Bernard quits Lawyers after 46 years

His father was secretary before that, his grandfather preceded his dad. Kevin, Bernard's lad, would quite likely have followed his dad into the country's coldest hot seat had things turned out differently, but now Kevin's resigned from the committee, too.

Heroic enough simply to devote 46 years to a perishing place like Tow Law - what might be termed an all-weather pitch - but since 1968 Bernard had lived a 50-mile round trip away, in the temperate zone of Darlington. Tow Law was two top coats cooler.

"I've never really been tempted to stop at home," he insists. "I've had a few funny journeys, once or twice had to turn back because the A68 was impossible but it's usually rewarded the effort."

Mind, adds Bernard - ever the honest Lawyer - it can get a bit crisp up there.

George Fairbairn, his grandfather, was the Co-op tailor. His father, another George, worked down Inkerman colliery at Tow Law - "often enough in 18-inch seams," recalls Bernard, "hewing coal off the shoulder."

Among his souvenirs is a picture of his grandad, flat cap and gold watch chain, with the Lawyers' team which won the 1923-24 Northern League championship, by a point from Ferryhill Athletic.

There's a Northern League yearbook from 1938-39, his father then in office, the club headquarters said to be at the Royal Hotel (Tel. Tow Law 29) and the ground five minutes walk from the railway station.

There's also a snapshot of the younger Bernard with the legendary 1967 side which, on a November afternoon unfit for polar exploration, thrashed Mansfield Town 5-1 in the FA Cup.

On the photograph, too, is the late Eddie Carr, the former Arsenal player and Darlington manager who plotted - sub-plotted, the weather may have had something to do with it - the Stags' downfall.

"Eddie was a very quiet man," says Bernard. "He was probably happy to let us go round chasing players and he would gell them. He certainly knew his stuff."

In the second round they lost at Shrewsbury, the draw already made for the third - Arsenal, at home. The following season, again in the first round, Lawyers were sent to Mansfield.

"They'd complained about our slope, but when I saw theirs it was no better," says Bernard. "They had some big names and I think they'd probably under-estimated us. They might have been a bit cold as well."

Undoubtedly the finest hour, however - the high point at 1200ft above sea level - came in 1998 when Tow Law reached the FA Vase final, against Tiverton Town.

"It had never remotely crossed my mind that one day a little club like ours might play at Wembley," says Bernard. "I only began to suppose it could be possible when we drew 4-4 at Taunton in the first leg of the semi-final.

"It was a wonderful day, but so sad that many who'd worked so hard for the club were no longer there to see it. We had 4,000 supporters, which wasn't bad for a town of 2,000 people and an average gate of 130."

Tiverton won with a 79th-minute goal. If they could have only reached extra-time, says Bernard, he's sure they'd have taken the trophy to Tow Law.

He was born in 1938, remembers how immersed his father was in football administration - "people just don't realise what's involved" - remembers Featherstone's horse and cart leading snow, day after day, from the hard as Ironworks Ground.

In 1947, they drew Lowestoft away in the Amateur Cup, supporters travelling via London, innocents abroad, and trying to keep the Tube doors open to get some fresh air.

Memories and mementoes overflow equally. He calls the latter "collectables"; Pat, his magnificently loyal wife, calls them rubbish.

After national service in the RAF he joined the football club committee in 1959, becoming secretary two years later and for 32 years from 1967 manager of Eldon brickworks, near Shildon.

Though the secretary's job left him with plenty to write home about, it never paid him a penny.

"I wouldn't say that I was expected to do it," he says, "but I don't suppose I exactly volunteered either. It had become a bit of a Fairbairn tradition."

The great days of the 60s swiftly followed, players like Harry Hunt, George Brown and Mike Ingoe still returning regularly to reminisce.

"I think it was because they were looked after, not in terms of money but by the whole community. People would even invite them back for tea. If you made the effort to play football for Tow Law, you deserved some reward."

There was a New Year's Eve, though, when he and Pat decided to check if star striker Terry Hunt - "could have moved five times over" - were tucked in bed before a match the next day. "I don't know why," muses Bernard, "we were only knocking him up again."

For more than 30 years he, club chairman Harry Hodgson and the late Harry Dixon, the treasurer, were part of a great triumvirate around which everything revolved - though he's keen to stress that many others worked very hard, too.

