No monkeying around from Jeff when it comes to Pool

"It's a funny old football programme," he tells Hartlepool United's annual awards evening. "No goals, no shots, no action at all. It's just like watching Darlington, really."

They love it, of course, roar their giddy heights heads off, and are by no means alone in appreciating Jeff Stelling.

Now 49, he's the Hartlepool lad and former Hartlepool Mail reporter whose consummate professionalism, unflappable approach and sure grasp of statistics have made him beurre blanc for coach potatoes.

He has become stellar Stelling, a bright star in Sky's firmament and a big fish however the Pool is measured - though still prone to the inevitable mistake.

Particularly there was the time when Lee Bowyer joined West Ham, making his debut at Charlton. "Bowyer returns to his old stamping ground," announced Jeff, and wished at once that he could have bitten his tongue off.

Increasingly, Stelling is also renowned for his unashamed sympathies towards his home town club, his fluffy H'Angus the Monkey mascot making several on-screen appearances last Saturday as, almost on overtime, Hartlepool edged improbably into the second division play-offs.

"I'm thankful to my bosses for giving me the leeway to do that sort of thing," he says, though it wasn't always the case.

In his early days he was summoned before Vic Wakeling, the former Consett Guardian reporter who became managing director of Sky Sports. There was more chance of viewers finding the score from Hartlepool United than from Manchester United, grumbled Wakeling.

"I had to rein it back for a while, but with Hartlepool doing so well these last five years it's given me a good excuse," he says.

"Saturday was purgatory. The feller we had at the match kept whispering in my ear piece that Swindon looked like scoring a second any minute. No wonder H'Angus got so overcome when we equalised."

Now he was back to make the presentations, stopping overnight at the Staincliffe in Seaton Carew, a couple of brisk miles along the familiar beach before stotting statistics off the Staincliffe's stencils.

"Seventy nine games since we had a player sent off, Mickey Barron getting both hands to the ball at Bournemouth. I'm still trying to find if it's a record...."

He's joined by Pool chairman Ken Hodcroft - shrewd, relaxed, almost exuberant - telling Stelling that even when he's in Europe on business there are people who talk about the "other Hartlepool supporter" on television. Still, however. He has a little dig at the print media.

"The last five seasons have been play-off, play-off, play-off, promotion, play-off. Anyone else and it would have been all over the back pages."

Jeff's pacific. "It's all over Sky anyway," he says, and heads for a few photographs at the ground where first he watched the team as an impressionable eight-year-old, taken by the elder sister who became the first Miss Hartlepool. ("Crowned by Brian Clough," he recalls.)

Things are much changed, the ugly duckling transformed, the team that once wore a crown of thorns - a civic reception for finishing second bottom of the fourth division - now close to real glory.

The pitch (like Stelling himself) wears very well for its age. There was a ramshackle old stand, he recalls, supposed to have been temporary at the end of World War I, but still shaking 50 years later.

"Even then we looked at it enviously, because it was completely beyond our aspirations. We stood at the town end, or the rink end and were grateful that we could."

His first heroes were Ambrose Fogarty, the Irish inside forward who'd become the first Pool player to win international honours, and Jimmy Douglas who'd scored four goals in 13 games as an amateur centre forward but who also taught young Stelling maths.

"I'd always wanted to be a footballer or a journalist. I think I was probably better off as a journalist."

As a news reporter on the Hartlepool Mail, he'd join most of the editorial staff ("including the editor") behind the goal for home games, leaving promptly at 4 30 to help produce the hot metal miracle that was the Saturday night Green 'Un.

His career then took him to Radio Tees, to 18 "miserable" months with TV-AM and thence to BSkyB. "It was great because nobody watched it; I could make as many mistakes as I liked."

He lives in Winchester with his wife and three young children, escapes whenever the noise becomes unbearable to a nearby motorway service station where he can research for hours and cups of coffee on end.

"Contrary to appearances, I've a memory like a sieve. Usually it's the north bound, but if the view gets boring I go south," he says. "It's very quiet there. Sometimes I think I'm not only their best customer, I'm probably their only customer."

The programme works because of the laughing gas chemistry with a panel of still twinkling old stars like George Best and Rodney Marsh, Stelling's own eye never off the ball.

"All we ask is that they have played at the highest level, are relatively eloquent and are able to do two things at once - look at a screen and talk to me.

"It's not an easy job but everything's relative. My dad worked at the steelworks and that's a damn sight harder."

The presentation is a sell-out, more people on a Tuesday evening in the Borough Hall on Hartlepool's heroic Headland than there used to be on Saturday afternoons at the Victoria Ground.

There are union jacks, blue and white balloons, optimism inflating the air. Supporters are below, players - and the girls they love - up on the balcony.

Dozens ask Stelling where his monkey is. "Having a lie down after all Saturday's excitement," he says, the line delivered with autocue precision.

"Jeff's the best ambassador this town has ever had," says Stuart Drummond, the mayor, though in his monkey suit alter ego he earned quite a few column inches himself.

