HAPPIER things were meant to fill the right-hand page of today’s column. Deaths have overtaken them. Three men familiar to Backtrack readers have passed on in the past two weeks, among them the delightful Tom Ward from Hunwick, near Crook.

Tom had featured in 2012, the first nonagenarian to win a game in his snooker league – and still playing with the 7/6d cue that his father had bought him, second hand, 75 years before.

“My opponent was only about 20, so he tried to play a safety game. It was money for old rope,” he said.

In his 20s he’d also been a member of the Hunwick team which won the All England three-a-side snooker cup.

He’d worked for Montagu Burton for 40 years, 20 as manager of the Bishop Auckland branch, had been secretary of the village workmen’s club in Hunwick for half a century, in three stints, and was chiefly responsible for its survival. The Tommy Ward Snooker Room was named in his honour.

In 2012 he was still secretary, still kept the books, was still down the club seven nights a week, two halves a night.

An ever-optimistic outlook on life had further been brightened by cataract operations. “I could hardly see across the road,” said Tom. “Now I just stand and look at the colours.”

Tom was a delightful, hospitable and greatly community-conscious gentleman. He’d also been a warden at Hunwick parish church. His funeral was held there yesterday.

COLIN Summerson, who has died, aged 81, will best be remembered as West Auckland’s centre half in the 1961 FA Amateur Cup final, but played for several other Northern League clubs, including dear old Stanley United.

At West he was the only village-born man in the team, supposed that familiarity bred greater criticism, baled out club secretary Sid Douthwaite after Sid had given away all his Wembley complimentaries.

“I gave the gateman ten bob to let him in,” Colin once recalled.

On Stanley hill top in the 1950s, the club chairman was Tommy Horn, who had a confectionary factory down in Crook and would reward the victorious players with bags of toffee. “Real lovely toffee,” Colin had recalled at Stanley’s centenary reunion in 1992.

That was the occasion, held at Billy Row club, when Burnley legend Tommy Cummings had pitched up at the “wrong” Stanley despite playing for United for a year and when conversation centred around the weather and around uncompromising United defender Ernest Armstrong, known thereabouts as Sikey.

Ernest became Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons and Vice-President of the Methodist Conference, neither role self-evidently suited to a shall-not-pass centre half.

“The weather, which was always awful, was probably more consistent than Ernest Armstrong,” we wrote back in 1992. “Ernest Armstrong was only awful on Saturdays.”

Colin Summerson, a thoroughly nice man, lived for a long time in Bishop Auckland but had moved to Ireshopeburn, top end of Weardale. His funeral was on Monday.

ARUN Banerjee, a long-serving former Crook GP, organised Crook Town’s extraordinary tour of India in 1976 – an occasion variously described in the column as an Indian summer and, more exotically, a magic carpet ride.

Basically they were Northern League lads, managed by former Boro and England Under-23s man Gordon Jones and augmented by pros like Clive Nattrass, Eric McMordie and Billy Horner. “I picked all the rogues. I didn’t want any straight-faced ones,” Gordon once recalled.

Like his father before him, Dr Banerjee had played for the Calcutta side Mohun Bagan, said to be the Arsenal of India. Until his father’s death in 2003, Doc Banerjee would ring him every day – the telephone bill from Crook to Calcutta said to be £2,000 a quarter.

Though a Crook life member, he remained a Mohun Bagan fan, too. “If they lose, everybody cries. It’s a very sentimental club,” he told Backtrack. “I cry, too. I might be a fool, but I can’t help it.”

Like Colin Summerson, the good doctor was 81. His funeral was in Southampton last Thursday.

…and finally, the former Football League team which played at Holliday Park (Backtrack, July 23) was Durham City. Neil McKay, first with the answer, reckons the Radisson Hotel now stands on the site.

The Stokesley Stockbroker today seeks the identity of the only English footballer to have been managed by two brothers – different teams and different times.

With news from Shildon Railway Boxing Club intended for today’s column, hopefully with something of tomorrow’s cricket match between Cliffe and Chesterfield and with tidings from the first stage of the Last Legs Challenge – Staithes to Marske United v Shildon on Saturday and in the Ship Inn at Saltburn from 12-1pm should anyone fancy joining us for a beer – the column staggers back into action next week.