OVER a pint in the Half Moon in Barton, south of Darlington, John Todd hands over a packet of old photographs. Most are of Bishop Auckland FC in the 1950s; one’s a bit different.

Bishops’ legends Seamus O’Connell and Bob Hardisty are sure enough either side at the front, and with a star-struck young audience behind, but next to Seamus is the unmistakeable figure of Sunderland great Len Shackleton.

On Shack’s left is Teddy Gardner. Teddy who?

“The former darling of North-East boxing,” said the Echo obituary when he died, aged 56, in 1977.

Gardner was a Hartlepool lad, began boxing at 12 and turned professional at 16. He became British, Empire and European flyweight champion, claimed a Lonsdale Belt at St James’ Hall in Newcastle, retired in 1952 after losing the Empire title to Jack Tull.

The Tull fight earned him £880, the biggest purse of his career – and that, said Teddy, was before taxman and accountant had their cut.

At various times he ran the Middlesbrough Hotel, Mill House and Powlett pubs in his home town, interspersed with spells at the Half Moon in Spennymoor and the Highland Laddie in Darlington. In 1971 he stood as a Conservative for Hartlepool council though the cuttings packet, sadly, fails to record if he won that fight as well.

There is, however, a 1968 piece in which he complains about the effect of the new-fangled breathalyser on his pub. Never mind Jack Tull, said Teddy, much his most difficult opponent was Barbara Castle.

THREE days after Barton, wholly coincidentally, I’m speaking to the Hartlepool branch of the University of the Third Age. Gardner’s question time? Some remember the name, none remembers the man.

The front row foursome are all dead, but who were the hero worshipping little lads and what the excited occasion? It would be wonderful to learn more.

THE Hartlepool U3A chairman is Barry Liddle, who admits to knowing nothing of Teddy Gardner but who in 1985, pre-internet, produced The Dictionary of Sporting Quotations. Best seller? “I’d have made more money doing a paper round,” says Barry, and probably we can quote him on that.

COCKERTON Cricket Club in Darlington have their 125th anniversary “fun day” – crumbs, is it really 25 years since the sceptred centenary? – this Sunday afternoon. A couple of other events may offer competition.

“We’ve told FIFA and the Lawn Tennis Association that their viewing figures may be affected but they insist on going ahead with their finals,” says Cockerton treasurer Martin Robinson.

Getting there first, a bit like the Third Little Pig, the event begins at noon. There’ll be seven-a-side cricket throughout the day, barbecue and bar.

To mark the centenary, they’d played a Durham County side that included West Indian quickie Anderson Cummins, England opener Graeme Fowler (out without scoring) and the erudite Simon Hughes – more tents than a middle-sized Cherokee reservation but most indelibly remembered for the Cockerton streaker.

The gentleman, the column observed, “wore nothing more than a pair of spectacles and an expression of bibulous braggadocio,” though he appeared to have little otherwise to offer.

“Those said to have been offended must have had eyes like a hungry hawk,” we added. Mr David Confrey (for it was he) later admitted to having done it for £15 and a sun hat.

He and everyone else will be warmly and counter-attractively welcomed on Sunday afternoon. Dress code? Preferably, yes.

LAST week’s column talked of former Darlington footballer Ian Larnach’s annual charity golf tournament at Bishop Auckland the following day. Though the event proved greatly successful, Ian himself didn’t make it – readmitted to hospital in the ceaseless fight against cancer. “Stuff happens,” he says (or words pretty closely to that effect.)

THE Daily Mail last Thursday reported Richard Symmonds’s record breaking 343 not out for Burnt Yates II in their 40-over 452-5 against Darley II in the North Yorkshire-based Nidderdale League.

It beat Simon Davies’s 328 for Tudhoe against Mainsforth in 2012, though not Tudhoe’s 45-over 509-2, thought to be a 45-over record.

Simon – now retired to help run his wife Sara’s hugely successful Crafters’ Companion business in Newton Aycliffe – scored 2,001 runs that purple season, averaged 100.5, took a single wicket and made a single duck.

The column presented Tudhoe’s annual awards that autumn. “It wasn’t a bad year,” said Simon.

COUNTRY house cricket at Thorp Perrow, near Bedale, featured hereabouts a fortnight ago. They themselves were in the Nidderdale League – top of division four – when last mentioned in Backtrack in 2002. A Darlington and Stockton Times paragraph had noted that the club’s ranks were to be boosted by the return of Taiwan international Andrew Carrick, but that after the previous week’s win over Helperby he was unlikely to get a game. Not to be confused with Andrew Caddick, whatever happened to the Taiwan one?

….and finally, the four international football sides who’ve beaten England more often than we’ve beaten them (Backtrack, July 5) are Brazil, Italy, Uruguay and Romania.

Still with the national team: of the 14 managers since Walter Winterbottom, who has the lowest percentage of wins – and by some way?

There’s a North-East connection to that one, too. Win some, lose some, the answer next week.