"A place this size has probably no right to be in the Northern League. It's never been easy and we've lost more than we've won but I've met some lovely people because of it. I shall miss it very much"

We need not go into the circumstances of his wholly voluntary departure, nor would the still-faithful Bernard wish us to do so. Save that he finds it all very sad and that, after 48 years, the minutes of the meeting which sparked it - which he couldn't attend - couldn't even spell his name correctly.

He won't be getting involved with any other club. "After all these years," says Bernard, "I'll always be Tow Law."

Tributes pour in as pair of Jacks is halved

Jack Robson, a football scout who discovered a rich vein of talent - and who remembered the meaning of scout's honour - has died, aged 82.

He and his cousin Jack Hixon, the man who turned up Alan Shearer, were chiefly responsible for the great array of North-East talent at Burnley in the early 1960s.

Jack Robson was a personnel officer at the Whessoe engineering works in Darlington. "He was a wonderful man, someone who just loved his football," says Neil Maddison, spotted by Jack on Abbey Road playing fields in Darlington and subsequently a star at Southampton.

Phil Parkinson, Stockton lad now Charlton's assistant manager, was scouted for the Saints at much the same time.

Jack, a widower, became a close friend of the Maddison family. "Even when he was in a wheelchair my dad took him all over, even Tenerife," says Neil, now youth team manager at Darlington.

"He was as genuine as they come, called things as he saw them. I only saw him in hospital on Monday and still hoped he might get better. It's really knocked me sideways."

Among those whom the pair of Jacks discovered for Burnley were England internationals Ralph Coates, David Thomas and Ray Pointer, plus John Angus and Mike Buxton.

When Harry Potts's regime ended at Turf Moor, they briefly worked together for Stoke City, Crystal Palace and Derby before being "pestered" by Lawrie McMenemy to pitch camp at Southampton.

Jack Hixon took the young Shearer, another relationship which became so close that Shearer even rang him for advice from his honeymoon hotel in the Seychelles. Jack never would let on what the question was.

Jack Robson never lost his enthusiasm. "No matter how long you've been involved, the excitement of seeing one of your lads make it is every bit as great," he once told the column.

Jack Hixon, now 86 - and thought to be his cousin's closest relative - pays handsome tribute. "The framework of the man was his honesty, his sincerity and his decency.

"Jack was conscientious to the nth degree, generous, kind and utterly reliable. He was a wonderful feller; truly a man among men."

Encountered on Wednesday at a do in Trimdon Station - much more of which in next week's John North column - former Oldham Athletic player Ken Chaytor draws attention to a little-known claim to fame.

Trimdon lad, now in Sedgefield, he was for 15 years the youngest player to score a Football League hat-trick, just 17 years and 72 days on January 29, 1955 when Oldham won 3-1 at Mansfield - the day, too, that 15,000 watched York City win 3-1 in the FA Cup fourth round at Bishop Auckland.

Though Trevor Francis beat the feat while barely out of nappies - still 48 days short of his 17th birthday, anyway - Ken remains second in a list of under-18s which also includes the likes of Jimmy Greaves, John Radford, Alick Jeffrey and Dixie Dean.

In seventh, 17 years and 240 days, is the young lad that Jack Hixon hurried off to Southampton. One fears, alas, that it was against the Arsenal.

Another passing and, sadly, another Robson. Doug Robson, a fine batsman and fielder for Redcar Cricket Club between 1948-71, was 80.

"A smashing lad, loyalty written through him like a stick of Redcar rock," says club historian Harry Foster. "He wasn't the most stylish batsman, but his technique was excellent and his fielding saved us hundreds of runs."

A former full back with Redcar Albion and an amateur on Middlesbrough's books, Doug even recorded his passion for cricket in his army log books.

He was Redcar's captain in 1956 and 1957, vice-captain many times. Though it was 1961 before his first century, 112 against Yarm in the Kerridge Cup, another followed, against West Hartlepool, in the next Kerridge match.

Doug was also a member of the 1965 NYSD championship winning team, the last all-amateur side to do it and the best, he reckoned, that he ever played in.

He was a teacher in Redcar. His funeral is at Guisborough parish church at 1pm today.

John Briggs's e-mail that Sky Sports have secured the rights to next year's world origami championships in Japan - on paper view - may probably be ignored. It would only be folding money, anyway.

AND FINALLY...

the well-known racing figure whose father was a judge at the Nuremberg trials (Backtrack, February 27) was John Lawrence, later Lord Oaksey. Alan Cooper in Darlington was first past the post.

Brian Shaw in Shildon today seeks the identity of the only man to have captained and managed a World Cup winning football team.

The world turns again on Tuesday.