"You couldn't buy the publicity he gives us," says a chap from the tourism department; "he's a lot better on television than he was playing for the Mail in the Sunday league," says sports shop owner Mike Gough, 54 and still turning out in it.

Jeff's told of the remark later. "Cheeky sod, I won player of the year once," he insists.

Neale Cooper, the idolised manager, makes a speech in Scottish. Ken Hodcroft tells the audience that the Stelling show has become an institution. "He's really put Hartlepool on the map," he adds.

Stelling himself, enthusiastically applauded, tells them he doesn't want to name drop but that he'd been talking that morning to George Best. "I told him where I was going tonight and he said I'd get absolutely bladdered. I think it's what's called expert analysis."

No one, he adds, thought Hartlepool would be in the second division play-offs, few thought when IOR - the oil company Hodcroft heads - bought the club that it would unite United.

"We were totally, absolutely wrong."

Next morning, a few beers but by no means Best foot backward, he's off to see his old mum in Catcote Road, talks of his "humbling" reception and of the impending play-offs.

"I do think we have a chance. I was quite relieved when QPR got the second promotion place because they've turned us over twice and I wouldn't have fancied our chances.

"A lot of teams who finish third suffer a hangover. Bristol City will be nervous, edgy. We have nothing to lose at all."

Tomorrow's first leg kicks off at 6pm, when Saturday Soccer ends.

While the rest of the television team heads for a west end restaurant for an end of season celebration, Stelling will stay behind in the office - "the on ly place I can be guaranteed to see the match."

Thereafter, save for the Greyhound Derby, he's off until the Premiership kicks off again on August 7.

"It's a job to die for," he admits. "I'm always pessimistic, I always think that someone's going to realise I'm getting away with murder."

It's not going to happen in Hartlepool, whatever the dear old town's notorious reputation. Hang the monkey, send Skyward for Jeff Stelling.

Lennie the Lion to get a fitting tribute

Len Ashurst, fondly remembered as Sunderland's long time left back, has a testimonial on Monday to acknowledge a lifetime's service to the game - "and Welsh football in particular."

Lennie the Lion, as the Roker faithful knew him throughout the 1960s, made 409 Football League appearances for Sunderland and 46 when subsequently he became player/manager at Hartlepool. He became an old age pensioner in March.

Scouser by birth, printer by trade, he took Newport County to the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winners Cup, steered Newport and Cardiff to promotion and Sunderland, as manager, to the 1985 League Cup final.

Now he works for the FA Premier League Academy and on July 30 celebrates 50 years involvement with the professional game. Half the proceeds from the Ninian Park testimonial against Birmingham City will go to the Noah's Ark appeal for the Children's Hospital in Wales.

Len's still near Chepstow, foot in both camps really, though sadly unavailable. Word is, however, that he plans a move back to the North-East.

Vigilant as ever, Peter Murphy points out a curiosity in last Saturday's Durham County Cricket League match between Evenwood and Langley Park.

Though Evenwood scored 240 and the opposition 216, Evenwood won - officially - by just four runs, having fallen foul of a new league rule.

"It's very complicated, a bit like trying to explain offside," admits league chairman Peter Metcalfe.

Briefly, each side is supposed to bowl its allotted 45 overs in two hours 40 minutes. If the side bowling second fails to hit the target, it's deducted four runs for every over it falls short.

"It's all about time wasting, trying to ensure that clubs get on with the game," says Peter though batsmen - he concedes - can be just as guilty.

Perhaps that comes under misbehaviour, and there's another new rule for that. Each side starts the game with ten points, is deducted a point for every minor misdemeanour and fined £1.

Proceeds at the end of the season will go to Macmillan Nurses. "I've mixed feelings," says the chairman, "about them making a small fortune."

Still at Evenwood, last July's Echo cricketer of the month was Mickey Robinson, who'd bagged 5-0 against Mainsforth Under 15s. At the weekend - "a year older and about six inches taller," reports John Teesdale - his figures were 5-5-3-0. The unfortunate opponents were again Mainsforth Under 15s.

Hughie Hamilton, the former Hartlepool United winger mentioned in the Kenny Simpkins piece a couple of weeks back, was himself at Tuesday's awards do.

Now 61, Glaswegian accent undiluted by 40 years in the Pool, he still drives the club's youth team bus and asks for no reward save that his ashes are scattered on the Vic.

"I'm still proud to be Scottish," says Hughie, "but Hartlepool's the finest place in the world."

Dear old Hartlepool may have to be on their best behaviour rather longer, incidentally, if Jeff Stelling's acclaimed 79 games without a sending off is to become a record. The good guys medals are held by Nottingham Forest: when Sammy Chapman took an early bath against Leeds United in 1971, it was Forest's first dismissal for 32 years.

And finally...

Tuesday's column repeated Peter Beardsley's question about the only player to have appeared for seven current Premiership clubs - and the answer, of course, was Beardsley himself at Man United, Man City, Liverpool, Everton, Newcastle, Fulham and Bolton.

Bob Foster in Ferryhill today seeks the identity of the three players who - with eight each - have won the most championship medals in the English top division.

Top of the pile as ever, the column returns in four days.

Published: 14/05/2004