OLD TIMES: Man. United players in Derek Lewin's front parlour. Left to right are Johnny Berry, Dennis Viollett, Roger Byrne and Geoff Bent

LEN Green, one of those true grassroots sportsmen who deserve medals as big as a bin lid - and to whom, inexplicably, Her Majesty never seems to get round - stepped down this week after 57 years official involvement with Middleton St George Cricket Club.

Perhaps more widely remembered as Darlington FC's right back in the epic FA Cup win over Chelsea, exactly 50 years ago, he's a cricket man at Middleton.

"There simply wouldn't still be a cricket club here without him," they insist in that most welcoming of clubhouses.

"Oh no," says Len with characteristic modesty, "there've been a few more than me."

Born in Middleton St George and properly proud of it, he became scorer at 14. "They had enough players, it was the only way I could get into the club,"

he recalls.

They played on a rough-hewn wicket cut into the middle of a farmer's field, haycocks (as Len calls them) appearing twice a year on the outfield.

It was on his first team debut, aged just 15, that a whirlwind blew in. "It just lifted the haycocks and spread them everywhere. I hadn't faced a ball and the match was abandoned, whirlwind."

Now they face the wind of change, and village cricket increasingly feels the draught.

Len opened the batting, bowled pretty fast, preferred to keep wicket. During national service, lance corporal in the Royal Signals, he also played first-class cricket - Combined Services against the British Universities.

"I was the only non-officer in the team," he recalls over a hugely convivial pub supper near his Stockton home. "We had salad and sherry for lunch.

I was just a village lad, I thought I could get used to that."

He's brought an M&S carrier bag, overflowing with football memorabilia, too, threepenny programmes that these days would be worth a small fortune.

Chelsea's, for the original fourth round tie, headlined their Quakers feature: "The story of Darlington is of how the poor live." Chelsea's programme was a tanner, though; that's why they were rich.

There's a yellowing Sunday Express piece about the day Stan Matthews visited Darlington - "Green's come on a ton in the last few matches,"

Dick Duckworth, the manager, told the Wizard of Dribble - and the typewritten menu from the "complimentary dinner"

given by the council at the Fleece Hotel to mark the team's 1957-58 Cup exploits. Music by the Metronomes Concert Party.

Len was a part-timer, a lab technician by day and studying three nights a week. "The top wage was £12 and I can tell you I was getting nothing like that.

My first wage packet was 10/6d.

"I suppose Chelsea's my only claim to fame," he says. "They even took us to the Regency Cinema so we could see ourselves on the Pathe Newsreel. We were quite famous for about two weeks."

He'd played once for Darlington Cricket Club's first team, too, a 16-year-old stand-in behind the stumps when Paul Carey was the lightning-fast professional.

"I know you should stand in front of the slips, but I wanted to stand ten yards behind. It was like a rocket going into your gloves, quite nerveracking.

We played Normanby Hall and lost by ten wickets."

He played for Middleton St George for 40 years, reaped the whirlwind and then had to help the club look elsewhere when the farmer sold the field for housing.

Forced to play away for six years, led by Bert Johnson - "plumber and undertaker" - they raised money by New Year's Eve dances in the Parochial Hall, by an annual gala - "procession from one end of the village to the other, stopped at every pub" - and by carol singing from the back of a lorry, Mrs Johnson on the piano.

Eventually they found another field and a secondhand Ferguson with which to cut it, fashioned a plough, bought a hen house - with an extension called the royal box - to use as a pavilion. The clubhouse opened in 1960, weekend queues halfway down the drive.

Len, professionally to become senior lecturer in maths and engineering at Stockton and Billingham Technical College, was variously secretary - in the last spell for 23 years - chairman, entertainments secretary, groundsman and trustee. For ten years he was also secretary of the Darlington and District League, overseeing its expansion from two to four divisions.

"Middleton used to have two teams and a rule that there could only be three players from outside the village. Now there's one team and we had to change the constitution just to get 11 players. There may not be three players within the village now.

"We've a football section which has ten teams, but that's because all their fathers see them as future internationals on £150,000 a week."

He traces the decline of village cricket to the introduction of comprehensive schools. "When every village had its own secondary school they'd play one another, even if it was only on the school field.

"We used to play three times a week and on Saturdays and Sundays. Now no-one will spend six hours over a cricket match, they want to be in the pub by eight o'clock or in front of their computers. Most village clubs are finding it really hard just now."

As a young footballer, he'd played for Middlesbrough Intermediates, suffered a bad ankle injury and was taken to hospital. "They just left me there and I had to make my own way home," he recalls.

"Jimmy Gordon and Mickey Fenton did come around the house afterwards to get me to go back to the Boro. I'm afraid my dad wasn't very polite to them."

He also had an Arsenal trial, Probables v Possibles, in the highly improbable setting of Tow Law. "I think the Arsenal scout must have lived up there, but no-one told me the pitch was on a mountain side.

"In the end they said I lacked a yard of pace, which must have been all that running uphill, and got a taxi home.

That's where I found a fiver in my boot."

He played for Lingfield Lane on Tommy Crooks park in Darlington, joined the Quakers, was just 21 when the FA Cup run ended in 6-1 defeat at Wolverhampton Wanders. "I remember thinking I could chip the ball over Billy Wright's head and he just stepped back and cleared it. It was the difference in class."

