Farewell to gentleman Bill

“He always wore that handkerchief in his shorts. Bill was a little toff,” recalls Barrie Geldart, an old friend. His funeral was held yesterday at St Cuthbert’s church in Billingham.

Bill’s first Wembley appearance was in 1954, Crook Town’s right half in the ultimately twice replayed FA Amateur Cup final against Bishop Auckland, their neighbours.

Crook eventually won at Ayresome Park, the triumphant players on the open-topped team bus soaked as they descended Newton Cap Bank in Bishop Auckland by what Bill called pots of water. He was being euphemistic.

Eleven years later he was back beneath the Twin Towers, manager – coach, they called it back then – of Whitby Town’s Amateur Cup final side, seaside sprats against the mighty Hendon.

“Wembley was special in those days,” Whitby player Maurice Crosthwaite recalled at one of the reunions. “The only people who played there were the FA Cup finalists, the Amateur Cup finalists, the England team and the band.”

He might have mentioned the Rugby League Cup finalists, too.

Wakefield were in that one, Leeds United in the FA Cup final. Don Revie sent Whitby a telegram.

“Let’s make it a Yorkshire treble,”

he said.

The tourism department produced 4,000 brochures. “Whitby for the Cup – and your holidays,”

it said. The Tykes all lost.

Bill, said to have “inspired the unknowns with a diet of fitness and determination,” remembered pre-season training in the sand dunes at Seaton Carew, or pounding round the car park in Billingham town centre.

“We were almost all Teesside lads,” recalls Barrie Geldart, Whitby’s outside right. “Players for Whitby and other clubs would meet twice a week for training behind Billingham Synthonia’s ground. The club didn’t like it very much.”

Bill, a GPO engineer, had himself begun his football career at Synthonia, playing in the club’s first Northern League game in 1945 – they beat Shildon 5-4 – and in the team which, five years later, went through the season without conceding a home goal.

He also played for Stockton in the North Eastern League.

Barrie, now 77 and until recently scouting for Blackburn Rovers, also recalls playing against him. “He was constantly on the move, one of the fittest lads I ever knew, forever running.

“At Whitby he worked us really hard, up and down those ramps in the Billingham town centre car park or round the Technical College track, but it didn’t matter what he did. At the end of the day, you always knew that Bill Jeffs was a gentleman.”

Burton’s dreaming of Wembley

JUST 18 when released by Middlesbrough, Andy Burton spent last season as player/coach at Billingham Town, in the lower reaches of the Northern League first division.

This afternoon, however, he appears before 90,000 fans at Wembley – if not in the England team, then picking up trophies, nonetheless.

Andy’s now full-time football development officer and centre manager for Stockton Town FC, already named Durham County and northern community club of the year.

Before this afternoon’s international, he collects the FA’s national award for creating links between football clubs and schools after only nine months in the job – now he wants to go back to Wembley as a player.

“I’ve just turned 27. I still think I’m good enough to make an FA Vase final team,” says the former Whitby Town man. “Who knows what might happen when I get the taste.”

The club, formed in 1987 as Hartburn Juniors, now has its own base at Stockton Sixth Form College. “The council, the FA and the Football Foundation have all been brilliant,” he says.

There are boys’ teams from seven to 18 and a senior side, mainly made up of former under- 18s, that in its first season is top of the Teesside League second division.

The aim, says Andy, is to be pushing for the Northern League within five years.

Now they’re planning for girls and disabled teams across the age range, too.

Working especially closely with the nearby White House primary school – the award acknowledges both club and schools – they’ve started five new community teams this year. So how does he remember all the names?

“I’ve always made the effort it’s one of the few things I’m good at,” Andy insists. “I know what it’s like to be released by a football club, to feel kicked in the teeth by football. We want all of our children to feel valued.

“It’s been a massive learning curve, really hard work at times with 12-13 hour days. I was chuffed to bits with the county award, but to gain national recognition is unbelievable.

“As corny as it sounds, we want to make a difference for the kids.

Wembley makes all the hard work worthwhile.”

Early cards depict a North-South divide

BAINES cards, as now generally they are known, were first produced by John Baines of Manningham, Bradford, in 1887. “I wondered if you’d come across the phenomenon,” writes Ian Robson from Bishop Auckland.

Phenomenon they became. Originally they were six-a-penny; a single card may now fetch £50.

Mostly they featured rugby, football, golf and cricket. In the 1920s, it’s recorded, around 13.5 million were sold across the north and Scotland.

Some featured clubs remain familiar.

Others included the Sloggers and the Snufflers, the Cloghoppers and the Gobstoppers, the Buzzlers and the Wolloppers.

