THE Department for Culture, Media and Sport - not to mention political correctness - announced in November that Peter Rowley had been appointed chair of Sport England's North-East regional board.

The news was closely followed by a second media release, from the Darlington Building Society of which for 16 years he has been chief executive. Largely similar, it contained a subtle difference.

The new position had become chairman, instead.

"A chair's a piece of furniture, a chair's inanimate," he protests and few are more animated, more enthusiastic - or, indeed, less wooden - than Peter Rowley.

At DBS he has committed substantial sums to support sport and arts in the North- East. In the additional Sport England role he will have both a major funding budget and help lead a campaign to persuade 95,000 more North- East people to become active participants.

"Sport transforms lives," he says simply. "It makes you feel good about yourself, helps you develop a confidence that might otherwise not be there and to see how confidence can become competence."

Though he moves in high places, his passion's grass rooted. "You can give much more by awarding a few hundred pounds to a club to train a young person who might otherwise not be helped than by putting millions on the front of Manchester United shirts," he says.

"Being part of the prawn sandwich brigade is sometimes part of the job, but I'd rather turn up at ten to three, have a beer, watch the match and be home in time for the results.

"Much of the best sport is Corinthian, about the warm glow it gives, about recognition from your peers."

Still just 52, he runs five riverbank miles every day before breakfast - "I call it passion, my wife calls it obsession" - competes most weekends with the Quaker Running Club, raises tens of thousands for charity by taking part in half marathons.

Since officially becoming a "veteran" at 35, he's also had his times automatically adjusted to acknowledge advancing years. "It's very heartening," he says. "We all try to slow down the ageing process and now some computer software does it for you."

These days, however, he no longer plays golf. "I do everything very intensely and it jilted me on the third tee at Hexham Municipal - four balls sliced into the North Tyne. I never played again."

HE WAS born in Burton-in- Trent, wrote a university thesis on the history of Burton brewing, remains loyal to the Marston's pedigree.

At school he captained athletics, enjoyed rugby, supported Derby County - "I saw us in a European Cup semi-final; the referee was bent" - and opened the batting at cricket.

"I'd carry my bat for 20, a bit like Geoffrey Boycott. I could never understand why I wasn't applauded when I came in."

Befitting an athlete, his financial services career was suitably fast-tracked. At 31 he was manager of the Sunderland branch of the Coop Bank, three years later general manager of Newcastle Building Society.

Formed 150 years ago and still independent, DBS has thrived under his leadership.

Membership's up from 50,000 to 85,000, future bright despite gathering financial clouds elsewhere.

He continued to play rugby until he was 40, his last match for Darlington thirds ("maybe it was the fourths") at Frankland maximum security prison, near Durham.

"Obviously it was an away fixture. It took that long to search us all that the referee asked if we could just play 25 minutes each way.

"They were all out for the match - IRA bombers, everyone - and the first time the ball went into the crowd it never came back.

"I had a very elegant game in the centre, a bit like Jeremy Guscott, but it was also the first match I've played in where the crowd was escorted away before the teams were.

We lost, graciously, and I hung up my boots."

SPORT England identifies 105 different activities for which it will consider funding.

Were there to be a 106th, juggling, the new regional chairman would be in line for a grant himself - the guy has more balls in the air than a kindergarten kickabout.

As well as guiding DBS through any gathering storms - he's confident they're in good shape to survive - he's also actively involved with the University of Teesside, the Learning and Skills Council, Catterick Garrison radio, Beamish Museum and doubtless two or three others.

"I describe myself as a wellmeaning busybody," he says.

"I'm one of the usual suspects who's rounded up to sit on things, to help organise things or occasionally to chair things, usually with a community base.

"That's what mutuality is about, about co-dependence.

There's an economy about sport that's essential to the wellbeing of community."

He denies, however, that taking on yet another demanding role poses a risk of taking his eye off the DBS ball.

"Everyone needs an antidote, it actually makes me better at my day job.

"I have a very supportive team here, but that could just be because they want me out of the way, and I have a wonderful wife who puts up with me being out most nights of the week.

"The Sport England job came up in November at a time when the financial services industry (through Northern Rock) was in turmoil, but I didn't have to think very hard about it.

"Life isn't a practice, it's the real thing. You should be pushing yourself, challenging yourself, as much as you can.

This role fitted me like a glove."

THE Society thrives, the foyer hung with community awards, several sponsored by Northern Rock.

His expansive office boasts many more. Whatever else DBS is, it's hugely generous.

The most engaging of men, Rowley also likes to talk of "Little old Darlington Building Society" and, yet more improbably, of its being a "warm and cuddly" local society.

