IT'S BEEN a busy bank holiday weekend, and not what you'd call a home banker. Darlington Mowden Park Sharks annual dinner was among the highlights.

The Sharks are the women's rugby team, bite yer legs and then some, about whom we wrote two months ago.

"I can do ladylike. I've a dress and a skirt and photographs to prove it," England player and top points scorer Katy McLean had insisted. She, and they, do ladylike sensationally. Whether there are pictures to prove it depends upon the column's seriously underexposed photographic skills.

Probably it was much like any other rugby dinner - "assorted antics," said team manager Heidi Swaffield - only bonnier.

Girlsterous.

They appear to have two team songs, one to the tune of the Dambusters' March and the other to the Beach Boys' song Sloop John B, in which the first line is "So Hoist up the Mowden flag" and the second couldn't possibly be repeated.

Like the senior men's side, the women had narrowly lost a promotion play-off. Unlike the men's team - bruised experience speaks here - they don't throw bread buns at the speaker.

The parent club, meanwhile, has a meeting on Thursday with local MP Alan Milburn to try to push forward the long-proposed move to the new West Park development - delayed by problems with pylons, overhead cables and NEDL.

"This place is being held together by death watch beetle, if they left it would fall down,"

said club chairman John Widdale. NEDL may have to be fed to the Sharks.

THAT afternoon to Morpeth v Northallerton, the crowd swollen by a two-blue contingent from Bishop Auckland. Were Northallerton to win, the Bishops - the most successful side in amateur football history - would suffer a third relegation in four years.

Off the field, the talking point was yet again metal thefts - three burglaries at Morpeth's ground in ten days, the club stripped of everything from shower heads to toilet fittings. The replacement bill is put at £10,000.

Northallerton led after 20 minutes, Holbrook's shot in off a square post. Had it been round, someone suggested, the ball would have rolled back out. It's fallacy to suppose square posts illegal.

Morpeth equalised, the Bishops exulted, but on 86 minutes Lee Court waltzed through for the Yorkshiremen's winner that doomed the longhomeless Bishops to the second division.

Northallerton's victory would have meant much to Gordon Renton, a club committee man from Catterick Village whose funeral had been the previous day and whose wife and family were at the game. Gordon had an alter ego - and there'll be more of that in Thursday's John North.

EVEN at 73, Bert Hilton's up for a challenge - so far up that on May 25 he plans a bungee jump from the high point of the transporter bridge in Middlesbrough.

"Heights don't worry me, my problem is that by the time I climb to the top I'm knackered,"

he says. "I used to be a goalkeeper. They say you have to be mad."

Bert, encountered at last Thursday's dinner for Stokesley football and cricket clubs, also made the jump last year, raising £2,340 for the Butterwick Children's Hospice - but he's used to heart stopping moments.

At just 17 he was thought to have died after a faulty gas fire poisoned him while he lay in the bath.

"My brother took all the skin off his knees getting through the window to rescue me, but by the time the ambulance got there my heart and my breathing had stopped. I've never forgotten how good it is to be alive."

All bungee jump participants over 50 are required to produce a doctor's certificate. "Mine just comes automatically," says the admirable Bert, who lives in Stokesley. "It's probably not my heart that they think is the problem."

John remembered before Winning finally win a cup

YESTERDAY'S Ernest Armstrong Cup final brought a first trophy in 26 years Northern League membership for the smashing folk at Esh Winning, 3-0 winners over Sunderland RCA.

It was preceded by a minute's silence, impeccably observed, in memory of 28-year-old former Billingham Synthonia, Shildon and Marske United goalkeeper John Jackson who died tragically last Friday. John also played for Coundon Conservative Club, in which capacity we'd last spoken. He was a lovely, genuine and apparently very happy man and will greatly be missed.

Back in the office, we hear also that a minute's silence was observed before yesterday's Ushaw Moor v Etherley cricket match in memory of long serving former Durham County league chairman Peter Metcalfe and of Eric Ferguson, his long time friend and former Ushaw Moor player. Both died earlier this year. "It was a lovely gesture and both Eric's widow and I are very grateful," says Ann Metcalfe.

FAMILIAR North-east cricketer and entertainment agent David Greener, also encountered at the Stokesley dinner, fears an end to a long and pretty distinguished career.

Davey - Chester-le-Street lad, presently playing for Clara Vale - suffered cruciate ligament damage while bowling. This was ten-pin bowling.

"I was going for the slider,"

he says, enigmatically. "There was a pain like I'd been shot in the knee; I knew straight away that something serious had happened."

"I'm seeing the specialist next week in the hope that they may be able to rebuild it - but if you know anyone who wants a pair of cricket boots, I'm afraid they're going to be on the market."

BORO legend Tony Mowbray had a special house guest when his West Bromwich Albion side clinched promotion last week - 87-year-old Jack Watson, still the club's northern scout.

Jack - Shildon lad, former Durham and Northumberland cricketer - was also at the Hawthorns when West Brom gained the point necessary to ensure elevation.

"Tony's a lovely man and has done tremendously well," he says. "There was champagne everywhere in the manager's office and only me with a cup of tea.

"I've never touched a drop of alcohol in my life. I suppose you could say it doesn't seem to have done me much harm."

KEN Sykes, who played football for Darlington, Middlesbrough and Hartlepool and was equally well known on the golf course, has died. He was 82.

Ken scored twice in six Quakers appearances in 1946-47, failed to make the Boro first team and registered just one league game at the Victoria Ground.

"He was a lovely chap, great big enormous feller and always full of fun," says former Darlington and Hartlepool inside forward Harry Clark.

Ken's funeral is at Darlington crematorium at 1.15pm on Friday.

SAND in her shoes, and just about everywhere else, the indefatigable Sharon Gayter is back from the six-day Marathon des Sables, in which 800 runners carry their own packs across the Sahara.

The blisters were the worst bit.

"I didn't see any of the wild life but heard plenty of stories - the best probably about the medical tent which was busy with blistered feet when the doctors came running out, followed by hobbling runners with syringes hanging from their feet.

"The tent had been pitched on top of a scorpions' nest and ten or 12 suddenly appeared. It certainly seemed to fix the blisters."

Sharon, from Guisborough, was happy just to finish. The next one's toughest of all - unsupported through Death Valley.

Aparting thought from a sunny weekend: Spennithorne v Eryholme, Darlington and District League division A - Charlie Walker, Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme, 7-42. The Demon is 66 (at least).

...AND FINALLY

THE Football League club that was furthest from a railway station (Backtrack, May 2) was Rushden and Diamonds - who play at Irthlingborough in Northamptonshire and whose nearest station is Wellingborough, ten miles away.

Since Ian Redpath set such a good quiz at the Stokesley sportsmen's dinner, two questions from that - which is the only Football League ground with a pub on every corner and, secondly, who's the only Scouser to win FA Cup medals with both Everton and Liverpool?

Double whammy, the column returns on Friday.

9:04am Tuesday 6th May 2008

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