GORDON Bradley, who rose from the bottom of Easington pit shaft to the top of US football, has died. He was 74, and utterly extraordinary, from Colliery to Cosmos.

Gordon signed Pele, Cruyff, Carlos Alberto and (as we shall hear) one or two others as well.

He mixed with multimillionaires, cared passionately about football, was just as happy coaching a class of eightyear- olds.

The Washington Post called him "one of the most influential figures in US soccer circles"; the New York Times supposed him "a pioneering figure in American soccer."

US Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati hailed a true legend. "Gordon was a giant. We would not be where we are today without the contributions of people like him."

Chiefly, however, we are indebted to Mr Malcolm Dawes, Hartlepool United and New York Cosmos (and to Mrs Dawes for the coffee and biscuits.) Bradley signed Malcolm for the Cosmos, too. "I was a Trimdon Grange lad. I thought I was on my holidays if we went to Middlesbrough," he recalls.

"I'd suddenly gone from the Plantation to Manhattan, and that was down to Gordon Bradley."

He also has the DVD of the Cosmos story, sub-titled "girls, greed, glory, superstars, excess."

Ah, says Malcolm, that was after he left.

Born in Easington, signed by Sunderland, Bradley faced the post-war choice of National Service or the pit. He chose the colliery and was waiting on the surface for his shift to start when first reports of the Easington disaster of 1951 were received. His future father-inlaw was among the dead.

"Gordon never forgot where he came from," says Malcolm Dawes. "You wouldn't if you'd worked in a three-foot seam beneath the North Sea."

Without his ever having played for the first team, his Sunderland career was ended by a knee injury in training.

After two years on the road to recovery, he played for Blackhall CW, made 18 Football League appearances for Bradford Park Avenue and 129 for Carlisle United before in 1963 emigrating to Canada with Vera, his wife.

The man behind that move was the late and greatly lamented Owen Willoughby, later to be a greatly respected Spurs scout and the driving force behind Trimdon United Juniors.

In 1971 he became the first coach of the fledgling Cosmos, guiding them in 1972 to the North American Soccer League title. Home on holiday, he spotted Malcolm Dawes in 1973, Hartlepool v Peterborough United. It was Grand National day and Malcolm remembers it well.

"Red Rum had won the National and we kicked off at half past six. It was sunny but very windy, but usually made conditions very tricky at the Victoria Ground, but I had a very good game."

The following Monday morning he was told that two men - Bradley and recently sacked Middlesbrough manager Stan Anderson - were waiting at Seaton Carew golf club to see him.

He completed a summer contract - "Gordon was off to sign George Best after that, but Manchester United wouldn't let him go" - and was also offered a week's tour of Mexico at Easter.

Hartlepool manager Len Ashurst said he'd let him go if results went right. On Good Friday they drew 0-0 at the Vic, the following day lost 3-1 at Northampton - Malcolm scored an own goal.

"I didn't even have to ask Lenny," he says. "I knew I wasn't going."

When he finally made it, a new world awaited.

At hard-up Hartlepool, returning immediately after a match at Exeter, they'd had to flag down a lorry after their elderly team bus broke down on the M6 and travelled, absolutely perished, on the back of it.

Playing a night match at Southend they travelled there and back on the same day, arrived at 6.30pm, managed a cup of tea and a sausage roll before the match and arrived home - "absolutely knackered"

- at 5am.

If the Cosmos were playing Miami, they'd make a week of it.

He'd been met by a limousine at the airport, accommodated in a luxury apartment, driven each day to training by Gordon himself. "He really looked after me, always went a different way into the city, just to show me the sights.

"I tried to take it all in, but I was a Trimdon lad. How could you?"

When Bradley asked if he knew any other single lads who might fancy it, he recommended Ralph Wright, who'd joined Hartlepool at the same time.

In 1973, Bradley was also made head coach of the US national side, picked himself for a friendly against Israel - though still not a US citizen - but was sacked after six successive defeats.

Cosmos in turn sacked him in 1976, reinstated him a year later but replaced him with former Darlington favourite Ken Furphy two years later. When Washington Diplomats sacked him in 1980, Furphy again took his place.

Bradley was also involved in the game at all levels - "a bit like football in the community"

says Malcolm - as adept at marketing as he was at motivation.

"If you could take the soccer DNA of many of today's outstanding players you could trace it back to the Cosmos and Gordon Bradley," said former general manager Clive Toye.

From 1985-2000 he managed the George Mason University side, the most successful in the States, and was what American television calls a "colour commentator." He had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease for several years.

