No place like home for Nick (From The Northern Echo)

No place like home for Nick

10:02am Saturday 4th July 2009

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NIGEL Gates, North-East lad but world traveller, will be back in the UK tonight on the trail of a global award for creating change through sport.

Bill, his dad, made a few bob from football and millions from sports shops. Judith, his mum, became a leading educationalist on both sides of the Atlantic.

We talk to Bill and Judith over lunch in a pub near Durham, to Nick over the telephone to Malawi. “There are no wires,” he says; cheeky sod.

His charity’s called Coaches Across Continents, designed not just to teach football but through it everything from HIV education to leadership and what Nick calls female empowerment.

“Social development,” he says, but he’s also very keen just to make kids laugh.

Though presently centred on Africa, in the past year they’ve had requests for information from 83 different countries. Next Thursday he’ll learn if CAC has won a Beyond Sport award, at the end of a three-day event attended by everyone from Tony Blair to Richard Branson, Archbishop Tutu to Prince Faisal al Hussein of Jordan.

He’d left Malawi, by bus, on Thursday morning. “I don’t particularly enjoy all the travelling, but I love getting dirty with the kids and seeing what a difference all this makes,” he says.

“I don’t really think about winning the awards, but there’ll be 300 hugely influential people there and who knows what other good might come out of it.”

He’s 42. “I reckoned I was getting old when one of the kids, instead of calling me brother called me Papa. I kicked him, of course.”

BILL Gates was from Dean Bank, Ferryhill, Judith Curry from Spennymoor – a couple of miles away.

They met on a school trip to the Rome Olympics, chucked three coins into the Trevi Fountain, wished for happiness and found it in abundance.

He was 17 when they married, she a year younger.

Getting on fifty years later they’re still holding hands in the Seven Stars. Trained observers notice these things.

Bill captained England’s youth team, made his Middlesbrough debut in the week before his 17th birthday, totalled more than 300 appearances – mostly in central defence, always on contact lenses – while training in the morning and studying accountancy in the afternoon.

After the last day of his finals in Gateshead, he dashed off to Carlisle, arrived at 7 20pm and played for the Boro ten minutes later.

He opened his first sports shop in 1974, sold the chain of 12 for £4.4m thirteen years later and became a tax exile in the Cayman Islands.

Judith went to Nevilles Cross Training College, became a head teacher at 29, opened a new school in Middlesbrough the following year, was a schools inspector in Sunderland at 36, gained a PhD, lectured at Durham University and was a visiting professor at two American universities.

They’re still in the Caymans, allowed just 90 days a year to return to their home at Castle Eden, near the Durham coast. Much of the time’s being spent extending and refurbishing it.

“Women,” says Bill, affectionately.

No danger of crossed lines, we’d spoken to Nick a couple of hours earlier.

Did he, asks his mum, mention about the time he’d found barefoot kids playing football on a rubbish tip – a rubbish tip with broken glass all over it?

Did he tell of the kids who’d turned up with a battered pair of football boots and proudly worn one each?

Did he talk of a kid called Walcott, lovely little lad, who wanted nothing else in the world than to be like Theo?

While directors of Coaches Across Continents, a registered charity in both UK and USA, they take a back seat both corporately and financially.

Nick had seen Africa’s problem’s especially in the South African townships, during an extended tour in 2006-07.

“It made him reevaluate his life, have a very different perspective on things,” says Judith. “He wanted to work with the kids and he wanted to work through football, but he came to this with his head as well as his heart.

“He’s not a soft touch, but he’s got a soft heart.”

Bill, one of five brothers – ex-England international Eric another – was himself so committed to football that at the age of nine he went doorto- door around Dean Bank collecting names for a petition to erect goal posts in the rec, because they were always getting chased off the streets.

“I suppose Africa’s a bit like when we were kids,” he muses. “Very few people have much but they’re lovely people and they’re happy, just like we were. It sounds almost pretentious but it’s amazing the difference that football is making, the way it’s changing lives.

“It’s a structured programme and it can be replicated in India and elsewhere.

It can grow much bigger. He’s a good lad, he really is. Nick cares.”

NICK went privately to Millfield School in Somerset, played for England Under 18s, had trials with several Football League clubs but decided instead to take up a scholarship to Harvard University.

“It was the days before all the Sky Sports money, education seemed a better bet,” he says.

His dad believes he could have played professionally – “maybe not at the top, but certainly in the lower leagues.”

Was he as good as his dad? “What at,” says Nick, “golf?”

In 1991, Nick and his elder brother David launched Play Soccer, running soccer camps and coaching throughout America and coached their millionth child four years ago.

The brothers had also been mascots at their dad’s Ayresome Park testimonial against Leeds United, one carrying the second division trophy – Boro’s - and the other the championship trophy, won by Leeds. The occasion notwithstanding, Leeds fans threw stuff at them, anyway.

