BEFORE the war they were formidable, after it no pushovers. Now Eldon Albion, one of Co Durham's best known football teams, is being revived.

Instead of the old Albion, however, the new club - which plays its first game today - will be an under 11 side run by familiar former Northern League centre-half John Fenwick.

"The parents and grandparents are over the moon, even more excited than the kids, because everyone round here still talks about the great days of Eldon Albion," says John, now an arthritic 58.

Eldon's near Shildon, once also the home of a pit baths water polo team that became national champions and a boxing club which produced several England internationals.

Like almost all the village amenities, the pit and its baths are long gone. The football pitch remains, used by teams from surrounding communities.

"The village has been really cleaned up and there are some very nice people here, but there's just nothing for the kids to do," says John, back in Eldon after running a bar in Portugal.

He played in the Northern League for West Auckland when he was 16, was at Bishop Auckland under Lawrie McMenemy ("couldn't manage a toy shop") and was a youngster at Crook Town when they were drawn at Eldon in a Cup game.

"Crook had to put us on a win bonus. Even then, teams dreaded having to play at Eldon."

He finished at 35 - "centre forwards were getting too lippy for me" - ran pubs in Kirk Merrington and Barnard Castle, went to Portugal with the intention of buying a coffee shop and again ended up behind the bar.

Paid for by UK Coal, which has open cast workings above the village, the new strips arrived last week, the bairns ("proud as punch") sent round the village in them to collect towards the £525 needed for goalposts alone.

Initially they'll play friendlies. "There's some really good players round the doors here," says John.

"Some of them are worse than lasses for bitching but we're going to be a good little team. If we have just a tenth of the success of the old Eldon Albion, I'll be a very happy man." Offers of friendly matches to 01388 773321.

LAST year they had Mad Frankie Fraser, on Saturday Spennymoor Boxing Academy turned the other cheek and persuaded Det Supt Ray Mallon (presently non-com) to hand over the annual awards.

He entered to the theme tune from Space Odyssey, the relevance of which may be open to conjecture.

High profile fellers, these, though no presentation night may be better remembered than that in 1996, when the column did the honours and sat in a bowl of trifle.

It made a big impression, at least upon the trifle.

Mr Mallon - familiarly double-breasted, inalienably single minded - was introduced by club secretary Paul Hodgson, whose own suspension, by the ABA, had generated almost as much publicity.

Hodgy felt obliged, therefore, to offer the polliss a public word of advice. "Don't go round telling packs of little lies," he said. "One big 'un will do."

This, it should swiftly be explained, was a joke.

Mr Mallon told them he'd played 54 water polo internationals between the ages of 11 and 23 - not many people know that - and swum 15 miles a week in training.

"I've had an idea what it's like to go through the pain barrier. I didn't particularly enjoy it," he said.

Though a pleasant enough chap, he doesn't play these things, or much else, for laughs. "He's not called Robocop for nothing," someone said.

The do, as usual, was in the marquee at Whitworth Hall. As usual on these June Saturdays, it tossed down.

Mr Mallon, waiving a fee in favour of a donation to the Butterwick Hospice, invited questions thereafter.

"You've been a water polo player, how long can you hold your breath?" asked a Spennymoor insurgent.

"Not long," said the deflective detective, and lives to fight another day.

THOUGH it rained on his parade, as on most others, it should be recorded that Bishop Auckland Cricket Club's first team on Saturday was led by 64-year-old Harry Smurthwaite. This is the same Harry Smurthwaite, Shildon lad originally, who quite vehemently assured Backtrack during the winter that he had retired from the game, burned his boots, the lot. Whilst younger players gain experience, the captaincy was apparently a toss-up between Harry and club chairman Keith Hopper, 68. "I pulled rank," says Keith.

THEY are but bairns compared to the extraordinary Les Dawson - more heavily laden than ever after last week's annual presentations of the Veterans' Time Trial Association.

Les is a cyclist, though not usually a bicyclist. He competes, at high speed, on three.

With standard allowances for age and for the additional handicap of three wheeling - "there are mutterings about that," says Mary, his wife and training partner - the Teesside Road Club member took the national 10, 25 and 30 miles titles against competition from those aged 40 and over, plus the award for most meritorious service.

Mary, three years his junior - they met, almost inevitably, at a Cyclists' Touring Club gathering - picked up a bronze and a silver, pipped by someone from the San Fairy Ann Cycling Club.

(San Fairy Ann, as readers will know, is a corruption of the French "ce ne fait rien" - meaning that it doesn't matter a bit.)

"Since he turned 70 he's been on fire, whilst I've been going down hill fast," insists Mary.

The day before the presentation, Les - from Eaglescliffe, near Stockton - again won the national ten mile time trial. The day after it, he was 75.

HARTLEPOOL postman John Dawson watched his 250th football match of the 2000-01 season on Saturday, the Co-op Funeral Services Cup final at Linlithgow preceded by a minute's silence. At first they wondered if it might be a tribute to the sponsors, learned later that a club official had died. "I don't know who buried him," says John.

SPORTING personalities of Bedale occupied barely two lines of type when we dwelt that way a couple of weeks ago. There were a couple of early Yorkshire cricketers, the Grayson brothers - Paul hit a career best 189 for Essex the other day - and that was it.

We overlooked Eva Asquith, writes Steve Harland, from Stockton.

Eva, born and bred in Bedale, was among the pioneering riders on northern dirt tracks when speedway became popular in the late 1920s.

"She and her fierce rival Fay Taylor certainly gave the best male riders a run for their money but an accident involving a woman rider at Wembley led to a ban on them competing," says Steve.

Instead she toured abroad with Charlie Barrett, Middlesbrough speedway's first captain, and with Jack Ormston, who for three successive years in the 1930s rode with the all-conquering Wembley Lions, became a racehorse trainer and still lives at Gainford, near Darlington.

Steve Harland, incidentally, is just back from the World Speedway Grand Prix at the magnificent Millennium Stadium in Cardiff . The length of the track, he says, is almost identical to dear old Cleveland Park - "only the spectator facilities are a little more adventurous."

THE North-East team for which Trevor Brooking played league football (Backtrack, June 8) was Blue Star - now Newcastle Blue Star - in the Vaux Wearside League.

It was April 27 1985; Blue Star against Coundon and so, of course, it snowed. The Tyneside club had first tried to sign George Best, failed to sidestep his agent, and turned instead to the 47 times capped Brooking, who'd just retired from West Ham.

His single match fee, it was reported, was £500 - which, allied to a disappointing 2-2 draw, may help explain why he wasn't asked again. Brooking scored the first for Blue Star, Coundon's last minute equaliser a header from Gary Walton, who died tragically last year.

Brian Shaw from Shildon today seeks the identity of the only English city with a team in the top flight since the Football League kicked off in 1888-89.

Published: Tuesday, June 12, 2001