to say a few words for the football fraternity, I was able to recall that, as a ten-year-old, Sam and his mates would have a kickabout in the back yard. One wanted to be Alan Shearer, another Teddy Sheringham. Sam, wanted to be Jarrod Suddick: Jarrod Suddick played for Tow Law.

The only prayer was one written by a North American Indian chief called Yellow Lark in 1887. Sam was much into North American history, too.

Donations were invited for CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, formed to address the spiralling suicide rate among the young. Already the rugby club has sold more than 400 T-shirts with the associated slogan “It’s OK not to be OK.” There are wrist bands, too.

An annual Boxing Day match will be played for the Sam Gordon Charity Cup. If U Care Share, a North-East charity with similar aims to CALM, has already addressed a players’ meeting.

None knew what had forced Sam’s hand – “an act of desperation,” said Angela Wallis, the celebrant. All will remember his brutally brilliant farewell.

“In time people will ask us how we are and we’ll say we’re fine,” said Jon. “We will be lying.”

JOHN FLYNN, Tow Law’s chairman on the road to Wembley, is himself recovering from a pretty hideous football injury.

John, now a retired solicitor, had banged his head in a fall but thought little more about it until again whacked on the head, by the ball, in a five-a-side game.

Next thing he remembers is waking up in the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle with a lot of tubes in his head, having suffered a sub-dural something-or-other.

“The doctor asked me if I knew what day it was. I said I did but I wasn’t going to tell him. That’s when they really started to worry,” he says.

Still sworn off the Guinness, even medicinally, he has somehow managed to persuade the medics that he can return to football. “I’m thinking of getting a Petr Cech helmet,” says John.

The Lawyers’ lawyer will be 69 next month.

WRETCHED coincidence, former Tow Law chairman Harry Hodgson – in office for 36 years – died at the weekend. Harry was one of a great triumvirate – secretary Bernard Fairbairn and the late Harry Dixon, treasurer, the others – who together served the hilltop club for 120 years. Born in Tow Law, educated at Wolsingham Grammar School, he became manager of Blair’s Foundry. More of Harry’s passing next week.

TWO further coincidences, one regrettable and the other greatly sad, attended last week’s column on Michael Ganley’s proposed football fans’ museum at the former Monkwearmouth railway station in Sunderland.

The first was that, a few days previously, the museum had had a burglary; the second was that one of the things stolen was Winston Young’s playing contract for Sunderland. Winston had died a couple of days before. He was 77.

Football mad from his Wearside childhood, he’d started working life as office boy on the Darlington and Stockton Times, enjoyed lunchtime kickabouts on the flat roof – “baccy tin wrapped up in newspaper” – signed for Wolves and then joined Sunderland.

It was the 1960s and he was a full back, thus in a Roker Park queue behind Cec Irwin, Len Ashurst and Colin Nelson, the part-time pro who was also a locum pharmacist. Winston never made the first team.

Instead he joined the police force, rose to become chief superintendent at Stockton, still played constabulary football with pips but no chips on his shoulder.

“They call me all sorts of things but none of them is Sir,” he told the column.

In the Over 40s League, once said to be an acrobatic goalkeeper, he played for Sedgefield United until 54, when a gammy knee compelled him to hang up his boots. He became secretary of the Sunderland Former Players’ Association, a role he tackled with much enthusiasm and a willingness to help jobbing journalists.

“A most modest and unassuming man, the sort of person who always put the team first,” says Sunderland historian Rob Mason. Winston’s funeral is at Hartlepool crematorium at 12.30pm tomorrow.

THE Queen was 92 last Saturday. Treated royally, she was taken to the theatre where the turns included someone – or possibly several someones – called Shaggy.

The evening previously, the column had sat through Dr Feelgood at Guisborough Town football club, and – for someone whose musical education ended with Simon and Garfunkel – perhaps with a similar degree of trepidation to Her Majesty.

The 70s rockers, up from Essex in tribute to the late Guisborough secretary and press officer John Butterfield – once the Feelgoods’ roadie – were supported by Kings Contraband, a local band who began with an upbeat version of Mrs Robinson, a Simon and Garfunkel classic.

Thus encouraged, it was tempting to ask if they could do a bit of Peter, Paul and Mary as well but for several reasons it seemed unlikely.

It proved a greatly enjoyable evening, benefitting charities close to John’s heart. Best remembered for a song called Milk and Alcohol, the Feelgoods also found one about Johnny Green, acknowledging John’s alter ego as an emerald clad wrestling MC known throughout the country.

“He wasn’t just important in helping us through the difficult times, he was absolutely pivotal,” said football club chairman Don Cowan.

The excellent Kings Contraband, also performing without charge, even did an unscheduled second spot after the other support band had to call off at very short notice.

One of their members had been found dead. It’s feared that he committed suicide.