10:01am Tuesday 2nd March 2010
AMID its proper concerns for the precarious state of Mr John Terry’s personal relationships, the March issue of When Saturday Comes – the self-styled “half decent football magazine” – devotes a two-page photo feature to the Wensleydale Creamery League derby between Richmond Academy and the neatly named Buck Inn Broncos.
The game took place on the scenic Earls Orchard pitch, in the shadow of Richmond Castle. “It’s a lovely setting, but I’d rather they’d had a proper Wensleydale background,” says North Riding FA chairman Len Scott, a former chairman of the Wensleydale League.
The setting, in truth, may have been rather better than the behaviour of some of the players. It was the day that the Buck Inn Broncos gave the referee a particularly rough ride.
WSC briefly records that a Buck player was sent off after an hour, that his team collapsed to a 6-2 defeat and that following a post-match “altercation” with the players, the referee resigned.
Among the things they didn’t comment upon was that the ref was wearing the green shirt and Air Asia logo of a Football League official.
The referee was John Brown, a level 7 official qualified only for local games. “He’s a good official but I think he got told off for wearing a green top,” says Mr Scott.
And the Buck Inn big mouths? Reported to the county FA, they were fined £25. “I think they’ve also been given a right bollocking by the league,” says the chairman.
“The first time that the Wensleydale League has ever had national publicity and it has to end like that.”
WSC is mistaken, however – “You know what reporters are like,” says Mr Scott – to suppose that referee Brown has now left the firing line.
Though he was in action as usual the following week, he now has good cause to be temporarily AWOL from the Wensleydale League.
Mr Brown is a soldier; he’s just been posted to Afghanistan.
WHEN Saturday came, the plan was to watch Norton and Stockton Ancients’ FA Vase quarter-final at Barwell, in Leicestershire.
The evening previously, Barwell had put prospects of play at just 25 per cent. By 8am next day they were 50- 50.
The train left Darlington at 8 13. Shortly before it reached Leeds, the match was called off.
Two consolations; Shildon’s quarter-final with Whitley Bay was still on and the Church Times carried a re-advertisement for the post of Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, this column’s dream job.
No matter that it still insists the successful applicant must be a priest. If it comes round a third time, I reckon I’m nailed on.
SO, unscheduled, the Railroad to Wembley continued on the 12.54 from North Road to Shildon.
Though the town was said to be cup feverish, there were even those who carried on to Bishop Auckland.
St John’s church bells pealed as if by way of premature celebration, the Royal George may never have been so full since Timothy Hackworth was a lad, the police asked for the kick-off to be put back 15 minutes, so great the congestion along Dean Street. “When did that last happen at Shildon?”
someone wondered.
The result’s known, the game irretrievably turned by Phil Brumwell’s 30th minute dismissal and Whitley’s resultant penalty.
Tough for those of us who all these years have longed to see Shildon at Wembley, tougher yet for football club secretary and town mayor Gareth Howe.
Not only does he hate football – “detest it,” he cheerfully confirms – but his tremendous efforts to help put on the match at Shildon meant that he missed the one he really wanted to see, at Twickenham.
We lost that one, an’ all.
THE phone rings (as is its wont.) “It’s Jesus,”
announces the voice on the other end and, ere the last trump sound, it should be explained that this is Jesus with a distinctly Middlesbrough accent.
Once familiar on every cricket ground in the North- East, Tony Day – forever “Jesus” because of a marked resemblance – has been absent for four or five summers. Cricket’s number’s up, he explains.
“It’s all these coloured shirts with numbers on the back.
“It was bad enough on Sundays, but when they came into the four-day game that was me finished. I blame Lancashire. I would, I’m a Yorkshireman.”
His other adversary is Father Time. “Almost everyone on our corner appears to have died, there’s only Posh Mike from Hartlepool left,” laments Tony. “I’m staying in to watch television.”
LAST Tuesday’s column on Keith Schellenberg – former winter Olympian and Laird of the Hebriddean island of Eigg – has brought a spirited response from one of his former tenants.
The colourful Mr Schellenberg, born in Middlesbrough 80 years ago and now back in Richmond where twice he contested the parliamentary seat for the Liberals, was said to have antagonised islanders.
“It certainly wasn’t the indigenous population,”
insists former Eigg resident Iain Campbell, now in Dunoon. “As far as I’m concerned, he was the best landlord I ever had.
“It was the hippies who caused the trouble,. They were supposed to come to work but when they got to the island, they started doing all sorts of things.
“People said that Mr Schellenberg was toffeenosed, but he was the exact opposite. It was a pleasure to be there with him.”
Mr Schellenberg is said by Jilly, his wife, to have enjoyed the piece, spotted a couple of inaccuracies but no longer to be litigious. “He’d enjoy a chat,” she adds. Perhaps on Saturday.
Charlie Crowe, a United Hero CHARLIE Crowe had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease several years before we met in October 2004.
Though the former Newcastle United wing half never let on, nor on that evidence could the condition have been guessed, its progress was inevitable.
Exactly a year ago, Charlie and his family launched a £1.5m appeal to fund a scanner to speed research into the terrible affliction. He died last Saturday evening, before the total could be realised.
Charlie, who played in both the 1951 and 1955 FA Cup finals, had signed for £10 a week – “me dad got that” – from Byker and Heaton Youth Club. He travelled in on the trolley bus, wanted nothing else than the honour of playing for the Magpies and for that privilege earned £20, tops.
“It was enough to buy my house,” he said. “It was more than a lot of lads could do.”
His written reminiscences included the story, perhaps apocryphal, of the Cup final band getting a bigger bonus than they did. “They played better than you,” United chairman Stan Seymour is said to have remarked.
We’d chatted for 90 minutes at his home near Four Lane Ends Metro station, strolled off for a couple at Benton Conservative Club, bumped into Alf Nolan – the only man alive to have won English amateur titles at both billiards and snooker – and had another.
The interview marked Charlie’s 80th birthday, and he was brilliant. The second, third and fourth paragraphs deserve a second airing. Readers may make of them what they will.
“I’m part and parcel of an organisation called United Heroes,” said Charlie. “I’ve had an education, albeit an elementary one, and I know I’m not a hero.
“I would say Sir Francis Drake or Winston Churchill were heroes, not footballers.
I made the point to Freddie Shepherd (then the United chairman) and I got checked for it.
“I suppose it’s the way that they do things now, but we were ordinary working lads and we’d sharp have been reminded if we’d supposed it any other way.”
Lesley Edmondson, his daughter, said that her dad had suffered greatly in the past few years.
“It was heartbreaking to watch. Now at last he has peace.” In Charlie’s memory, the fund raising appeal will continue.
LOTS of readers – the first of them Clarrie Ranson in Darlington – responded to the column’s first-ever picture quiz on Saturday. The future England international on Keith Hopper’s left was Bryan Douglas – 36 England caps and 100 goals in 436 Football League appearances for Blackburn Rovers. Now 75, he still lives in the Blackburn area.
Martin Birtle in Billingham today invites readers to identify the player who, yet more enduring, became on February 26, 1983 the first to make 1,000 Football league appearances.
Grand gesture, the column returns on Saturday.
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