When last they ran around Australia with the Olympic flame, Joe Teesdale was the bright spark who got in for nothing. They were, he concedes, very different days.

It was Melbourne, November 22 1956. Joe, Coundon lad, had sailed from Southampton, stayed a year - "that's how long it took to earn the fare home again" - still had the problem of how to get into the opening ceremony.

It was at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, athletes marshalled in the park outside ready for the grand entrance, Joe - and a lot more - watching from up a tree.

"When the last man went in I just jogged along behind him," he recalls. "I got into the tunnel, found myself alongside Ron Clarke who was waiting for the Olympic flame, and didn't dare go any further. I wasn't exactly dressed for the part. It might have been a case of standing out in a crowd."

They were the Olympics of the Russian sailor Vladimir Kuts, who won 5,000 and 10,000 metres, of the American Robert Morrow who took three sprint golds, and of Australian swimmers like Dawn Fraser, Lorraine Crapp and Murray Fraser.

Legendary Bishop Auckland footballer Bob Hardisty was there, too, captain of Great Britain. "I met him on a corner and he invited me into the Olympic village, a former air force camp," recalls Joe.

"After a while he said he had to go down town and just left me there. Can you imagine that in Sydney?"

Hardisty and Bishops' colleagues also got him into the match against Bulgaria - "bunked me over the turnstile, that's what the security was like."

The Munich games forever changed all that. Joe, finally home, was a PE teacher in Bishop Auckland and Darlington and at 50 became one of the stoic breed of ultra runners - once covering 285 miles in six days.

He'd last been in the column in 1992, the end of a 100 mile North Pennine walk in 34 sleepless hours - "I remember the sheep giving me some very funny looks" - to raise money for Bishop Auckland General Hospital, which successfully treated his bowel cancer.

Now he takes things more gently in West Auckland, regrets that the charm, the appeal and the innocence of the Olympics are all gone. "I'd not even cross the street to watch them" says the tail end cheeky Charlie, "not even if they let me in free every day of the Games."

Olympics, is it? A note from Allan Newman in Darlington concerns heroes local and otherwise.

Will anyone emulate Blair Cochrane, he wonders, a Darlington lad who won gold in the eight metre yachting class in 1908. (Does anyone, come to that, know anything else about him?)

No one, since we no longer enter a football team, will equal Ronald Brebner - another Darlington man - who took gold in 1912.

Then there was Guisborough born William Reuben Applegarth, a gold winner in the 1912 4x100m and bronze in the 200m.

The 1948 four-man bobsleigh team slipped up on the ice (then as now) but had medals already - two DSOs, three DFCs and three AFCs - for yet more courageous exploits in the RAF. And finally, says Allan, no one - "but on one" - will duplicate Philip Neame's feat in 1924 in adding a shooting gold to his medal collection.

He'd won the VC already.

In the days of old tech and Pink paper they'd ring the breathless last words at twenty to five, hope that the sports desk was on its hot mettle and go gratefully home to the fireside.

Before six o'clock the sports edition would be on the street and the sports desk in the boozer.

Times change. Seaham Red Star's first qualifying round FA Cup tie with Great Harwood Town on Saturday was the first on the road to Cardiff - Wembley no longer playing the game - for some of these website johnnies called Teamtalk.com. "Nice lads, kept on having to go off to send stuff down the line" says Seaham committee man Dave Copeland.

They'd arrived the previous day, booked into the Harbour View, picked up half the team in something called a people carrier, maintained the proud journalistic tradition of not getting the beers in.

Agog, Seaham waited by their computers. Not what you might call on the dot. Finally the report appeared on Sunday evening, still confused Seaham with Seaman - Seaham doesn't have a silly pony tail - mischievously revealed that they'd been advised not to park near the Harbour View because the kids from the estate out the back might nick it.

Still, Red Star won 7-0 and club secretary John McBeth reckons they're the new mascots. Thus welcomed, they'll be back for the next round against Easington a week on Saturday - technologically healthy, but no longer in the Pink.

