Teenager Drinkhall’s got it all to come

In the March world rankings he’s down one to 128th, in Europe he’s not even in the top 50.

Few doubt, however, that England may at last have someone to take us to the very head of the table.

“He’s got everything you need. If he works his socks off, he really can give the Chinese a run for their money,” says Carol Moore, his first coach.

“Now he has to live and breathe it, to go the extra mile.”

“He’s a quality player, already the best in England by some margin,” says Alan Ransome, another early influence.

“In a global sense he’s still a very good young prospect, he still has a long way to go.”

“If he works as he has been, he’ll do it,” says Karen, his mum.

The lad himself left almost immediately for a training camp in Germany. There’ll be no exclusive interviews here.

He was English men’s singles champion when just 17, the youngest since Chester Barnes in 1962. “To be honest, it doesn’t really mean much,” he told the BBC in 2007.

His website tells of his birth in January 1990 in Lotfus, east Cleveland, how he first picked up a table tennis bat as a seven-year-old after watching his granddad play in a local league at Saltburn, how his natural ability was spotted at once.

It reveals also that his nickname’s Wiggy, or sometimes Wigster, that his favourite book’s The Last of the Mohicans, his favourite sports personality is Muhammed Ali and that his ambition, now and for several years past, is to win gold at the London Olympics.

Favourite place? “At home with family and friends,” he says, though for the past eight years he’s not seen too much of any of them.

Both Paul and his brother Bryn, four years older, had been sent to the nationally renowned Ormesby Table Tennis Club in Middlesbrough.

“Bryn was talented, too, but not in the same way,” says Carole Moore.

“Paul had good hands and a good touch. You could tell by the way that he moved around the table that he was a natural athlete.”

By the age of nine he’d won two national under-10 titles, the following year the under- 11s. Already he was spending time away at training camps; at 11 he went to live at the national training centre, then in Nottingham.

Now the website gives his address as the new national centre in Sheffield, though he’s just bought a house in Rotherham with his girlfriend Joanna Barker, herself a senior England international.

“He’s missed out on a lot, not least living at home,” says his mum. “It’s been a hard regime but that’s the way he’s been brought up. From the age of eight he was training three or four nights a week.

“In a way he probably became a man too soon, definitely older than his years and very independent. He’s had to learn to think for himself.”

Last year he won three European youth titles, the first clean sweep since 1961, but failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. Now he plays in the German Bundesliga, is coached by the Chinese Jai Yi Liu and has been a regular visitor to China since the age of 11.

“It was all pretty shocking on the first trip, the centre was more like a prison,” he told the Telegraph two years ago.

“What I remember most was the food, which was terrible, nothing like what we were used to from the local takeaway.

“The sticky rice was OK if you learned to use chopsticks but if you ate the meat – if that’s what it was – you spent the whole of the next day on the loo.”

He’s a dab hand with chopsticks now.

He remains, all agree, both thoroughly pleasant and highly competitive, a young man who never takes his eye off the ball.

“He has to practise hard every day, play in all the major tournaments,” says Alan Ransome, who formed the Ormesby club when he was 12, is still its chairman 50 years later and was awarded the OBE for services to table tennis.

In 1972 the only English club ever to win the European championship – Alan was captain – they picked up another 13 medals at last weekend’s national event.

Young Drinkhall, says Alan, has always been an exceptional talent. “He had a feel for the ball, a natural control. You get footballers who are naturals on the ball and Paul’s like that.

“He can comfortably be in the top 100 and hopefully significantly higher.

Karen and Andy Drinkhall, still in Loftus, had been at Sheffield with Bryn and his sister Michelle. “I just sit there very quietly but Andrew’s usually off pacing round somewhere.

There was a brilliant atmosphere, which there usually isn’t in table tennis.”

Bryn is again playing local league table tennis, their granddad no longer picks up a bat. Paul gets home whenever he can, plays tennis, has just taken up golf.

“He has friends all over the world, a huge phone book, but he still likes getting back here,” says Karen. “If he works as hard as he has been, if there are no more Chinese coming out of the woodwork, I really believe he can win that gold, next time or in 2016.”

The exclusive interview comes later.

Backtrack Briefs...

Tommy Jackson reckons he’s the answer to a favourite quiz question. “Who’s the only man to have been physio for two different Football League clubs on the same day at the same venue?”

It was August 23 1986. Hartlepool v Cardiff City at 3pm, Middlesbrough – rescued from the very brink of oblivion – playing Port Vale at 6.30pm before a crowd of just 3,690. Both games were in the old third division, both at the Victoria Ground. Ayresome Park had only just been unlocked.