Ian’s come across several examples over the years. “For some reason the northern cards invariably seem to depict two thugs knocking seven shades out of one another whereas southern teams are usually portrayed as upstanding ex-public school types with moustaches.”

The cards for Bishop Auckland (“nicely held”) and Southampton (“well passed”) illustrate the divide.

“As the cards were produced in Bradford,”

says Ian, “I can only assume that even back then the northern male was proud of his hard man stereotype.”

ANOTHER link looms between Bishop Auckland and Bradford. A week today, the Bishops play their first FA Cup tie against Bradford Park Avenue for exactly 100 seasons. They’ll want to do better than last time.

It was the first round proper, January 15 1910, both City and Park Avenue at home after City gave Notts County £1,000 to reverse the tie. Poor PA attracted a crowd of just 5,000, a gate of £178.

Park Avenue were in the second division of Manchester City, Wolves and Fulham. Bishop Auckland were in the Northern League of York City, Scarborough and Knaresborough, who lost 6-2 at Crook the same day.

Bishops fared worse yet – “Run off their feet,” said the Echo headline, after an 8-0 defeat. Such an overwhelming scoreline, we added, was never for a moment expected.

Elsewhere that cold winter Saturday 100 years ago, the Northumberland and Durham Paperchasers League held its sixth meeting of the season, Darlington lost 2-1 to Wallsend Park Villa in the North Eastern League and the first rugby international at the new Twickenham ground brought England their first win against Wales for 12 years.

Back in the 21st century, Bishops’ secretary Tony Duffy is confident there’ll be no repeat. “We’re going there to win,” he says.

REPORTING the annual reunion of the great Bishop Auckland teams of the 1950s, Tuesday’s column said that the 1956 Olympics – in which Bob Hardisty, Derek Lewin and Harry Sharratt all represented Great Britain at football – were the gold medal Games of Chris Brasher, Judy Grinham and Gordon Pirie. Two out of three, anyway.

Derek Parker, also in Bishop Auckland, points out that Pirie, another West Yorkshireman, was beaten into second place in the 5,000m by Vladimir Kutz.

“In the 10k he tried to run the heart out of Kutz, but couldn’t do it. By the end he was so tried, he was kicking the kerbs.”

It wasn’t a bad year for Pirie, nonetheless. In June he beat Kutz in Bergen to set a new 5,000m world record – and knock 25 seconds off his personal best – then three days later created a 3,000m world record in Trondheim.

Named BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1955, Pirie was just 60 when he died in December 1991.

MOST will know that Marske-by-the- Sea is between Redcar and Saltburn.

Fewer may realise that there’s another and altogether smaller Marske between Richmond and Reeth, in Swaledale.

None whatever will doubt that they’re occasionally confused, or that that technological tautology the satnav has done nothing to improve matters.

The latest mix-up came when Marske United – by the sea – were due to host Whickham, from Tyneside, in the skilltrainingltd Northern League second division. Marske’s programme takes up the story of how six players rather lost their way.

“Not being able to see the sea should have been an early giveaway that they were being pointed in the wrong direction.

When they started driving past tanks, they knew it was time to turn around.”

Disorientated, Whickham lost 2-0.

SOMEWHAT disorientated ourselves, we set off early on bank holiday Monday to take in four matches. The chase stumbled at the first hurdle – a noon kick-off, not 11am as advertised – and was abandoned completely on learning that Harrogate Railway’s 7.45 had been advanced to three o’clock.

Still, it was good to be at Brandon United, two days after the anticipated 500 crowd for the Halifax Town FA Cup tie had been counted at 217 and the club left with rather a lot of pies and programmes on their hands.

Mr Peter Sixsmith tried manfully to shift the pie mountain and bought a programme, too. Dean Johnson, United’s admirable editor, had been up until three o’clock on Monday morning completing that afternoon’s 44-page edition.

Thus we were able to learn not just about the trials of the Halifax match – “a bit of an anti-climax both on and off the field” – but that chop suey had been invented on that selfsame day in 1897.

The diet is incomparable.

And finally...

THE former England cricketer who became Bishop of Liverpool (Backtrack, September 1) was David Sheppard.

Modern communication being what it is, George Alberts in Thailand was first up both with the answer and that the bish was a friend of the late Bill Coverdale at North Durham Cricket Club in Gateshead.

“Mind,” adds George, “Bill knew every bugger.”

Still the only man to play international cricket while a priest, he averaged 37.8 in tests and claimed two wickets at 44 apiece. He died in 2005, on the day before his 76th birthday.

Still on matters ecclesiastical, readers are today invited to name the Premiership club that began life as St Domingo’s and where the church of St Luke the Evangelist occupies one corner of the ground.

On our knees again on Tuesday.