A promising career ended, however, when playing the Army game. "It was just a troop match and we were told to wear sandshoes, presumably because not everyone had boots. I slipped, tore a cartilage, and that was it.

"It was like Brian Clough's injury, and though I had an operation at the Catterick Camp military hospital I never played again. There was a sergeant major in the bed opposite, he told me I'd been crying all day."

Football's loss, of course, was cricket's gain. Now 71, he'll continue to be a Middleton St George trustee, to sell their tickets, to play his dominoes there.

"I don't really know why I'm packing up, but I'll still be there if they want me."

Then, the day after the annual meeting which officially declared closed an extraordinary innings, he'd to be on his way. Lenny was needed back at the cricket club.

Lewin recalls old days with pre-Munich photograph

A POIGNANT PS to the plethora of Munich air disaster coverage, from former Bishop Auckland player and England amateur international Derek Lewin.

It was Derek who, as the column recalled on February 1, had been instrumental in bringing fellow Bishops Bob Hardisty and Warren Bradley to bolster the Manchester United numbers.

Manchester-based, he'd trained regularly at Old Trafford for two years previously, made friends of many of the players, frequently had them for tea at his home in St Anne's - as the evocative, period- piece photograph shows.

Footballers dressed differently in those days.

Johnny Berry, on the left, survived the crash but - like Jackie Blanchflower - was so badly injured he never played again. Capped four times by England, he died in 1994.

Dennnis Violett, next to him, was relatively unhurt. He scored 159 goals in 259 League games for United before a fiveyear spell at Stoke City. He died eight years ago, aged 65.

Roger Byrne, half-hidden, was a veteran among the Babes, two days away from his 29th birthday when he died at Munich. He'd won 33 England caps.

Geoff Bent - "probably my best friend of all, lovely lad,"

says Derek - is on the right. A local lad, just 12 first team appearances, he was also killed.

As helpful as ever, Derek - who still lives in Lancashire - admits to "being under a bit of pressure" at the time of the 50th anniversary. "That photograph is among the best memories of all."

BOBBY Charlton survived Munich, too, as Davey Munday - former Darlington lad, now in Dunfermline - is happy to underscore. From the Dunfermline Press (and West of Fife Advertiser), Davey sends a cutting about veteran football commentator Archie McPherson.

"The only reason I still go to the match is to get a pie. The best I've had have been at Dunfermline. Bobby Charlton was another man who knew and loved his pies and whenever he was in Scotland he'd make a detour to Dunfermline just to get one." Neither Sir Bobby nor his brother is thought likely to detour to their home town tonight, when Ashington play their last game at historic Portland Park - against Seaham Red Star (7.30) Much more in Tuesday's column, though.

ANOTHER PS, this time to last week's story on the November 1923 murder of Aston Villa player Tommy Ball, Co Durham lad and former collier.

Though Villa's league form declined thereafter, they did reach the FA Cup final - just the second at Wembley, and the first all-ticket - against Newcastle United on April 26.

Five days earlier, Easter Monday, the teams had also met in a league game in Birmingham, Villa winning 6-1.

"While there was joy in this the pleasure was marred by Newcastle's representation,"

said the Echo - the Magpies fielded nine reserves.

With fresher legs after three Easter games in four days, United won the final with two goals in the last seven minutes - and were fined £750 by the FA for fielding an under-strength team on the bank holiday.

EASTER Monday 1924? A Feethams crowd of 9,000, paying £617, saw Cockfield and Ferryhill draw 0-0 in the Durham Challenge Cup final, Ashington drew 1-1 at Walsall, Middlesbrough's relegation was confirmed by defeat at Cardiff City and the holiday mood seemed not to have reached Stanley Hill Top.

Stanley United were playing neighbours Willington, won with a first minute goal but had two men sent off - as did the visitors.

The Echo's headline writer thought it "regrettable", our man at the match reported that "ill feeling had crept in"

during the second half.

In truth it seemed not so much to have crept in as to have stormed up to the Little House on the Prairie and smashed down the door with a sledge hammer.

But it was Tow Law who the same day won the league.

ABIT belatedly, congratulations to John Armstrong who has been named Etherley Cricket Club's second team player of the year. Remember John? He was the player damnnear killed when the sightscreen at Shildon Railway took off in a gale and flattened him. Wind back in his sails, John's already looking forward to next season. "It's not bad,"

he says, "for a lad of 63."

JOHN'S still but a bairn, of course, compared to 70- year-old Kevin Chisholm, aka the Aged Miner.

Kevin, the club secretary, has just played the full match for Wearmouth in the Over 40s league - his first appearance since scoring a hat-trick as a 68-year-old.

League secretary Kip Watson is delighted at the eternity of youth, miffed that he had to learn about it from someone else.

"The Aged Miner rang in with the score," he protests.

"He never cried squeak."

...AND FINALLY

THE club which won most trophies at the "old"

Wembley stadium (Backtrack, February 12) was Liverpool - 17 in four competitions.

Tuesday's column also mentioned Greenwich Borough, Whitley Bay's potential opponents in the FA Vase quarter-final, who play in Eltham, south London.

Readers are today invited to name the world-famous American who was born in Eltham. With the usual spirit of optimism, the column returns in four days.

9:44am Friday 15th February 2008

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