It's with different thoughts of what's warm and cuddly, however, that a constant critic - a retired GP from Barnard Castle - regularly at annual meetings refers to Rowley as a fat cat, a reference to his salary.

The Barney army seems to have few recruits. Nor may the chief exec be said to be Rowleypoly; his surname's pronounced as in Cowley.

"I rub my back with surgical spirit for two weeks before the annual meeting to withstanding the lashing," he says. "He doesn't disappoint me."

Sport England's aim is to have two million people nationally participating in some form of sporting activity - flagellation's not presently included, either - minimum 30 minutes, three times a week.

Further meetings to attend, the new chairman's again up and running at 11am. It's testament to his vigour that I walk the very long way back to the office.

The night Keegan put Winning first

KEVIN Keegan's return to Newcastle reminds the indomitable Allan Morton of the night that KK agreed to do a question and answer session at Esh Winning FC.

All seemed well until it was discovered that a major awards dinner was to be held the same night, and that Keegan - in his first managerial incarnation - would be named sports personality of the year.

"We thought he'd just get his secretary to tell us he couldn't come, but he said that we'd asked first so that's where he'd be," says Allan, an Esh Winning official for 40 years.

He was accompanied by Michael Rochford, Newcastle's lord mayor at the time and himself an Esh Winning lad.

Half the proceeds went to the club, half to the lord mayor's appeal for cot death research "It might have been a bit posher at the awards dinner but Kevin had time for everyone, he was absolutely brilliant," says Allan. "The man's an absolute gentleman."

VOLUNTARILY exiled Quakers fan Richard Jones is back in Tenerife after spending Christmas back in Darlington - a period in which he saw his team play three, lose two and draw the other. They'd won the previous three games and they've won the three since he went back. "I'm staying here," says Richard, "until promotion's guaranteed."

REPORTING Consett's FA Vase visit to Poole - that yachtsman's paradise on the English Riviera - Tuesday's column told how, no matter how affluent the locals, some still watched through the skylight rather than pay a measly £5 admission.

Denise Haworth's picture tells the story better. Poole's gold, perhaps that's why they're so well off.

We also noted that one of Poole's bookstores was unsuccessfully trying to shift great piles of former Darlington FC chairman George Reynolds's autobiography at just £2 a time.

Alan Wilks in Chilton reckons he bought a similarly inexpensive copy at the Cornmill centre in Darlington, but that he hasn't yet started it. "I want to finish the one I'm on with first.

It's called The Cowboy Way."

ALF Hutchinson, a good friend of these columns, seeks help in recruiting new blood for Cockerton Cricket Club, whose indoor nets begin at Carmel College, Darlington, on Sunday.

Now marking its 115th year - the centenary match in 1993 was against a Durham County side that included Wayne Larkins, Graeme Fowler, Simon Brown and Anderson Cummins - the club has waned a little of late.

Any who feel capable of playing at Darlington and District A or C division level - or, of course, higher - is asked to contact club chairman Terry Simpson on 01325 243230 or secretary Dave Carroll on 01325 240425.

STIRRED from his hibernation by recent memories of the Durham police football team, Hails of Hartlepool reports the funeral last week of 84-year-old Stan Wilde - known as Stash - who'd played for the polliss 60 years ago.

The team also included Jock Heward who, more happily, still meets Ron Hails on the bowling green.

Ron further reports the passing, at 88, of Tommy Lumby, a "fearsome" left arm fast bowler for Seaton Carew and not much slower on the green.

We also hear of the death of David Branson, aged 65, a Norton cricketer who made five Durham County appearances - 139 runs, six wickets - between 1964-67. He had long lived in Holland.

OVERSTEPPING the mark, as always, the February issue of the Arngrove Northern League magazine reproduces the old joke - in turn filched from the Brandon United programme - of the mother superior announcing to her nuns that they had a case of gonorrhoea at the convent.

"Thank God," says an elderly sister at the back, "I'm so tried of chardonnay."

...AND FINALLY

THE feat common to the careers of both Fabrizio Ravanelli at Middlesbrough and Malcolm Macdonald at Newcastle United (Backtrack, January 22) was that both scored a hat-trick against Liverpool on their debut.

That he was at both matches may help explain why Ralph Petitjean in Ferryhill was first to know.

Since it's cricket weather, as he wryly observes, Alf Hutchinson in Darlington today invites readers to name the four different players who captained England in a five-Test series against the West Indies in the summer of 1988.

Leading from the back, the column returns on Tuesday.

11:05am Friday 25th January 2008

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