David now has day-to-day control of that operation while his daughters, aged 18 and 20, run PASSIT – Pencils and School Supplies for International Townships.

After that it becomes almost selfexplanatory.

Nick, as might be supposed of pencils and things, is at the sharp end.

Formed two years ago, Coaches Across Continents trains local coaches and then gets them to train other coaches, the whole exercise backed by an on-line program 365 days a year.

It affords versatility and sustainability, says Nick. They can mentor communities all year round. “”We have a strategic business plan. It’s a charity, but we’re running it like a business.”

“The problems in Africa are unique, but the children are still the same. They laugh, they smile, they show respect for the coaches and for the game.

“Children might not always attend school, but you can bet if we show them different ways to do their daily tasks, change will be possible. Just to play football for an hour a day means so much to them.

“My dad’s background in football and my mum’s in education have been incredibly useful. They’ve both been very supportive.”

He’s sitting in an office at the Malawi FA. The country, he supposes, may now be famous for Madonna and her new baby than anything else.

There’s no time to dwell on it; there’s a bus leaving towards England and, many hours later, a plane.

“Of course it’ll be good to be home,”

says Nick, “but my passion’s now for the kids of Africa.”

Skeeby’s Richardson is just champion, Gayter’s off again

THE NORTH-EAST has a new world champion: just six weeks after first we wrote about him, 17-year-old Jonathan Richardson last weekend took the world motor cycle trials title with two events still to be ridden.

“We’ll probably have a party at the end of the year,” he says, asked how the celebrations went.

Needing only to finish in the top ten in the event in Andorra, Jonathan – son of celebrated trials riders Gerald Richardson – finished third.

“It’s just an amazing feeling. I’m so pleased for my mum, my dad, my sponsors and everyone who’s helped me,” he says.

His eyes are now on the adult world title, the final two events of this year’s championship now raced on the tougher adult course.

Straight back from Andorra, he’s been spending the week working on the family farm at Skeeby, near Richmond – making hay while the sun shines, no doubt.

SOMETHING similar with our old ultra-running friend Sharon Gayter, another world title holder. She just wishes it could have been a wee bit warmer.

Sharon sets off on Monday for the uninvitingly named Death Valley in America for the 135-mile Badwater race – billed as the hottest in the world.

“I’ve been preparing by shutting doors and windows in the conservatory and slogging it out for three hours at a time at temperatures up to 49 degrees.

“Death Valley can get up to 55 degrees, so what’s a little 30 degrees in this country?”

Through places like Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells, the first 40 miles are below sea level. Then the climbing begins, all 12,000ft of it – and once they’ve done 122 miles, the final half marathon embraces another 4,000ft ascent.

Death Valley or glory, Guisborough lass Sharon, who’s 45, hopes to complete it in 30 hours.

TOMMY Donnelly, indefatigable chairman of Billingham Town FC, reports the death at 70 of Donny Gray – gateman extraordinary.

“Even when he was in a wheelchair he’d follow us home and away,” says Tommy.

“Donny was the sort of person clubs at our level simply can’t do without.”

ONCE or twice over the years, the column may have suggested that those who played football for Darlington Grammar School Old Boys might not so much be “old” as recipients of a telegram from Her Majesty. Education, after all, has long been comprehensively rearranged.

The club itself is reckoned the oldest in town, predating even the Quakers. Now, we hear, the Old Boys are set for a new start.

They’ve amalgamated with Darlington RA’s seconds and will play as Darlington GSRA in the Teesside League second division.

“It makes sense to pool our resources. The days when lads queued up to play football on Saturday afternoons are gone,” says club chairman Peter Turnbull.

Peter reckons to have played more than 1,000 local league games, the last at 48 – “I shouldn’t have, it was too late,” he supposes.

Now 53, he’s comfortable that the Old Boys network is no more. In an attempt to raise funds, they’re offering £50 sponsorships to local businesses and would love to hear from more. Peter runs the Tapas Bar in Darlington town centre.

A LAST reminder that Durham County Cricket Club scorer Brian Hunt’s testimonial year moves next Tuesday to Bishop Auckland Golf Club when four first team men, including Steve Harmison, will speak after a four-course dinner. Seth Shildon, too. Tickets are £25, tables £250. Organiser Graham Sheldon is on 07976 607430.

And finally...

THE only one of the English “92” who remained unbeaten at home last season (Backtrack, June 30) was Liverpool.

John Phelan in Howden-le-Wear to Don Bradman’s 334 in 1930, Len Hutton’s 364 in 1938, Gary Sobers’ unbeaten 365 in 1958 and Brian Lara’s 375 in 1994.

What, remarkably, was their common denominator?

Common as muck, the column returns on Tuesday.

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