That double, of course, was the answer to the question at the foot of Tuesday’s column. Several knew, not least – bless him – Hails of Hartlepool. “Why not ask Tommy Johnson?” he said.

Tommy was a former Boro junior – “Five shillings train fare, half-a-crown tea money” – who’d played in the Football League for Darlington and in the North Eastern for Spennymoor and Stockton. He’d been Hartlepool’s physio (“sponge man in old money”) for 25 years.

“I was just clearing up after our match when there’s a knock on the door and it’s Bruce Rioch, the Middlesbrough manager, with Barry Geldart who I’d played with at Stockton.

“Bruce asked me where I thought I was going. I told him I was going to watch their lot and he said they had no one and asked me to give them a hand out.

“I must have done all right because afterwards Dr Dunn, Boro’s club doctor, said I seemed to know a bit.

I didn’t get paid, though – no expenses, bugger all.”

A week later, however, Rioch asked him to become Boro’s physio. “It certainly took some thinking about.

I’d been 25 years at Hartlepool and was part of the furniture,” says Tommy.

“I then had ten smashing years at Middlesbrough, but the contrast was enormous.”

Boro’s future finally secured, new strips kept arriving. “There were hundreds of pounds worth, lovely stuff,” says Tommy.

“At Hartlepool I’d take the socks to my sister’s at Seaton Carew to have them darned.

“When Middlesbrough finally got going again, we went on tour to Bermuda.

At Hartlepool we never got beyond Scarborough.”

Lovely feller, he’s now 82 and still in Hartlepool, still playing golf two or three times a week and still paying £9 to stand on the Victoria Park terraces with his pals.

Back on August 23 1986, Tony Smith scored for Hartlepool in a 1-1 draw – Easington lad Rob Turner equalising for the Welshmen – while Port Vale fought back to level 2-2. The back page also revealed a possible £100,000 investment in Middlesbrough by Peter Cane, a Boro lad who’d founded Houston Dynamos in America and whose brother was described as a docker and racehorse owner.

Tommy Johnson’s just glad they lived to tell the tale. “It was probably all down to the physio.”

STILL in Hartlepool, a call from John Dawson, the king of the groundhoppers – probably the first time he’s been in the column this season. Now 68, he’d watched a match at Chipstead in Surrey the previous evening, caught the overnight bus back from London, got home at 7am and was woken by council workmen three hours later. So far this season he’s only managed 107 matches. “Part timer,” he says.

THE column’s own ground hopping has this week led no further than West Auckland, where all manner of things are in the offing to mark the 100th anniversary – on April 12 – of the club’s first World Cup win in Italy.

Happily, however, the centenary beer’s already behind the bar. It’s called Lipton Ale – though Sir Thomas Lipton brewed nothing stronger than tea – made by the newish Maxim Brewery at Rainton, near Durham, to the recipe of the original Maxim Ale of 1901.

Club sponsor Kenny Wynne, who runs the Model T in Darlington, also has a dozen crates in stock.

It’s a bottled beer, 4.7 abv, strong stuff. “I know a feller who had six pints after we were beaten by Northallerton on Saturday,”

reports club secretary Allen Bayles. “Mind, he was probably just drinking to forget.”

AFTER two years break, it’s hoped to restart the Trimdon and District Sunday league next season.

Dave Robinson, the last secretary, would welcome enquiries from all potential clubs or anyone interested in helping run the league. He’s on 01429 880579.

TUESDAY’S Backtrack noted that, not for the first time, there seems to be one law for the big boys and another for the rest – as with the case of footballers’ jewellery.

Maurice Heslop from Billingham was in his usual place at last Saturday’s Hartlepool match, against Peterborough, when during the second half a player was ordered finally to remove his gold necklace.

“They know the rules. Why can’t they be booked for breaking them like they can for entering the field without permission?” asks Maurice.

The offenders? Posh, of course.

STILL upturning every stone, Durham County Cricket Club scorer and historian Brian Hunt seeks information – especially the dates of birth and death – on two more who played for the side known as Durham Colts. Billy Agar, who played club cricket for Langley Park and Consett, was a hard hitting batsman from the 1930s to1950s. George Luke, from the Horden area, was a fast bowler in the 1920s. Brian’s on 01388 661783.

And finally...

ALF HUTCHINSON in Darlington invites to readers to name the cricketer who first two test match centuries were exactly 100 – and who went on to score another 17.

Today’s the day that Shildon play their 2,500th Northern League fixture.

More from there on Tuesday.