Bricks without straw (From The Northern Echo)

Bricks without straw

2:14pm Thursday 28th July 2011 in Backtrack By Mike Amos

“Go therefore now and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks” – Exodus 5:18

THE young have a phrase about things being a no-brainer.

Until the other day, contemplating the column's annual and much-anticipated foray to the Feversham Cricket League, I was never quite sure what it meant.

The Feversham, long adopted, covers rural North Yorkshire, chiefly around Helmsley.

Membership this season is up by 25 per cent, that is to say from four to five.

Wednesday evening's chosen match was to involve Duncombe Park, the returning fifth club, against Spout House - they of the sheepish twinoccupancy and the onein-six outfield.

The problem, the only problem, is the league's inaccessibility for nondrivers. Thus it was that Charles Allenby, the assiduous and everaccommodating secretary, offered three public transport options.

The first was to catch a main line train to Thirsk and be met there, the second to travel via Middlesbrough to Battersby, on the Whitby line, be intercepted there and work out a way of putting in the intervening four hours.

The third was to catch the 13 30 to Middlesbrough, the 14 16 to Whitby, alight at Grosmont, travel on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway to Pickering and have a bite of tea with the secretary before heading up the road.

That was the no-brainer.

Perhaps regrettably, Duncombe Park no longer play their cricket at the noble home of the Fevershams, where once they were based, but at the back of Helmsley cemetery.

Early Wednesday morning, Charles emailed confidently. The pitch was covered, he said - surely a first for the Feversham's grass roots - though he omitted to say with what.

Were the weather forecast to be believed, they may have needed something akin to Billy Smart's big top.

So it proved.

Sportsmen's dinner comedians - the term is used loosely - have a favourite joke about a chap with (shall we say) retention problems who calls his GP to demand a home visit.

"Where are you ringing from?" asks the doc.

"The waist downwards," he says.

Thus it was that that an ill-timed storm of near-Old Testament proportions rendered me soaked through, literally wringing wet, before even reaching Darlington station.

Still, there was always the NYMR to look forward to, still the Feversham with its unsullied and incomparable appeal.

Charles rang just before the Whitby train reached Grosmont.

"Match off," he said - rain stopped play, if ever, and little consolation that the intended NYMR train proved to be what Thomas the Tank Engine scornfully called a Diseasel.

Gentlemen that he is, he'd arranged by way of compensation a tour of Grosmont signal box, which could explain why today's sports column is adorned by a photograph of a departing locomotive.

Charles had also recognised the dilemma.

"Your readers are going to be wondering what'll be in Saturday's column, " he said.

It was a headache familiar to the Children of Israel. "The readers aren't not the only ones, " I replied.

THE next train back was an hour away, a pint and the Whitby Gazette clearly called for. The Gazette carried an appeal by Whitby Town historian Neil Thaler seeking information for a planned book on men who've made than 100 appearances for the club.

Among them are Hartlepool twins Billy and Bobby Veart and Charles Chaplin. The Northern League history has a story about him.

Chaplin, Middlesbrough lad, played for both Whitby and West Auckland in the 1930s, at least twice asked his name by an indignant referee and in even bigger trouble when, truthfully, he replied.

"I'd rather have been Charles than Edward or anything else, " he insisted. "It's given me a lot of fun."

THOUGH it appeared not to have made the Whitby Gazette, the other papers were full of the grilling of the Murdoch gang by the ten members of the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee.

Tuesday's proceedings may have embraced all three disciplines, and just when you thought the last lot had banned hunting with dogs.

The committee includes former Middlesbrough FC scout Alan Keen, MP for the London seat of Feltham and Heston, said in the Telegraph to have addressed the Murdochs as Mr Rupert and Mr James, as if they were floor walkers at Grace Brothers.

The Times was blunter.

Alan Keen, said its sketch writer, appeared to have been on a different planet.

Keen and his mother had moved to Grangetown, near Redcar, when he was just three weeks old - "domestic violence, I never met my father." He was appointed to report on Boro's southern opponents by manager Stan Anderson - "I did the south, Harold Shepherdson did the north" - and lasted 18 years under seven managers, his favourite Jack Charlton.

"Probably it was because he wanted to know the players names, " he told the column back in 1993.

Four years later, when 60, he was still turning out at full back for the MPs against the Door Keepers. The doormen won 6-1. "They played ringers, Badge Messengers and all sorts, " he complained, as if to underline that there's always been skulduggery in high places.

Yesterday the culture, media and sports committee, clearly industrious people, was due to issue its report on football governance.

Regrettably I'd to be in Cumbria essaying some low-level football governance of my own.

Word on the political grapevine, however, is that the Northern League and its poor, sodden chairman are never mentioned once.

