Evenwood honour (From The Northern Echo)

Evenwood honour

10:00am Tuesday 23rd August 2011 in Backtrack By Mike Amos

For services to mutual mickey taking, very likely, I have been made a life member of Evenwood Cricket Club. It's a very great honour, though the all-that-glisters statuette may not bear the pea-pod resemblance - "right down to the beer-stained shirt" - that they suppose.

The citation spoke of a "world famous and legendary column" and of "sycophantic adoration of one individual, namely Peter William Teesdale."

The do, coupled with club chairman John Teesdale's 60th birthday celebrations, took place on Sunday evening in Chutney's, the Indian restaurant above the Trotters Arms in Ramshaw.

While all others enjoyed eastern exotica, Bulldog Billy looked at the pictures in the Daily Star and awaited his tomato omelette.

We go back a very long way, John supposing Evenwood CC's first appearance in one or other of these columns to have been in 1973 when first team player Harry Mordue, then a keen young polliss, disappeared half way through a match against Dean and Chapter.

Harry, it transpired, had spotted in the opposing ranks a chap who'd escaped from custody a few days earlier - "a bit of bother at the Top Hat" - and had nipped down the call box to summon the cavalry.

Though the claim that he deliberately got himself out has always been treated with a degree of circumspection, the miscreant was duly led away in cuffs. The score book was unequivocal: "did not bat: locked up."

"You wrote about it," John recalled. "You didn't quote me right, but it was probably a better story that way."

Kevin Richardson had also produced a sort of Backtrack montage of Evenwood down the years, the page dominated by the story of how Trinidadian steam roller driver Clint Yorke pitched up as Evenwood's pro.

"I'd never heard of them and they'd never heard of me," he explained.

Soon he was smashing Durham County League records, drawing three-figure crowds and, most remarkably of all, silencing critics' corner. They even made £9 on the penny chew stall.

The Teesdale brothers - John, Alf and Bulldog Billy - have been with the club since its re-formation in 1966, still passionately nourishing cricket's grass roots, growing the kids, delighting in their success.

In 1990, Bill captained the first, John the seconds and Alf the thirds. The following year, John and Alf produced a delightful club history.

Grandbairns and great grandbairns now play beneath Evenwood;s banner; Doreen Teesdale, the brothers' 87-year-old mum, still makes the first team teas.

"Sometimes she's up five o'clock to start baking," said John.

It was a splendid and a generous evening, the club further boosted by news that, since it's 2011, the pavilion may soon be getting electricity.

There's just one worry. For most people cricket's just for the summer: now, it seems, Peter William Teesdale is for life.

Just two weeks before their visit to Charterhouse School and the lads of the Durham Amateur Football Trust seek more information on Ernest Barton Proud, one of those who forms the bond between them.

E B Proud was born in Bishop Auckland in 1880, kept goal for the Bishops for ten years, was the first Northern League player to gain an England amateur international cap - in his first match, against France, we won 15-0.

For long-time Backtrack readers, however, the most significant feature may be that the family home, Dellwood, was behind the bottom goal at the historic Kingsway ground.

It was subsequently home to his son, Bill - hence, it's alleged, the weather-worn phrase about it's looking black over Bill's mother's. The issue's also clouded, of course. At a rough forecast, about 500 other places claim it, too.

Ernest Proud, who died aged 86, also played cricket and hockey for Durham County, was a leading solicitor and became Northern League president.

We once recalled a cricket match between Guisborough and Bishop Auckland - July 24, 1909 - when Guisborough had declared at 219-6 and Bishops were 167-6, Proud 70, and anxiously consulting their timepieces. The last train went at 6.48pm.

Proud's offer of a draw declined, he declared, forfeited the points and led his still-flanneled phalanx to the huff-puff station nearby.

The outcome, said the following Monday's Northern Echo, had been "most unsatisfactory." Not what you'd call a Proud moment, anyway.

For the information board they're preparing for the Charterhouse visit, DAFT secretary Tony Huntington seeks any information about Proud's familyy or news of any living relatives. He's at huntington.tony@gmail.com or 01262 676520.

As we'd previously noted, the Charterhouse excursion recalls the occasion in December 1938 when a team from the St Helen's Auckland Social Centre played Eton. The wonderfully evocative photograph has, happily, now turned up.

Things grim up north, the College had earlier "adopted" the St Helen's centre for the unemployed and their familes, paying several visits to Co Durham.

"They took parts in the sing-songs, the village teas and suppers and dances," noted the Auckland Chronicle. "It gave them an insight into that quality of warm hospitality which is the quality of the north."

Eton reciprocated. Eighteen players and seven officials travelled by Elite bus to the south - "a far distant land," said the Chronicle - and were received graciously.

They were put up in a hotel, attended a service at the College chapel, shared tea with the Eton boys, stood toe-to-toe on the sidelines. Ours are the ones in the flat caps.

To show that all men really are equal, the game ended 2-2.

Perhaps not so cash-strapped but always in need of help, West Auckland's present-day footballers are much cheered by a £1,000 legacy in memory of someone who played for them more than a century ago.

Joseph Henry Tweddle was there in the early days of the 20th century. "The story was that he'd have played in the first world cup but was injured," says a family member who asks not to be named.

He did, however, win a clutch of other medals which have been passed down through the family. When Edgar Tweddle died recently, the medals went to his nephew and £1,000 to West.

"Even after all this time we've always had a soft spot for West Auckland," says his relative.

"It must be a real struggle but the way that the club keeps going is brilliant. It's good to be able to help."

Allen Bayles, the Northern League side's secretary, clearly agrees. "Good news is hard to come by but this has given everyone a huge lift," he says.

The bequest will be used to complete the club's medical room, begun five years ago before funds ran out.

... and finally

Saturday's column sought the shared surname of a British pole vaulter in the Moscow and Montreal Olympics, a Newcastle United goalkeeper in the 1990s and a West Indian cricketer with over 100 test appearances. They were Brian, Mike and Carl Hooper.

The younger bairn today recalls that Rangers won the 1972 European Cup Winners Cup despite losing a penalty shoot-out in the second round against Sporting Lisbon. How? Another close-run thing, no doubt, the column returns on Saturday.