The dot com men missed something last Wednesday, mind, half way through Seaham's League Cup tie at Evenwood. Suitably refreshed, the home side were already heading back towards the action when frantic banging and yelling could be heard from the visitors' dressing room. Somehow they'd been locked in but played with much greater freedom thereafter. Evenwood Town 0 Seaham Red Star 3.

Our old friend Maurice Flint, last in the papers after being banned for life from the Over 40s League - too strong a youth policy, it might be said - shows his caring side next Monday.

Maurice, landlord of the Masons Arms at Middlestone Moor, near Spennymoor, has organised a golf day at Bishop Auckland - the club donating all green fees - to help the family of former Newcastle United apprentice Gary Walton, murdered at Coundon.

They'd played together for ten years for the Three Tuns in Coundon, Gary - "great quoits player, as well" says Maurice - scoring the winner in the unforgettable 2-1 Durham Challenge Cup final win over the Bishops in 1983-84.

The golf competition, 25 teams of four, still has a few vacancies at £120 a team - including an evening do with entertainment by Brendan Healey and Dave Black. Maurice, older and wiser, is on 01388 816169.

At last the truth about "long serving" footballers, courtesy of Peterlee Newtown's pen picture of Steve Routledge. "Round 'ead has been with the club for years," it says. "We just can't get rid of him."

The Albany Northern League magazine, back for a 12th sensational season, reports upon the wonders of modern communication. It was 4.45pm one Saturday afternoon when Penrith secretary John Balmer, lying on a Spanish beach but anxious to know how things were going back home, rang committee man Norman McCaskie - mobile to mobile - to find out the score. "How should I know" said Norman, "I'm on the Metro in Paris."

THE only cricketer to have played both played for Durham and featured in a record partnership against them (Backtrack, September 15) is David Boon - the latter for the Australians in 1993.

Bill Bambrough in East Boldon today seeks the identity of the New Zealand test cricketer who played rugby for England.

We return, up over and down under, on Friday.

Ray Kell, small in stature but a giant among North-East snooker players, has died. He was 66.

Usually using an aluminium cue, Ray twice reached the CIU national final, won the team title with John Griffin and Ron Stanworth and helped Durham to the inter-counties championship with Griffin and Kevin Sumpton and Bobby Allison of Horden.

Ray, Ferryhill lad and very proud of it, also won the inaugural Invitation Snooker tournament pioneered by Tyne Tees Television.

"He was very much an attacking player, a tremendous potter, scored a lot of century breaks" says John Griffin, from Fishburn. "Ray was a lovely lad, a great friend and a wonderful man to play, with or against."

He carried on playing despite breaking an elbow whilst hod carrying, having a hip replacement operation in 1978 and several other illnesses. For the past 15 years, however, Ray had been chiefly a spectator.

"We'd meet up almost every Saturday to talk billiards and snooker in Mark Toney's coffee bar in Newcastle," recalls Alf Nolan, 73, the only man alive to have won both the English snooker (1950) and billiards (1964) titles. "It was like Morecambe and Wise to a degree. Ron was a very homorous little chap; he could have tears rolling down my cheeks."

Alf still travels every Thursday to play billiards on Teesside - "it might only last 20 minutes, but you can't get a decent game in Newcastle" - and remains president of Darlington Mechanics Institute, a billiards emporium for 175 years.

He'd first met Ray Kell in 1960 at a match in Ashington, finally accepted a £4 bet on the outcome - "I told him I didn't bet but he pestered me."

Four years later they met again, on Ray's home territory - Ferryhill workmen's club.

"I'll bet you £4" said Ray.

"I don't bet" said Alf.

"You did that night in Ashington," said Ray.

A money match with rather more at stake, Ray also beat English professional champion Patsy Fagan at Ferryhill, with £400 at stake. "He was a fireworks player, like Jimmy White," says Alf. "I can't remember a good snooker player being so small, but he was incredibly skilful.

"The great thing about Ray was that he was a gentleman win or lose, a man it was always a pleasure to rub shoulders with."

Ray's funeral service is at 11 15am today at St Luke's church, Ferryhill