Stewart notches two half-centuries

So what comes first? "Oh cricket, definitely," says Nancy, cheerfully. "Cricket, golf, snooker, billiards, anything that involves chasing a ball around."

Stewart isn't only general and cricket secretary at Guisborough but secretary and treasurer of the North Yorkshire and South Durham League. Unless watching cricket, or attending meetings about it, he spends almost all day, every day, at home organising it.

For the last 30-odd years they've had just one annual holiday, four days in Hawes, top end of Wensleydale, at the beginning of November.

"Lovely place, Hawes," says Stewart.

"Those four days are his close season," says Nancy.

For 35 years he was also a local councillor, twice chairman of Guisborough UDC, though the closest he has come to a medal richly warranted was an invitation, when council chairman, to a Buckingham Palace garden party.

Nancy's father - Bernard Wilkinson, then the Cleveland coroner - was coincidentally asked, too, the invitation extended to his "unmarried" daughters. There were six. "They all went by train while Nancy and I went by car with eight hats in the back seat," Stewart recalls.

He works from a meticulously ordered office-cum-repository-cum-museum in the couple's town centre flat, where a PC murmurs nervously in the corner, as if aware that it's only there on sufferance, a computerised cuckoo in a pen and paper nest.

Somewhere, one suspects, a Remington typewriter still awaits the return to service, like the fabled National Steam Engine Reserve shedded somewhere beneath the Mendip Hills.

Stewart keeps the place, cleans the place, knows the place and everything in its place. Nancy knocks before entering. To the NYSD, and to Guisborough Cricket Club, it is as much headquarters as is Lord's.

"He's a perfectionist," says Nancy. "He even folds his socks."

"I just like to do things correctly," says Stewart. "Sometimes I'll scrap the minutes three or four times before I'm happy with them."

There are old team photographs, yellowed and then some, scrapbooks from 1910, Guisborough membership cards from 1884 and a record of when - two years after the League's formation - the club gained NYSD admission in 1895.

Among the other members was Constable Burton, halfway up Wensleydale. A discussion ensues about how on earth Guisborough got there. "I expect the trains were better in those days," says Stewart.

He is urbane, diplomatic - "We don't have problems with politics in cricket" - impeccably mannered and immaculately dressed, which is probably what comes of folding your socks. Stewart Clarke's tale is of total dedication.

Nancy's father and two uncles played cricket for Norton, her mother's father captained Tudhoe way back in Durham Senior League days. Cricket - all sport - passed her by, a grass widow with the option of a lifetime of mourning or of getting on with it.

She still does voluntary remedial teaching, plays bridge, bakes - great Easter cake - almost everything except cricket. "She's the only person in the world who can do a crossword puzzle, knit and watch television at the same time," says Stewart.

"And eat a bar of chocolate," says his wife.

"My life would have been utterly impossible without her," says Stewart.

He'll be 74 on May 1, a week before the golden wedding, has angina but no plans to declare his innings closed.

"I'm not at all sure what I'd do," he says.

"I'm sure I don't," says Nancy.

His parents were keen Guisborough supporters, among his earliest memories a Saturday in September 1937 - "Last game of the season, Bishop Auckland" - when a monoplane from RAF Thornaby crashed into the Cleveland Hills above the ground, killing all four occupants.

He not only still has the newspaper cutting, at once knows where to find it, but could probably intone the names of the victims.

Forever at the ground as a youngster, he admits to trespassing across the adjoining railway line - "When no-one was looking" - in order to get there more quickly. It may be the only recorded example of J S Clarke on the wrong side of the tracks.

"The players were my heroes," he says. "I wanted nothing more than to do what they did, to play cricket for Guisborough."

His first "proper" game was at the age of ten, "club" boys against "town" boys. Half-hidden behind his pads, near-dwarfed by the bat, he scored six. "I remember writing to my brother, with the Eighth Army in the desert, telling him about it.

"Several weeks later I had a letter back with a silver sixpence in it, one for each run. I used to wonder if I should have reverted to amateur status."

A wicketkeeper, he was in the squad which won the junior league in 1949, but second choice behind future Darlington and Middlesbrough footballer Derek Stonehouse - "the best wicketkeeper I've seen who never played county cricket. That's how good he was."

After a few second team games following National Service, he accepted the inevitable. "I hadn't the ability; I wasn't good enough."

In 1957 he attended the club's annual meeting - "You know what it's like, if you show the slightest interest, you always get roped into something." So it proved.

He still has the minutes from his first committee meeting - groundsman to be paid £7 10s a week, 1/3d a mile from the seven-seat taxi, 1/1d for the smaller one, half a crown an hour waiting time.

In 1961 he was made cricket secretary, in 1964 club chairman, a position he held for 23 years. Just two of those who attended his first league meeting in 1960, Peter Athey from Middlesbrough and George Waters from Bishop Auckland, are still alive.

He joined the league management committee 30 years ago, became treasurer in 1987 and combined the secretary's role six years later. Herbert Trenholm, his predecessor for 49 years until 1987, had also been a Football League referee.

Stewart had worked for a Guisborough steel company, then owned a sports shop - after five days at the chalk face, Nancy looked after it on Saturdays. In 1997 he retired to concentrate on cricket, and never once took his eye off the ball.

