Reeth’s beautiful new hut (From The Northern Echo)

Reeth’s beautiful new hut

4:26pm Wednesday 7th September 2011 in Backtrack By Mike Amos

STRAIGHT back from a week on the Outer Hebrides to Reeth, in Swaledale, a place every bit as beautiful if not quite as remote. Both have a travelling chip shop.

In Reeth on Sunday they officially opened the new £650,000 sports pavilion, a quite wonderful development for so small and so scattered a community though it's likely they'll still call it the hut.

The village band played Oh What a Beautiful Morning, as well they might.

Its glories else, they could never have justified that one on Uist.

The sports ground, the only outdoor facility in Swaledale and Arkengarthdale, is alongside the river and thus seriously susceptible to flooding.

The magnificent new place is thus effectively built on stilts, if not six feet above contradiction - as they used to say of pulpit preachers - than a good yard, anyhow.

Local councillor James Kendall eyed in approvingly.

"Mind, " he said, "it could mebbe do with another eight inches."

This time, however, a cloud had been cast by the death a few days earlier of David Hutchinson, familiar for 40 years in Swaledale sport, chairman for 20 years of the cricket club and an active fund raiser.

Known universally as Tan - he was originally from Tan Hill - he was particularly a keen cricketer and feared fast bowler. His funeral had been the day previously.

"It's a cruel twist of fate, he'd so much have loved today, " said James Alderson, the cricket club secretary.

"He loved his cricket, very competitive, you couldn't get the ball out of his hand.

Played to win, did Tan."

The old pavilion had neither changing rooms nor electricity. "Whenever there was bad weather another bit fell off, " said Derek Pollard the project director.

Pavilion and adjoining multi-use games area - football, cricket, tennis, bowls - have chiefly been funded by a £344,000 grant from the Football Foundation. Other bodies chipped in handsomely, the community raised £45,000.

"You name it they did it, " said Derek, Devon lad originally. Formerly an international operator in the electrical engineering industry. he retired to the dale 13 years ago, volunteered, and is also president of the North-East Philatelic Society.

"People here are very welcoming so long as you don't try to take over, " he said.

The biggest problem had been the paper work.

"Implementation of this project, the amount of red tape and petty bureaucracy was bigger than anything I ever encountered in industry. I can understand why people don't volunteer."

The pavilion was opened by Robert Miller, a beneficent American said to have made his money in duty free shops who now owns the Gunnerside estate and its shooting rights. Former England footballer and Boro manager Gareth Southgate represented the Foundation.

"They're particularly pleased with the way the money has been spent, " he said.

Derek Pollard's confident that it will prove sustainable.

They may never leave the little wooden hut again.

DAMN near black-bordered, last week's Scottish press bewailed the state of the national game - every club out of Europe before the end of August.

The Observer's Scottish edition ran the headline "A truly shameful week for football", the Daily Record had a graphic of a tombstone with the engraving "Here lies Scottish football: died of shame, August 25 2011. !"

The Scotsman quotes SFA chief executive Stewart Reagan on a real low point for the game up north. "We want to make serious changes, " he says.

Mr Reagan, as previously we have observed, is a police sergeant's son from Crook.

THE Scottish edition of The Times, meanwhile, reports that Berwick Rangers fans have been warned to stop waving England flags at away matches.

We wrote of the club's cross-border travails three weeks ago, after the launch of Tom Maxwell's book The Loan Rangers.

The problem, apparently, is particularly bad in Stranraer. "There was once an incident where a Berwick fan ran the whole length of the pitch to throw a leek at Stranraer supporters, " recalls a spokesman for Dumfries and Galloway constabulary.

What Wales has to do with it, he was unfortunately not able to explain.

ON North Uist we stayed at Langass Lodge, owned by the Hon Neil Leveson Gower and his wife Amanda. For cricket fans, the name would ring bells.

Sir Henry Leveson Gower, said to be seventh in a batting order of 12 brothers and known as Shrimp because of his diminutive size, captained England in his only three international appearances in 1909-10 and picked sides for the Scarborough festival between 1899-1950.

Neil supposes himself but a distant relative - he is, however, a cousin of the Queen. In Sir Henry's time, as now, the family name is officially pronounced Lorson Gore. "I just tell people I'm Mr Gower, " he said.

At cricket, he insists, he got no further than the school third team. He runs a quite splendid hotel, notwithstanding.

JUST about the only available newspaper on the five-hour return crossing from South Uist to Oban was the Oban Times, where Hurworth lad Stuart Laundy - long familiar in the Darlington and District Cricket league - is now deputy editor.

Up there the national sport's shinty, just four farflung teams competing in the Argyll Cricket League. It proves quite enough to stage a stooshie.

The Oban Times reports that, by winning its penultimate game against Sannox, from Arran, Oban still have a chance of sharing the title.

The Arran Banner, part of the same group, insists beneath the headline "It's just not cricket" that Sannox won it a month ago by virtue of Oban's single point from a cancelled match. Oban, however, have rearranged the game for September 25.

"Things have been allowed to slip. People have been allowed to make up the rules as they go along, " says league official Gordon Lyburn.

Stuart, not playing this year, shakes his head. "It wouldn't happen in the Darlington and District, " he says.

HOME in time for the FA Cup match between Guisborough Town and Shildon, the one in which Shildon sub Leon Scott was sent from the field to have a stud removed from his lug hole.

Inevitably it was the ref who had his ear bent, though the Elderly Secretary of the Bishop Auckland Referees' Society confirms that he was correct. Law 4: "A player must not use equipment, or wear anything that is dangerous to himself or another player (including any kind of jewellery.") Since none was able to shift the offending article, and since all substitutes had been used. Shildon were obliged to play the final 20 minutes with ten men but still won 1-0.

Had they not, mused former Marske United chairman John Hodgson, they could have appealed to the FA. "Mind, " added Hodgy, "I doubt if they'd have got a sympathetic ear ring."

THAT was the preliminary round, preceded by the extra preliminary and followed on September 17 by the first qualifying. David Walsh forwards a cyberspace link from someone wondering who to follow on the road to Wembley. Billingham Synthonia, the usual favourites, are out; instead he's chosen Thurnby Nirvana, from Leicester.

Nirvana, loosely translated, means a state of bliss. "If only, " the guy adds, "Coventry Sphinx were still in it."