Backtrack briefs...

GREAT news for our old friends at Evenwood Cricket Club:– at the suggestion of Kathy Botham, they’re to be the featured club during Sky TV’s test match coverage.

“Lady Botham must read your column,” says Evenwood treasurer John Teesdale, one of a great dynasty of Teesdales who’ve helped the club survive.

Sky will be filming next Thursday and Friday evenings, hope that Sir Ian will also be able to make it, and will also cover next Saturday’s game with Langley Park. “It’s a massive opportunity for us,” says John.

There is, of course, one obvious problem. They’re going to have to interview Bulldog Billy and the programme goes out during the lunch interval. Sky may have to look to the watershed.

TUESDAY’S column not only mentioned Brighton and Hove Albion but Nit Napier, so great a legend thereabouts that an anthology of Albion fans’ recollections was simply called “And I’ll be Kit Napier.”

Mick Bennett forwards a photograph he found in his attic.

Napier was a Scot, made eight goalless appearances for Newcastle United in 1965-66, moved south for £8,500. At Brighton he hit 84 goals in 256 matches, top scored in five of his six seasons and was the hero of a poem by the celebrated Atilla the Stockbroker.

Atilla also wrote a poem about the moment forever engraved upon Albion minds. It was called “And Smith must score.”

THE only previous mention of Atilla the Stockbroker hereabouts was in 1997, when he’d written a poem about Billingham Synthonia.

Memory suggests that “synthetic ammonia” rhymed with “phona ya.”

That same column noted that Mr David Mellor had been due to speak at Shildon FC’s sportsmen’s dinner the Sunday previously, a decision that so enraged Peter Sixsmith that he threatened not just to tear up his season ticket but to boycott the weekly fiddle as well.

Happily or otherwise, someone had rung on the morning of the dinner to report that Mellor had an ear infection and was unable to fly, not even by the seat of his pants.

All that’s coincidental because Pete Sixsmith, formerly Shildon Sunderland Supporters Sedulous Supremo and a long-time occasional in these columns, retired yesterday after a lifetime’s inspired teaching at Ferryhill School.

His retirement bash takes place this very day via a number of licensed premises along the trans-Pennine railway. He is to be wished very happy days.

A BOOK arrives called Confessions of a Football Dinosaur. John Lightfoot’s a Sunderland fan, like Sixer, and – like Sixer – took early retirement.

“Bored rigid”, he decided to put down on paper some of the things he’d been thinking and saying for years. It took 15 months but, basically, he’s not happy.

“Fans now seem to be viewed as customers, not supporters, and may be falling of love with the game they once cherished – sick of the hype, greed, arrogance and selfishness.

The clubs are going to reap the whirlwind sooner than they think.”

No time yet to read it, so more later. The book’s 230 pages, costs £9.99 and is available from the A Love Supreme shop opposite the Stadium of Light or by contacting the author – raised in Easington, now in Peterlee –at johnlightfoot2003@yahoo.

co.uk He also hopes that it’ll soon be on sale at Asda in Seaham. Still bored rigid with retirement, he got himself a part-time job.

And finally...

MANY knew that the first footballer to win an England cap while with a Scottish club (Backtrack, July 19) was Joe Baker of Hibs. Fewer may have remembered that he also played for Sunderland.

“Scottish in everything but birthplace,” says All the Lads, the book of Sunderland biographies. “Not surprisingly he was also Scottish in style – thrustful, persistent and employing a degree of craft.”

He’d scored 102 goals in just 117 matches for Hibs before a £75,000 move to Torino after the Hibs’ board, also Scottish in style, refused him a £5 a week pay rise.

From Italy he joined Billy Wright’s Arsenal, forming a lethal combination with Geoff Strong, whose route to Highbury had been rather different.

Baker crossed the Alps; Strong came down from the heights of Stanley United – and for a pay cut. At the Northern league club he’d been on £10 a week and £1 a goal, of which there were many.

At Arsenal he was on £13 flat – “and that was taxed,” he once told the column. “They’d not heard of tax at Stanley United.”

Joe Baker moved to Nottingham Forest after Arsenal, joined Sunderland for £30,000 in June 1969, may best be remembered for a hat-trick against Charlton Athletic in September 1970 – after Sunderland had been relegated.

After 12 goals in 44 games he headed back north to Hibernian, later ran a pub and died in 2003 after a heart attack during a charity golf match. Geoff Strong, now 73, lives in Southport and has Alzheimer’s disease.

For today’s question, Paul Hewitson in Darlington invites the identity of the only footballer to have played for three different London clubs in the Champions League.

With or without straw, there should be anther tale of bricks on Tuesday.