Backtrack

Former Boro star Jamie Pollock arrives to save Synners

8:00am Sunday 16th September 2018

HE has played at high level for Middlesbrough, Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers. Now Jamie Pollock – older, wiser and very significantly heavier – is seeking to restore the fortunes of Billingham Synthonia, the Synners having dramatically fallen from grace.

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C-2-C worthy

5:20am Saturday 15th September 2018

Some may have walked, others cycled, all or bits of the 140-mile Coast-to-Coast route from Whitehaven to Tynemouth. Many will understand how formidable it is.

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Scoular and a gentleman?

5:58am Saturday 8th September 2018

The Times obituary on Burnley legend Jimmy McIlroy, an Irishman among a team of North-East lads, recalled an encounter with the formidable Jimmy Scoular – more indelibly remembered at Newcastle United but then at Portsmouth.

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Wine-up merchants

4:48am Saturday 8th September 2018

On the first day of meteorological autumn, 75 degrees beneath balmy Bradford skies, we again set out to re-enact Last of the Summer Wine. The Railroad to Wembley rolls once more.

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Squire-article

6:30am Saturday 1st September 2018

The Squire of Ravensworth is on the move. Park House, Sir Ian Botham’s 11 bedroom, Grade II-listed home near the North Yorkshire/Durham border, is on the market for £2.3m.

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Every picture ...

6:23am Saturday 1st September 2018

If only in the hope of a good photograph (some hope: ed) we’ve been to the Wearside League match between Richmond Town v Darlington RA.

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Backtrack: Supermackeson?

5:01am Saturday 25th August 2018

STILL coming back for more, we return to former Hartlepool boxing champ Teddy Gardner – and to a wholly improbable discovery in the blue corner of the internet.

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Cuttings edge

8:03am Saturday 18th August 2018

Jim Salkeld was Bishop Auckland’s lucky mascot after the war. Still he treasures a cutting of one of their less fortunate days.

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Noughts for his comfort

5:48am Saturday 11th August 2018

FIRST the good news: our old friend Tom Stafford, the wicket keeper with the WD40 knees, has yet to be dismissed this season.

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Good Goad

5:41am Saturday 11th August 2018

RECENT columns have had cause to recall the Square Ring, an 1860s Hartlepool pub that had been the Spotted Cow until renamed in 1977 in memory of local lad Teddy Gardner, British, Empire and European flyweight boxing champion in the early 1950s. The Square Ring is about to go full circle.

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Backtrack: A most unlikely promotion for the Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme

4:51am Thursday 2nd August 2018

SOMETHING greatly improbable has happened to Charlie Walker, the Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme. After ten years batting No 11, and only there because there wasn’t a 12, tail-end Charlie has been upped to open the innings.

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Backtrack: Celebrities and the former Wheatsheaf football ground

5:59am Thursday 2nd August 2018

FOR reasons that need not concern us, the Grass Routes blog – www.mikeamosblog.wordpress.com – has been recalling celebrity visitors to the former Wheatsheaf football ground near Newcastle Airport.

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Gardner’s question time

6:34am Thursday 26th July 2018

Scroll back a couple of columns: we carried a photograph of the great Len Shackleton alongside Bishop Auckland football legends Bob Hardisty and Seamus O’Connell and, between them, Hartlepool boxing champion Teddy Gardner.

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Rugged crossroads

5:50am Thursday 26th July 2018

The great Arthur Puckrin, as last week’s column noted, had wanted three hymns at his funeral and a party to follow it. Even the for the insuperable Iron Man, the first bit seemed a bit tricky in a half-hour time slot at Teesside Crematorium.

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

5:15am Thursday 19th July 2018

FROM Russia with a bottle of Kaliningrad best bitter, a present for the column, our international jet-setting friend Ralph Ord landed back in Blighty early last Tuesday.

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Iron curtain

7:15am Thursday 19th July 2018

Arthur Puckrin, an athlete who took extreme sport to extremes, has died. He was 80, perpetually pushed back the barriers of human endurance but never quite answered the question “Why?”

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Teddy, boy!

4:59am Thursday 12th July 2018

OVER a pint in the Half Moon in Barton, south of Darlington, John Todd hands over a packet of old photographs. Most are of Bishop Auckland FC in the 1950s; one’s a bit different.

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BACKTRACK: Philadelphia spread

5:09am Thursday 5th July 2018

FEW North-East cricket folk won’t have heard of Philadelphia. Fewer yet may know where, or why, it is. Little use consulting the Ordnance Survey, either, save with a magnifier. Any smaller and the print would disappear.

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BACKTRACK: Draughts includer

5:09am Thursday 5th July 2018

AGES since former Darlington FC chairman and scallywag safebreaker George Reynolds has been mentioned hereabouts, so here’s a memory from retired Spennymoor entertainment impresario John Wray, encountered (almost inevitably) at a funeral.

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Backtrack: Paying the penalty

6:29am Thursday 28th June 2018

BACKTRACK only twice spoke to the great Stan Anderson, who died earlier this month, the first time in his improbable capacity as captain of the Left Handers’ Golf Association ahead of a match at Bedale.

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