THE splendid chaps from the Durham Amateur Football Trust have a new exhibition at the National Railway Museum in Shildon. This one’s truly grass rooted.

Largely photographic, there are memories of long lost sides like Eldra United and ENV Rovers – with whom memory suggests that Bulldog Billy Teesdale was once sent off after ten seconds – of Bakelite and Butterknowle, Willingham Temperance and Wolsingham Steel Works.

Then there was Balaclava. Heights of incredulity, where on earth was Balaclava?

There are long defunct leagues like the Gaunless Valley and the Auckland Church League, cups like the Tudhoe Orphanage, the Crook Aged Miners and the Shildon Nursing Medals.

What of Ferryhill Androssans, Stanhope Rectory Rovers – a pretty youthful looking church lads’ brigade – or, most intriguing of all, of Crook Electric who toured Spain and played Lloret Rovers?

A bilingual match poster gives the date but not the year, advises that admission was to be 35 pesetas (which probably wasn’t much) and that the grandstand was covered – but can anyone shed light on Crook Electric?

We spent an agreeable hour there, the museum otherwise pretty much deserted. For those still not yet out of their first childhood, the indoor play area’s right next door. Like everything else at the NRM, admission’s free.

  • The DAFT lads are also reprising the exhibition marking my 20 years as Northern League chairman. It’ll be at Darlington’s closure-threatened library from February 1-27, again free. That should keep the wolves from the door for four weeks, anyway.

The Northern Echo:

SARTORIAL INELEGENCE: George Courtney in hospital pyjamas

HIS out-of-the-blue-light job reported in last week’s column, former FIFA referee George Courtney is now back home in Middlestone Moor and very much on the mend after a heart attack.

George, 75, had become ill in a Manchester hotel the night before flying off on holiday. “My only worry is that the cardiologist was an old Manchester United fan. He was never very impressed with me to start with,” he says.

Well, actually, there were two worries – the other one the pyjamas in which he was obliged to spend four days in Manchester Royal Infirmary. Since he never takes such things on holiday – too much information there, George? – he had to wear hospital issue.

“They were like something from San Quentin. All they needed was a number on the side,” says the old butcher’s dog. “Apart from that, the NHS was absolutely magnificent.”

Last week’s column again reckoned the odds against picking up all seven doubles in a game of dominoes and in turn appears to have been at sixes and sevens. It’s 1,184,040-1, not 1,108,040 says mathematical mastermind Robert Bacon.

At last, a local angle on Donald Trump: he pulled Middlesbrough out of the hat in the 1991-92 League Cup quarter-final draw.

It was held in Trump Tower as part of the Saint and Greavsie programme, the television team having been in the USA for the World Cup draw.

Greavsie pulled the home side, the future president the visitors. Second division Boro were away to third division Peterborough and, since they’d avoided Man United and Leeds – first and second in the top flight – must have been pretty pleased with him.

“Donald had no idea about football and certainly no idea about Rumbelows (the sponsor),” St John once observed.

The game ended goalless, Stuart Ripley’s first-half strike five weeks later winning the replay in front of a 21,973 Ayresome Park crowd.

Boro lost to Manchester United in the semi-final. Donald Trump won a Saint and Greavsie mug with “Funny old game” on the side. It could almost be his watchword.

The great leg spinner Peter Kippax, who died last week, was perhaps the only man to play Minor Counties cricket in five different decades.

He’d begun in 1957 with Yorkshire II, thereafter performing most of his Minor miracles with Durham, where we’d caught up with him in 1990.

Peter had been out for three years with a shoulder injury that required three major operations, a direct result of the curious contortions necessary to sustain the leggie’s legerdemain.

By then he was 49. “The surgery wasn’t just because I wanted to play again, it was a quality of life thing,” he said. “It was shot completely. I couldn’t even dress myself.”

Peter finally returned to club cricket at Harrogate, and to making bats. The surgeon went off on a trans-Atlantic lecture tour to talk about Kippax shoulder.

He was 76, had been ill for a long time and was an exceptionally nice man.

….and finally, last week’s column sought the identity of the three top-flight managers since 1960 – one each from Newcastle United, Sunderland and Middlesbrough – who’d never played in the Premier League or Football League.

They were meant to be Richard Dinnis, Lenny Lawrence and Lawrie McMenemy – but what, asks former Shildon manager Ray Gowan, of Arthur Cox?

He’s right. Best remembered at Newcastle, Cox never played professionally after breaking his leg in a reserve match for Coventry City. He guided the Magpies to first division promotion in 1983-84 but (says Wiki) joined Derby County soon afterwards.

County had been relegated to the old third division. Cox got them back to the first. Now 77, he was last in football as Kevin Keegan’s assistant at Newcastle in 2008.

Today back to Peter Kippax, who played Minor Counties cricket in five different decades. Readers are invited to name the post-war England all-rounder who achieved the same thing in the County Championship.

Ageless, the column returns next week.