From Russia with a bottle of Kaliningrad bitter Ralph Ord's back in Blighty

Once he managed Eastgate leisure centre, and the mighty Wearhead United a few miles further up the dale. Subsequently he’s held top posts at numerous global sporting events and at the World Cup has been a venue manager for HSB, Fifa’s host broadcaster.

“Among the most hospitable people I’ve ever met,” he says of the Russians.

We meet last Wednesday at the incomparable Victoria in Durham, Ralph quick to answer his phone. It’s Russia: if England win the semi-final, can he fly back again?

“I’m one of the nearest available at this level,” he says. “London to Moscow’s just a hop these days.”

Next week he’s filling a similar role at the Asian Games in Indonesia. After that, he vows – as always he does – that he’ll retire to his coffee farm down under.

As for the bottle of Kaliningrad best, having made it all the way from eastern Russia, he forgetfully leaves it in his dad’s fridge in Langley Park, sups it while watching the Croatia match and then on Friday morning catches a direct flight back to Australia.

Headed back to Durham station from the Vic, we spot – ever the eagle-eye – a sporty little number with the registration 1 BAT parked outside the Students’ Union. So who’s the No 1 bat? It can’t be Sir Geoffrey because he’s been poorly and can’t be the mighty Marcus because he’s still hobbling around Somerset with a pot on his foot. Opening gambit, can any reader help?

The only occasion upon which the column has crossed paths with Gareth Southgate was at the opening seven years ago of a £650,000 sports pavilion at Reeth, in Swaledale.

He wore neither waistcoat nor whiskers, seemed as affable as now, was then the FA’s head of elite development and represented the Football Foundation.

The band played Oh What a Beautiful Morning, as well they might have done.

The pavilion replaced facilities washed away in one of the dale’s not-infrequent floods and was effectively built on stilts – if not six feet above contradiction, as they used to say of the old bible bashers, then a good yard, anyway.

Southgate, broad beaming, said how delighted the Foundation was to have been involved. An awful lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, but hopefully not too much at Reeth.

England being on their way home, we looked on Sunday afternoon into Cockerton Cricket Club’s 125th anniversary do. A village club back in 1893, it’s now seamlessly subsumed into Darlington.

It was a lovely occasion, beer (and Pimms) £1 a can, good crack and hopes of a swift return to the Darlington and District League’s top division boosted after Shaun Farrow’s 119 helped secure victory against Barton II the day previously.

The only problem was that the gazebos kept toppling in the summer breeze. “It’ll be headlines in the Echo,” someone said but only, as we pointed out, if anyone got hurt.

In that event the headline would be “Wounding within tent”, but that one’s almost as old as Cockerton Cricket Club. Good on them.

Lamenting the death at 98 of former Bishop Auckland sports master Lez Rawe, we noted that in his Toft Hill childhood cricketers employed the term “treacle” to describe a sort of first ball amnesty.

Same sticky wicket, perhaps, but it meant something altogether different in the Trimdons.

Over that way, recalls Dennis Grimley, a “treacle” would be called to settle a dispute. “The batsman had to turn his bat upside down and defend his wicket by trying to hit with the handle a ball bowled underarm from half way.”

In the event of serious dispute, adds Dennis, it would be the best of three treacles – and coincidentally, they’d fallen to recalling it over a dominoes game in the Black Bull just the other evening.

“We agreed that it would still be a better way of settling snicks and LBWs than the third umpire they use today.”

Victory for Jack Draper in the boys’ singles at Wimbledon on Sunday would have been the first by an English lad since Stanley Matthews junior won it in 1962 – reminding veteran Darlington politician Peter Freitag, himself a former Wimbledon player, that he’d three times beaten the legendary Matthews senior.

“I took him on at croquet, table tennis and darts, each for sixpence a time,” says Peter, 90 next April.

He’s since spent the winnings, he adds.

Arthur Puckrin’s passing demands the space promised last week for memories of Hartlepool boxing champion Teddy Gardner, and others of his era. More next time – by when it would be great to know more about that photograph with Teddy, Len Shackleton, Bob Hardisty and Seamus O’Connell. Anyone know who the boys at the back were?

...And finally

The England football manager with much the worst percentage win record (Backtrack, July 12) is former Newcastle United boss Kevin Keegan – 39 per cent from his 18 games in charge. Eric Smallwood in Acklam first with the answer.

Today back to Wimbledon: had Serena Williams won last Saturday, she would have become only the second mother in the past 100 years to become ladies’ singles champion. Who was the first?

We’re holding the baby again next week.