Now 64 and living in Sedgefield, Malcolm Dawes still has the mementoes, the cuttings, the contracts $190 dollars a week, twice what he earned at Hartlepool, and all found. "Amazing money in those days."

The team picture doesn't just feature players and coach but public relations director, marketing director and equipment manager. Most English clubs, he supposes, made those sort of appointments a generation later.

He'd spent two summers with the Cosmos, was offered a third but asked if he could fly over in February. When Hartlepool manager Ken Hale refused to release him, Bradley signed Pele instead.

"I'd always worn the number six shirt," says Malcolm. "Next time I saw the Cosmos it was being worn by Franz Beckenbauer." Gordon Bradley, the miner miracle worker, had signed the Kaiser, an' all.

Happy Birthday to Hartlepool United THE indispensable Hails of Hartlepool points out that it will be 100 years on Monday since the meeting at the Commercial Hotel to form Hartlepool United, and no matter that it was the following week before the deed was done.

Ron's even seen the original minute book, rescued by a friend from the skip.

The Echo made nothing of either occasion, the paper chiefly preoccupied by the doleful proceedings of the police courts - a woman in Guisborough committed for trial on a charge of trying to hang herself, four lads before Tynemouth magistrates for playing nosey.

Nosey was a card game. "Each player gets three cards and the loser gets a punch on the nose three times," it was explained. It was the gambling, not the punch in the face, that was illegal.

Grey pages were brightened, however, by a report of how splendid Hartlepool's Ward Jackson Park looked in the spring sunshine. Our floribundant correspondent particularly liked the balearic sandwort.

Ron Hails notes that the new Hartlepools United Football and Athletic Company had a capital of £2,000, in 4,000 ten bob shares.

Though West Hartlepool FC already existed - they'd won the Amateur Cup in 1905, beating Clapton 3-2 at Shepherds Bush - it was agreed that the teams share the Victoria Field.

United, a professional club, joined the North Eastern League, for which the Echo noted applications from such manifestly Geordie sides as Heckmondwyke, Castleford and Huddersfield Town.

Pools appointed England international Fred Priest as player/manager on £2 10s a week, plus £10 to shift his furniture from Middlesbrough, where he'd been assistant coach.

What with the groundsman's £1 7s, the first weekly wage bill reached £14 8s 6d.

The team remained in the North Eastern League until 1921, when they helped form the Third Division (North). The rest's history, and Nick Loughlin's probably writing it at this minute.

SPLENDID news from our friends at Mowden Park Sharks, the Darlington-based women's rugby team - fly-half Katy McLean, 22, will captain England in the European championship opener against Sweden tomorrow. "Everyone dreams of captaining their country," says, from South Shields. "It still hasn't sunk in."

Team mate Tamara Taylor is also in the England squad.

DAVE Morrison, he of the higgledy-piggledy hands, will be 65 on Wednesday - and still, as they say, keeping canny.

Familiar in North-East cricket these past 50 years, Dave received worldwide media attention - someone even offered to be his agent - after Backtrack featured his mangled metatarsals.

He's still behind the stumps for Darlington and District League champions Barton - "Silly old bugger," says Valerie Tait, his adoring partner - and it's to the Half Moon in Barton that they'll be repairing after the home game a week tomorrow.

All friends and admirers will be most welcome to join them.

AN EYE on tomorrow's events at Wembley - Portsmouth's first FA Cup final appearance for 69 years - Dennis Cowey in Bishop Auckland sends this splendid photograph of Pompey's celebrations after the winning goal in the Highbury semi-final, against Huddersfield Town.

"A perfect picture of Cup joy,"

said the caption writer.

It's from what Dennis describes as his collection, clearly occupied the width of a broadsheet page and was probably, he suspects, from the Daily Herald.

"I must have been about seven when I cut it out," says Dennis.

"It's certainly stood the test of time."

The only disappointment is that the North-East representatives - Portsmouth keeper Harry Walker, from Wensleydale and full back Billy Rochford, an Esh Winning lad, aren't included. They're doubtless being ecstatic elsewhere.

...AND FINALLY

THE only man to captain both English and Scottish FA Cup winners (Backtrack, May 13) was Martin Buchan, with Aberdeen and Man United.

Dave Jasper in Sedgefield - "Darlo through and through," he insists - was first up with that one.

Still with tomorrow's events in mind, Ian Redpath in Stokesley invites readers to name four player/managers who've appeared in an FA Cup final.

The column, of course, will be attending the annual gathering of the FA Cup Final Escape Committee (and Scotch Pie Fest.) More of that on Tuesday.

9:47am Friday 16th May 2008

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