The busiest time, he says - an opinion echoed by most sports administrators - is the close season. He's been spending 30 hours a week just on rules revision.

Cricket's changed, of course. "I'm not one of those 'game ain't what it used to be" sorts, though I come across plenty. The game's better, much better."

He regrets, however, both the difficulty in finding volunteers to run clubs - "I just don't know the answer" - and the decline in traditional sportsmanship. "We had six disciplinary meetings involving ten players last season - swearing, disputing decisions, abusing the umpire, throwing their bat away."

Clubs, he believes, should just be allowed one professional. "It's hard enough getting people on committees without their thinking that all they're doing is raising money to pay players."

The 50th anniversary of his Guisborough involvement was marked, at his own expense, by a dinner for 50 guests. They included our old friend Kenny Thwaites - all-round sportsman, Methodist church organist, greyhound trainer - Bernard Gent, who for many years reported on NYSD League cricket from behind Middlesbrough's stumps, and former Yorkshire groundsman Keith Boyce, who cut his teeth, and the square, at Guisborough.

"He just came into the shop one day, said he played for Castleton and that the grass needed cutting," says Stewart. "He worked absolute wonders for us."

The dinner offered an opportunity for reflection. "I look back and realise how lucky I've been. I've been involved with a great club which has won the league 19 times, twice for four years in succession, reached the Kerridge Cup final 19 times and won nine, won nine MacMillan cups, twice reached the national knock-out semi-final.

"The dinner was a chance to thank some of the players for giving me so much pleasure."

Another do will mark the golden wedding. He's promised to be there. If Guisborough have a game that night, says Nancy, she may be going to the party on her own.

BACKTRACK BRIEFS...

Fifty years to the day since they completed a unique hat-trick of FA Amateur Cup wins, Bishop Auckland's players will be feted tonight - by Wycombe Wanderers, the team they beat 3-1 at Wembley.

"I have to admit it's pretty magnanimous of them," says Bob Thursby, the youngest man in the final. "I thought that Bishops might be doing something, but we've heard nothing from them at all."

Bob, 69, will be joined by Warren Bradley, Derek Lewin and Dave Marshall at the dinner in Wycombe - Wanderers have even borrowed the famous old trophy from the FA, though it'll still be the Bishop boys who walk into the room with it.

"It's an incredible gesture," says Bob. "I suppose they might never have been to Wembley since, but it's not everyone who wants to remember how they lost."

Four of the 1957 team - Harry Sharratt, Bob Hardisty, Benny Edwards and Jimmy Nimmins - have died. Corbett Cresswell's still in Sunderland but is stopping in, Bert Childs is believed to be in France and Billy Russell hasn't been heard of for ages.

Though the famous Bishops never again appeared at Wembley, Bob was back for an amateur international against Scotland - one of a dozen caps while with Bishop and Crook. He also won youth international honours with Stanley United and became a dentist in Chester-le-Street.

Russell, Lewin and Bradley scored the Bishops' goals. "I still remember it vividly," says Bob. "When you're 19, you think you're invincible. It was quite a bit later that I realised I wasn't."

On Wednesday to yet another FA meeting in London, where topics of deep-rooted debate included whether or not leylandii formed a proper means of enclosure for a non-league football ground. The Arngrove Northern League chairman had to urge them to curtail the discussion. They were, he suggested, merely beating about the bush.

Liverpool's Champions League semi-final place means that Coundon Conservative Club's FA Sunday Cup final will now take place at Anfield on Sunday May 6 - 2pm kick-off, fiver admission, all welcome.

The Cons Club, who'll play - as we noted - in red, have also ordered a supply of red scarves. On one side they'll have the team name, on the other "You'll never walk alone."

The man with the neck is team manager Paul "Pele" Aldsworth. "I'm a great believer," he says, "in keeping in with the locals."

The sap rises and Doghouse Cricket Club - of whom the column remains a proud vice-president - begin their season on Sunday, at Easingwold.

Other opponents include the Nightwatchmen, on guard at Cliffe, near Piercebridge, the Mallards - something to do with ducks, and Newcastle - the Hawks and the Mutineers who, all at sea, have yet to find a ground.

Doghouse, Teesside- based, include on the fixture card the names and telephone numbers of all 25 players - familiar lads like David Lewis, Dave Cross, Tom Stafford and Mark Christon.

It's not that they're getting on a bit, but of the 25, only three have a number at work.

Cricket's long underway in Thailand, from where former Durham Millburngate Shopping Centre manager George Alberts again reports. He's just back from a tournament where one of the English sides was called Yes, No, Wait, Sorry. George can't make his mind up about them at all.

...AND FINALLY

Tuesday's column sought the identity of the eight present Premiership or Football League managers who've served under Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford.

They are Roy Keane, Steve Bruce, Paul Ince, Mark Hughes plus - perhaps less obviously - Chris Casper (Bury), Mark Robins (Rotherham), Darren Ferguson (Peterborough) and Brian Carey (Wrexham).

Readers are today invited to name the England World Cup footballer who, in 1968, became the last player to score six in a league match.

Six of the best, the column returns in four days.