Prestigious cup final beckons

The Eggleston Cricket Cup, much coveted by teams over a wide area, is named not after the Teesdale village of that name but after Mr and Mrs W B Eggleston who gave it in 1939.

“Belonged to Barton, I think,” says Steve Gill, the competition secretary.

The 70th final will be staged this Sunday at 2.30pm, Crathorne v Rockliffe Park, the holders. Now as way back then, it’s organised by Darlington Cricket Club; now as then, semi-finals and final are at Feethams.

“I think that’s the big attraction,” says Steve.

“Playing at Feethams was like the FA Cup final for some of the older lads. For a lot it still is.”

Bob Pennington, 93 not out and part of the Spennymoor side which won the Eggleston in three successive seasons, 1958-60, eagerly agrees.

“It was a pleasure to play there, lovely ground,” he recalls. “Just coming down those steps from the pavilion, you thought you were playing for England.”

The first competition was won by St Cuthbert’s, the church where George Holderness, a subsequent, vicar himself captained Darlington with distinction before being elevated to the bench of bishops.

Uninterrupted by war, subsequent early finals were won by Mr Winn’s XI, Mr Eden’s XI and even the National Fire Service.

Few had even lifted it twice until Spennymoor’s hat-trick.

Darlington side Mowden Park lifted the cup in five successive years in the 1980s.

Spennymoor didn’t even play in a league, had a reputation for barely being able to hit the ball off the square.

Bob Pennington was a Tudhoe Colliery lad, missed the Germans’ misguided bombing of those parts by virtue of his own military service with the Ayrshire Yeomanry – “my grandma had her curtains singed” – played cricket before and after the war for the Colliery and after that for Dean and Chapter, in Ferrynill.

He’d once even won a bat – “a Herbie Sutcliffe bat” – from the Empire News after scoring 105 and taking 5-11 in the same match.

“I only joined Spennymoor because I thought I was finished; it turned out I was wrong,” says the former bricklayer. “I didn’t even like friendly games; I suppose I wasn’t all that friendly.”

He played a key role in all three finals, once scoring the winning four off the last ball.

“They set an offside field and bowled down the leg. I just slapped it the boundary.”

He retired at 50, becoming an umpire in the NYSD. “It was the biggest mistake I ever made, I couldn’t stand it,” says Bob. “I think I was more interested in watching the game than what I was supposed to be watching.”

Still he has the 1957 fixture card, games against sides like Thorp Perrow, Stockton Nomads and Blagdon Park – “I can’t remember where it was, but they had a herd of white cattle” – still has the miniature bat, signed by all the team, after the Eggleston hat-trick.

He’ll be 94 in a fortnight – “six quick singles and then I’m stopping” – is registered blind, has impaired hearing but a mind as sharp as a square cut.

His son Neil, a retired Darlington fireman, chats away with him, too. “Thanks for coming, he’s my hero and you’ve made my day,” says Neil – and that makes me day, too.

Tunstall learnt the hard, despite being tipped for the top

TUESDAY’S column sought the whereabouts of former Hartlepool United apprentice Eric Tunstall, pictured in a 1968 Football League Review to illustrate the unglamorous life at the bottom. Eric was shifting sand.

“They have to clean toilets, clean terraces, clean the boots,” Pool manager Gus McLean had said.

Learning the hard way, Tunstall made just one Football League appearance – sub in a 2-1 defeat at Barnsley, December 21, 1968 – but was then transferred for £3,000 to Newcastle United, apparently after impressing in a 6-0 FA Youth Cup defeat to the Magpies.

Unable to make it at St James’s, he spent many years playing for Reeds Cases, his workplace, in the Hartlepool League, apparently known as Terry Yorath because of his luxuriant moustache. He’s 57, still in Hartlepool, but presently out of reach.

We’ve also heard from former Hartlepool United youth team-mate John Irvine, now in Fishburn.

“Eric was a slight, blondhaired lad who looked a decent player,” he recalls.

John sends a copy of Soccer Star, November 8 1968, which – headed “Pool in the Swim” – forecast a bright future for lads like himself, Eric Tunstall, Alan Johnson, Bob McLeod, Dennis White, Howard Oliver and John Joyce.

Dennis White made 55 league appearances, Bobby McLeod 23, John Joyce – a man you’d want to bet on – just four.

Neither John Irvine nor any of the others started a league match. “If that’s the quality of Soccer Star’s predictions,” says John, “there’s no wonder it’s no longer with us.”

THE piece ten days back on the unveiling of Bob Paisley’s memorial in Hetton-le-Hole reminded Bill Hedley in Kelloe of why Paisley helped Bishop Auckland win the 1939 Amateur Cup – because Sunderland manager Johnnie Cochrane had rejected him for being too small.

“That was rich,” Bob later recalled, “coming from a man who was 5ft 2ins including his trilby hat.”

Subsequently persuaded of the adage about good stuff and little bundles, Sunderland approached him again but were told that he’d promised to go to Anfield.

