Bill's still a Raw talent even after half a century

Nearly 50 grassroots years later he retires - early - on June 2 having never changed jobs, never moved house, never married and never (for that matter) stopped reading The Northern Echo.

"There've been lots of memories," he innocently admits. "Unfortunately I've forgotten them all."

This is Norton-on-Tees, now the Norton Sports Complex, an operation with nine different sports sections, multiple teams and every one of them periodically challenging the biblical assumption that you cannot serve two masters.

"They all want first call on me, all claim from time to time that I'm biased towards some other sport but theirs," he says. "I honestly don't think I am".

He was born at Elwick on the Hartlepool side of the A19, still lives in the same house with its three acres of garden and its stroll down to the Spotted Cow for his two pints of Guinness.

He can see the complex's ever ascending floodlights from there, too, has been known to come back late at night if inadvertently they've been left on.

"Bill's a wonderful character," says Trust operations and finance administrator Jean Hughes. "He may be a bit set in his ways, but he's a superb groundsman and has been a tremendous worker here."

He'd become a groundsman because he liked the outdoor life, thought agricultural work too poorly paid, has never once regretted it.

Then there were just cricket and rugby pitches and a bowling green, the Trust president and first team cricket captain the still revered D C H Townsend, the last man to play for England without ever having represented a first class county.

Now the complex covers over 30 acres, divided by a railway line and renowned - whatever the sport - for having precious few postponements.

"Occasionally they might get on at Bill for wanting a match, but when he does it' only to save six weeks of postponements later on," says Jean.

He's still learning, he says, still battling the elements - "There's never been a wetter winter, but you have to work with the weather, not against it" - still a perfectionist.

"I just never got round to moving, I suppose because the place kept developing and there was always something new to do.

"The skills are still basically the same, it's only the machinery that's a bit more modern."

He'll be replaced by Dave Geldart, his assistant, who himself has had a 21 year Norton grounding since leaving school.

Bill Raw, still just 73, will retire happily back to Elwick, to his three well planted acres and to the green, green grass of home.

WORKWARD from Norton, we looked into the Builders Arms in Darlington - a familiar face, hirsute, behind the bar.

It is not a photograph of Dave Morrison's face which is framed on the pub wall, however, but an entirely different part of his anatomy.

He is a wicket keeper, familiar in North-East cricket for 40 years, made his fifth debut for Darlington RA - NYSD League Premier division - this season.

"I used to fancy other players' wives, now I ask after their mothers," he says.

Between his spells with the RA, he has played twice for both Bishop Auckland and Darlington, for Northallerton, Richmond, Barton and - last season when he had the Black Bull in Stokesley - for Great Broughton, when average and aggregate were both 61.

"I got out the last game of the season, I wanted to have an average," he insists.

Though again back at the RA, however - and keeping very canny, by all accounts - he may not take partake of the post-match refreshment in the clubhouse. "A little problem I had a few months ago," he says, and discretion suggests leaving it at that.

He was born not a quarter of a mile from the Builders, made bricks with straws there when he was 14, took over the pub before Christmas after it had been closed for three years.

Other cricket photographs adorn the walls. A notice warns against Blab - Bad Language At the Builders - another advises that prices may change according to the customer's attitude.

There's also a Builders Arms in Newton Aycliffe, but that's a Christian coffee shop based on the 127th Psalm - "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."

They should not be confused, nor are ever likely to be, though they're also good lads in the Darlo Builders - an old fashioned street corner local where a pint's £1.25 and the sandwiches may be the slowest toasties since Tom Brown's Schooldays.

"You're supposed to phone your order in advance," they said.

But to return to Dave Morrison, and an e-mail from Ms Valerie Tait - known to the gentleman, apparently - pointing out that he will be 58 on Monday and wondering if he is the Premier division's oldest player.

He's not, of course. K R Hopper, three years past his pension and still labouring for Bishop Auckland, probably holds that distinction. Keith's long time team mate Harry Smurthwaite, though swearing in the winter that this time he really had had enough, is also said to have returned to the colours.

Dave was persuaded to make a top level comeback at the Richmond darts finals, reckons he was terrible in the first game but has enjoyed himself thereafter.

"The movement's coming back. So long as you can bend down and your eye's in, you can probably still do it," he says.

The photograph, at any rate, was taken from the striker's end during the May bank holiday Monday match against Normanby Hall. By reason of the angle, the keeper features prominently for posterity.

"Do you know this bot?" asks the caption, and there may not be a more familiar rear view in cricket.

