ONE of Stan Wilson’s favourite stories – he had many, enthusiastically and tirelessly re-told – was of his Northern League debut for Shildon back in the 1950s.

After the match, players lined up in front of the treasurer to claim what euphemistically were called expenses. “Day return from Redcar to Shildon, three shillings and ninepence,” said Stan, with Methodist honesty, and was duly reimbursed.

“Bishop Auckland to Shildon, £2 10s,” said the next in line, the sum no less immediately provided. The train fare from Redcar went up a bit after that.

Stan, whose funeral was on Monday, was a Redcar lad and proud of it. Equally enthusiastic about football and cricket – he was a member of both Durham and Yorkshire – he was in the Redcar Boys football team which included future Spurs and England centre forward Bobby Smith.

“I was the captain, the grammar school boy,” he’d recall. “My job was to get twopence off each of them for the bus.”

When Stan became a PE teacher in Thornaby, Bobby was turning out against Portugal in a televised afternoon kick-off. “I nicked out even before the kids did,” he said.

He’d done National Service in the education corps – “not such a cushy number as you might think, it turned a mummy’s boy like me into a man” – before embarking upon a 34-year teaching career.

At Thornaby he’d ferry the bairns to fixtures on his Lambretta – “usually one at a time.”

He played both sports for Redcar, qualified as football referee and cricket umpire, once had to spend a week in hospital after being stung by something nasty while standing at Normanby Hall – a complaint that began with an ‘e’ and ended in agony.

He’d also umpired for the dear old Doghouse CC, given a white stick as indication of perceived myopia.

His hero was Brian Close – “bloody but unbowed” – his favourite cricket venue the Scarborough Festival. He’d also joined a campaign to save Yorkshire’s out-grounds, at much the same time invited to play King Canute in a Yorkshire Day pageant at Whitby.

The two, insisted Stan, were wholly coincidental.

Stan became one of the Backtrack column’s most cherished correspondents. Another favourite story concerned the occasion on which the Hartlepool United chaplain had the Bishop of Jarrow as a guest at the Victoria Ground. The bishop was introduced to Tony “Jesus” Day, a perceived biblical lookalike and another old friend of the column’s.

“He’s an imposter, your grace,” said Stan.

“Thank you,” said the bishop, “but I think I’d realised that already.”

Stan’s other passion was politics, from being NUT activist and chairman of the college Socialist Society to LibDem councillor and tilter at parliamentary windmills.

His first, in 1992, was in the Labour stronghold of Caerphilly, in the Welsh Valleys, as rock-solid as the town’s enormous castle.

“It’s like playing for Shildon against Bishop Auckland and finding you’re being marked by Bobby Hardisty,” said Stan.

“For the LibDems to send an elderly gentleman from North-East England shows how seriously they treat the people of south Wales,” said Ron Davies, the pugnacious retiring MP, provoking protest on two counts.

Firstly, said Stan, he was but a bairn of 60 and, secondly, he wasn’t North-East. Stanley William Wilson was very definitely Yorkshire.

His nomination papers had been signed by two Jenkinses, a Williams, a Jones and – the dead giveaway – a couple of Clutterbucks. The seat was unwinnable, Stan’s experience of Wales pretty much limited to ten weeks basic training in Brecon and a one-off appearance singing Blaydon Races with the Neath Male Voice Choir.

“There must be a few votes for an old soldier in the British Legion clubs,” he said, though one or other of these columns was more sceptical.

Our bairns, then quite small, had come down for the trip and were deputed during Stan’s car tour of the constituency to count each party’s election posters in the windows. Labour 138, Plaid Cymru 16, LibDem 2, Conservative 0.

“His task in Caerphilly is the political equivalent of storming the 12th century castle with a single mortar chisel,” we concluded. The headline was “How yellow is my valley.”

Never Say Dai, Stan held the Labour man to a 27,500 majority, moved across to Newport West in the next general election – so outwardly confident that he cancelled his holidays because they coincided with the State Opening of Parliament – and finally returned to fight Redcar in 2001. He didn’t win that one, either.

Manifestly, admirably, he was honest. “I’m not sexist and I’m not racist,” he said, “but political correctness is the biggest load of rubbish in the world.”

He and Stella had moved in 1997 to Sowerby, near Thirsk, apparently to be nearer the main line. He remained an active Methodist, joined the parish council, watched and umpired and loved to get about on the bus. “If they cut our bus passes the coalition’s dead,” he said in May 2010.

Whilst in Sowerby he also took part in a protest march by York City FC supporters against the proposed move from Bootham Crescent. Chiefly it was because they’d borrowed his loud hailer. “Like me,” said the lovely Stan Wilson, “it’s always available for a worthy cause.”

Stella had been a Conservative, Stan a left winger both on and off the football field. The reason that Stan joined the Liberals, sad the Rev Kathie Heathcoat, was that they might meet half way.

Though his dad had been a Primitive Methodist, Stan joined Trinity church, perceived as Wesleyan. “They had a better football team,” the minister explained.

The Rev Alan Powers, a retired minister now in Darlington, recalled a trip to The Oval with Stan when both were very much younger. Lillee bowled the first ball to Edrich, the snick flying through the slips for four.

The great Lillee stalked back to the start of his run-ip. “You should put an extra man in there, Dennis,” shouted Stan.

“I wanted to hide beneath the bench in embarrassment,” said Alan.

What Mr Lillee said is, sadly, not recorded.

The church was full, the gathering affectionate. “He was a man who enjoyed living every moment of life,” said Ms Heathcote.

Also among the mourners was Redcar and Cleveland LibDem MP Ian Swales, who with a 21.8 per cent swing succeeded in 2010 where Stan had failed nine years earlier. “They talk about standing on the shoulders of giants,” he said. “That’s what happened to me.”