Downsizing or not, he signed for Liverpool in the Roker Park boardroom.

“Football history would have been an awful lot different,” muses Bill Hedley, “had Bob Paisley not been a man of his word.”

TUESDAY’S column reported a gathering of former Bishops, too, and appears to have been appreciated. Former supporters’ club committee member Vince Hawman, now 84 and in east Cleveland, recalls the wonderful sportsmanship of the 1950s.

Arthur Newman was particularly pleased to see a photograph of England amateur international full back Dave Marshal who not only them at George Street school in Birtley but took them to midweek matches, including a 4-4 against Crook. Clearly it can’t be confused with the time that Crook beat the arch-enemy 12-1 – but that’s another story.

DESPITE a valiant six not out from our old friend Tom Stafford, Yorkshire went out to Somerset in the quarter-final of the national Over 50s cricket competition.

Though Somerset provided proper hospitality – “the old fashioned tradition of a jog of ale in the changing room” – it’s where the welcome ended.

Set to make 159, Yorkshire were dismissed for 82 when Tom, inevitably at 11 and batting for only the second time in six years with the county, ran out of partners.

The good news is that the perennial tail-end Charlie so impressed the skipper that he’s been offered a move up the order. “Next season,” says Tom, “I’m 10a.”

Gordon recalls that Three Tuns goal

THE world grows smaller daily. Further evidence, were it needed, of its shrinkwrapped diminishment.

The Gadfly column nine days ago had a note about Famous Amos cookies, the rage in America where it’s chocolate chips with damn near everything.

We also recalled that, four years ago, Darlington tennis coach Ian Wilkinson had been particularly grateful for the way the Amos cookies crumbled – part of a Red Cross food parcel when he and his family were stranded by Hurricane Charley at Sanford Airport in Florida.

Perchance – and this bit’s just minor coincidence – Ian was again in Florida last week, and again keeping an anxious eye on the weather.

“We’ve been soaked for five days by Tropical Storm Fay. Not quite Hurricane Charley but still pretty devastating,” he says.

At any rate, Ian rang his old mum back in Shildon, was told he’d been in the paper and emailed here to report that he’d spent a bit of time in the States with former Shildon tennis club team-mate Craig Gordon, now one of Florida’s top sports therapists.

“Maybe you’ve heard of him?” suggests Ian.

Heard of him? Of all the thousands of millions of people yon side of the pond, of all the plenty more fish in the sea, Craig – wholly unknown to his mate – had been mentioned in that very morning’s Backtrack column.

Craig had scored the second goal – the late Gary Walton the first – on the stillrecalled day in 1987 when the Three Tuns, a pub team from Coundon, beat the mighty Bishop Auckland in the Durham Challenge Cup final.

“It was just fantastic. I still can’t come home without people wanting to talk about it,” he says. “Coundon just went crazy that night, dancing on the tables, everything.”

Born in nearby Leeholme, his grandfather veteran councillor Joe Gordon – “real staunch Labour feller”

– he also played football for Brandon United and Easington.

He’d just been drifting, however – couple of bar jobs, a shift as a nightwatchman – until enrolling on a sports studies degree at Newcastle Poly. “I just thought,” recalls Craig, “that I’d better to do something to sort out my life.”

Fifteen years ago he was invited to play college soccer in up-state New York, took a masters degree, met his wife Susan and now lives in Tampa with their four children. Most of his “physical training” work is with leading golfers and tennis players.

Done well for himself?

“Not bad at all,” he concedes.

His sons spent a month in the former mining village near Bishop Auckland in the summer, discovered cricket, liked it so much they want to go back next year.

“It was real neat,” says Craig, a use of the word with which the Three Tuns may be unfamiliar.

“Coundon’s a great place but there are just so many differences,” he says. “For one thing the weather’s almost always good in Florida. It can get a little bit hot, but it’s a very comfortable lifestyle.

“There are no real issues here. It’s just a nice suburban way to bring up your kids.”

Organised by team manager Paul Adams – “What a guy for bringing people together,” says Craig, “what a great bunch of characters, what a majestic season we had” – the Tuns have a reunion on September 19.

Since he can’t make it back, he’d best talk them through the goal, then. “It was a corner. I was on the back post, moved out, saw someone go for a header and knew he’d miss it. I just volleyed it into the top corner. Fantastic.”

Ian Wilkinson, meanwhile, was hoping to be back in England last night but wary of forecast Atlantic storms and of another hurricaning.

The Red Cross, he trusted, had the Famous Amos at the ready.

AND FINALLY...

WYCOMBE Wanderers’ manager when they reached the FA Cup semi-final in 2000-01 (Backtrack, August 26) was Lawrie Sanchez.

Since tomorrow marks Ashington FC’s first game on their new ground – the FA Cup tie with Ossett Albion – readers are today invited to name the three Ashington-born players who became the Footballer Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year.

Perhaps with one or two notes from Northumberland, the column returns on Tuesday.