ANOTHER pub, another pint, the column was invited to topple a tower of twopences on Wednesday evening at the Springfield, in Darlington - another fund raiser by disabled Quakers' fan Paul Hodgson for the Percy Hedley school in Newcastle.

Paul, whose book about Darlington devotion may be turned into a film, himself attended Percy Hedley. One or two of the experiences described in the book may best be described as extra-curricular, however.

The twopenny tower totalled £77, bringing the amount raised between Paul and the Springfield to almost £500.

KEITH Hopper, veteran supreme, rings perchance about the Constantine Bowl - the novices cricket competition he's organising to help the Butterwick Hospice in Bishop Auckland.

Only six teams have entered, including Shaw's Sharks and the Timothy Hackworth from Shildon and Bishop Auckland police. Everyone will play each other once at Kingsway, followed by semi-finals and final.

Presentations will be on Sunday July 29. "We're still hoping to do well by the hospice," says Keith.

FROM Bishop Auckland FC's "supporters' website", meanwhile, a splendidly comprehensive review of 2000-01 - a 24 page booklet with plenty of colour pictures of the players and another of the "For sale" sign outside their end of Kingsway.

The season marked "a new era of confidence" writes John Cowey, the editor, though it wasn't reflected at the gate.

The league average was just 206, down 11 per cent on the previous season, while cup gates were "little short of embarrassing", bottoming at the 54 who watched the Durham Challenge Cup tie with Harton and Westoe.

The Bishops finished third - "on the budget available a truly great achievement," says John.

l The Review of the Season costs £1, including postage, from John Cowey, 2 Neville's Cross Villas, Durham DH1 4JR. Any profits go to the club.

JIMMY McMillan's long standing record of 505 appearances for Crook Town will be equalled tomorrow by Dennis Pinkney. Their careers have been rather different, however.

McMillan, uniquely, won four FA Amateur Cup winners' medals plus three Northern League championship medals and sundry other silverware. In a Crook career that began in 1973 poor Dennis has never won a thing.

Unless victorious against Billingham Town tomorrow, the celebrated side will have gone an entire season without a home win.

"He's been a wonderful servant, but it's been a difficult year," says Town secretary Alan Stewart, though the all conquering junior side has fared much better. Their array of trophies will be paraded at half-time.

Dennis has no ambition to beat the flying left winger's record. He retires at 4.45pm tomorrow.

Book signing in Durham the other day, the ever-admirable Bobby Robson was told by a purchaser that he looked a bit jiggered.

"I've signed hundreds of these today, hundreds" said Bobby, returned to automatic pilot and sent away another satisfied customer.

It was only when he got home that he read the inscription. "Bobby Hundreds," it said.

BOBBY Murdoch's premature passing this week reminded Stan Wilson of an encounter in 1982, shortly after Bobby had been relieved of the manager's job at Middlesbrough.

Stan, a 1950s player with Shildon and Redcar Albion - "the dirtiest left winger in the Northern League," he insists - ran a youth club team in South Bank, where Bobby's son was at school.

"As both a player and coach Bobby was brilliant," he says. "He taught Souness how to play, put pin-point balls through to Foggon, Clough wasn't fit to lace his boots."

It was only as a manager that Bobby Murdoch disappointed. "We'd become quite good friends and I remember telling him that night that he'd been a wash out," says Stan.

"Bless him, I think he probably agreed."

Durham Rugby Football Union secretary Chris McLoughlin is among several readers to highlight reports that as a result of the Italian general election, Silvio Berlusconi is contemplating an alliance with the Northern League. So far the phone has remained silent.

RECALLING Newcastle United's defeat in the 1905 FA Cup final, last Friday's column noted the Echo's observation that a few returning "excursionists" were still spirited enough to wave their grey hens "or their equivalent" as they left the railway station.

A stranger to this column, Christine Bennison from Hartlepool - "I read your real column," she writes - wonders if the grey hens might have been the stone jars still seen at country auctions.

"I suppose they could have been full of something alcoholic on the outward journey and more likely than the feathered sort of hen."

Implausible, perhaps, but the best offer so far. Others may further penetrate the grey area.

BACK to the FA Cup final - and Tuesday's questions.

The man who captained Newcastle United to victory in 1955 was Jimmy Scoular, the referee who sent off Kevin Moran was Peter Willis and the player who four times appeared on the losing side between 1985-93 was Paul Bracewell.

Readers are today invited to name the three clubs which Sir Alex Ferguson managed before coming to Old Trafford.

More championship stuff on Tuesday

Published: 18/05/01