9:31am Tuesday 16th March 2010
AS the Book of Common Prayer tells us, there are the quick and the dead. Bill Smith, 86 in June, is not just very much alive but yesterday played his usual game of six-a-side football against men less than half his age.
It was the Ides of March, and no reason to be wary. “It gets me out of the house, it’s the companionship I value most of all,” said Bill, a man reluctant to hang up his boots at an age when most have hung up their slippers.
The games are at the Dolphin Centre in Darlington, the court booked in the name of the fire brigade.
Breathing apparatus? “I don’t think they need it,” says the receptionist.
Blue light job? “Not up to now,” says Bill.
He lives in North Cowton, between Darlington and Northallerton, played for Darlington Victoria Rovers until being dropped at 45 in what he still considers an egregious example of ageism. Four decades later, he still offers evidence of all that they say about old ‘uns and ‘uns.
This is a man who can not only still turn on a tanner, but who remembers when it could get you into the pictures with change for a glass of Bentley’s Yorkshire Bitter.
Among his team-mates is former England schools international Steve Holbrook, still a bit bairn of 57, who made 104 Football League starts for Darlington in the 1970s.
“Billy’s just an amazing man, a one-off,” says Steve.
“I’d love to know if he’s officially the oldest regular football player in Britain, though it’s hard to see how he couldn’t be.”
Bill’s a former Northern Gas executive, professional track cyclist with Spartan Wheelers after the war and Army boxer in the Pioneer Corps – 34 defeats in 35 fights, he insists.
“There were some pretty spectacular pile-ups in the cycling, much worse than the football,” he’d once recalled.
“I’m sure that a lot of people only came to see the blood.”
He’s been playing six-aside since he retired. “I can remember when he was 65 and thinking who was that daft old so-and-so,” says regular opponent Charlie Greenhalgh. “Now were pushing 65 ourselves and Billy’s still at it.”
We’d uncovered his 70th birthday match when Julie from Trimdon Colliery disported in stripper-gram guise and Bill told folk that it was the wife. “I got into trouble at home for that,” he recalls.
We’d covered his 80th when still he insisted on playing up front – “There’s plenty of time for going into defence when you’re older” – but until a chance conversation with Charlie Greenhalgh had assumed that he’d finally become seventh man.
“Not a bit of it,” says Charlie. “He’s still running about, still treated just like one of the lads, still gets the odd sly elbow.” Bill, he adds is still scoring goals, too.
A keen fisherman and gardener, he also keeps the lads in trout and leeks.
The sports hall’s divided into two, the other half occupied by badminton.
Some of those folk don’t exactly look like young shuttlecocks, either.
On the football pitch, ages range from 19-year-old Paul Kidsall – “We were short one day, youth policy,” they say – to the most venerable of old sweats, still covering every inch.
It’s white shirts against coloureds, Bill still playing the whites man. There are more elasticated bandages than the in the surgical appliance department at Darlington Memorial; none of them is his.
Walter Marshall, the opposing goalkeeper, is 67; Jeff Lynn is 66. Jeff’s still playing cricket for Eryholme, topped last season’s second team bowling averages, isn’t even the oldest person in the cricket team. It’s the Demon Donkey Dropper’s side, too.
Bill looks good, maybe lost a yard of pace – a foot or two, anyway – but nothing in guile or in the ability to stroke a telling pass. Billy Smith, in truth, strokes a pass like most octogenarians might stroke a docile cat, effortlessly and with evident satisfaction.
“Hard luck, Billy son,”
someone shouts after a near miss. The sympathiser must be 110. In the final few minutes he has one pushed over the bar, another languidly cleared off the line.
“The amazing thing is that he never seems to get injured,” says Walter. “Some of us can hardly walk for days.”
The morning’s star – though young Holbrook also looks like he’s played before – may be Peter Dixon, who looks a bit like Peter Schmeichel and wears number 38.
Just to underline that you can’t believe all you read, not even on the back of a football shirt, he’s only 36.
“Bill’s final ball is brilliant,”
he says.
The game ends 11-7 to the whites, things only once getting slightly temperamental. “Remember we’ve got visitors,” someone shouts, like it’s a Sunday teatime and they’ve opened a tin of tuna.
Afterwards they head for the pub, a belated full English breakfast and pints of orange juice. “They’re a great bunch of lads,” says Bill.
He’s a bit disappointed not to have scored, though. “I often say that I’m just another wall to bounce the ball off, but I should have had three today,” he says. “I must be getting old.”
DARLINGTON railway station was prowling with pollisses on Saturday afternoon, the Saltburn train segregated – half for those headed for Boro v Newcastle and the remainder for ordinary folk.
Officers guarded every door, a Magpies fan anxious to thrust his face into that of a policeman to demand why he couldn’t sit where the dear-oh-dear he wanted. The polliss smiled. “It’s to keep you away from the riff-raff, sir,” he said.
HIS email headed “Wrong again”, Neil McKay in Lanchester draws attention to another own goal in Saturday’s column. Pat Jennings had scored, we said – in the 1967 Charity Shields final – while Peter Shilton never had. Neil turned to Google. “Sure enough, I soon learned that Shilton scored with a wind-assisted clearance for Leicester v Southampton at The Dell, October 1967.”
THOUGH it might not be said that the earth moved, there has also been a little controversy over why former Liverpool and England winger John Barnes was nicknamed Digger.
Jim Jennings in Durham insisted that it was because Barnes’s forenames were John Charles Bryan – hence JCB – and even sends a page from the 1997-98 PFA Footballers’ Factfile as evidence. Some sources, however, insist that Barnes was christened John Kenny Fulton.
Darlington lad Steve Wilson, co-author of the Tranmere Rovers Complete History – published last summer during Barnes’s brief sojourn as Rovers manager, claims the definitive answer.
“Someone asked him at the book launch; horse’s mouth. It was after Willard “Digger” Barnes, a character in Dallas.”
BEFORE Shildon’s FA Vase quarter-final defeat to Whitley Bay, we recalled the last time that they’d reached the last eight of a nation competition – FA Amateur Cup, 1958-59, home to Walthamstow Avenue.
Robbie Young in Bishop Auckland remembers it, too.
“I was ten years old, standing behind the top goal next to Wendy Ellwood who played football better than any lad.
“I was heartbroken when we lost the replay. I thought it was thelast chance to see my beloved Shildon at Wembley.”
So far, so it has proved.
THE last time that England played two off-spinners in a Test (Backtrack, March 13) was when John Emburey and Mike Watkinson played together against West Indies at Old Trafford in 1995-96.
Jim Jennings – him again – today invites readers to identify the only two players to have won the Premier League, the FA Cup, the UEFA Cup and the Champions League.
Winning ways, the column returns on Saturday.
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