Grist to the Millfield?

BILLY Callender, once a North-East miner, played 225 games in goal for Crystal Palace and then hanged himself with a skipping rope, somewhere beneath the stand. He was 28, and was still wearing his raincoat and cap.

He had quickly become a Selhurst Park favourite in the late 1920s, still so shy that he blushed when they cheered. The Magpies were to idolise Wor Jackie, the Glaziers worshipped the man they called Wor Billy.

In 1932, however, his fiancee died from polio. Two months later, Billy died, too.

His tale is succinctly told in a new, 20-page book called The Sad Story of Billy Callender.

Born Billy Coulson but soon fostered, he played his early football for West Wylam Primitive Methodists and for Prudhoe Castle before being spotted by one of the Palace retinue.

They were adept at that. Jack Alderson, the man he succeeded as first choice keeper, had been with Crook and became one of England’s one-cap wonders. Jimmy Hamilton, the long-serving centre half, had been found down the pit at Hetton- le-Hole.

Billy soon became the life and soul of the dressing room, won Football League honours against the Army, and was engaged to Ella Leslie, a clerk with the Board of Guardians.

Ella had long been in a wheelchair, faithfully pushed around the recreation ground by the local hero. “To Ella, Callender, below, was a gentle giant – 6ft and strong but with the sort of tender, caring nature that seems to be a characteristic of many North-East people,” writes Jim White. Her letters were found in his pockets when they cut him down.

“News of the tragic death caused a painful sensation in the district,” said the Croydon Advertiser. Back in the Tyne Valley, his funeral was said to have been the biggest ever out of West Wylam.

At Selhurst Park, football poet John J O’Connor believes that his spirit lives on:

So if you’re ever in the Old Stand
And feel the air turn chilly,
Don’t be alarmed
It’s just the ghost
Of poor Wor Billy.

• The Sad Story of Billy Callender is available (£2.50) from Jim Wright, 33 Parker Street, Cleethorpes DN35 8 TH. He also wrote Skegness in the Swinging Sixties.

ALMOST coincidentally, the bit about Billy Callender was written on the No 1 – one of numerous Number Ones; bus travellers will understand – between Darlington and Crook last Wednesday evening. They beat Birtley 4-0.

The club history records that Jack Alderson, Billy’s Palace predecessor, played in England’s 4-1 win over France on May 10, 1923, but was never picked again.

Nor should he be confused with Jack Anderton, inexplicably known as Harpy, who on September 23, 1905, played cricket for Fir Tree against West Auckland, took several wickets, left to captain Crook Town in their 1-0 win over Darlington St Augustine’s and then beetled back to the cricket and scored 18 before being LBW.

He later spent five seasons with Woolwich Arsenal. Probably they could do with him right now.

PAUL Fergusson was at the Crook match, too. He draws attention to his review – ecstatic, save a certain lukewarmness towards the hot chocolate – on one of the non-league websites.

The 90-year-old main stand, painted amber and black, is variously described as “wonderful”, “superb” and “beautifully maintained”; the entrance is tradition, the Kop top, even the outside netties extolled.

“Everywhere there is originality,” says Paul and, as if to complete the picture, to his left were the aged miners’ homes with the washing still hanging outside.

Trouble is that rumours persist, and will grow insistent, that the glorious Millfield ground is about to make way for a supermarket.

Paul’s aghast. Everyone, he says, should take a look around and tell them how wonderful it all is. “It’s fast approaching the time when a fund should be set up to assist clubs to stay in historic grounds like Crook’s.

We preserve railways and old buildings, so why not football grounds, too?”

Crook Town chairman Kieron Bennett declines to comment.

“There may be something to say quite soon,” he adds.

THREE times FA Sunday Cup winners in recent years, Hetton Lyons CC are again in the semi-final – against the memorably-named FC Tripimeni, a Greek Cypriot team from London. FC Canada are in the last four, too.

“Unsurprisingly, we know very little about them,” says Hetton treasurer David Leitch, also secretary of Spennymoor Town with whom the club has strong links. The semifinal’s at Billingham Synthonia FC on Sunday, March 18.

In only their second season in the competition, Tripimeni beat the holders, the yet more lustrously named Oyster Martyrs, a pub team from Liverpool. Martyrs to the cause, they appeared not greatly to have helped themselves, however.

They finished with eight men.

As the column goes to press, however, we hear that an appeal has been launched on the grounds that Tripimeni themselves played a wrong ’un. Were the complaint to be upheld, the usual penalty is exclusion.

The Martyrs may yet be back from the dead.

MIND, it’s not just scally Scousers who fall foul of officialdom. Minutes of a Durham FA disciplinary committee report that two players in a junior game between teams from the Bishop Auckland and Sunderland areas have been fined £25 and suspended for 35 days for violent conduct, which normally translates as fighting.

One’s ten, the other 11.

Since these are minor matters – in age terns, understand – names are ill-advised.

The same report, however, reveals that South Shields based Andrew Hunter – at 27 old enough to know much better – has been suspended for 112 days for threatening the referee.

His team? Mean Machine FC.

LAST Saturday to Bedlington Terriers v Dunston UTS, both team managers absent. Dunston’s Billy Irwin was watching this Saturday’s FA Vase quarter-final opponents at Peterborough, Bedlington’s Keith Perry was watching his horse – Mr Syntax – at Newcastle Races.

Dr Syntax was an early 19th Century cartoon character after whom an illustrious horse, winner of 20 gold cups, was named. It’s also the name of a pub in Prudhoe – as a syntactician might suppose, you learn these things at grammar school.

Dr Syntax also sired Beeswing, winner of 51 of her 63 races, and after whom a hornpipe, a Scottish village – nee Lochend – and a pub at East Cowton, near Northallerton, are named.

Mr Syntax started 7-2 favourite but could only manage second.

Graduation may take a little longer.