Scarborough by name and team

Smaller and fewer yet, Jimmy Scarborough played centre forward for the club which shares his name, and remembers it with relish.

"There's many a time we'd be in the visitors' dressing room and someone would come in to tell us we'd got the team sheet wrong," he says. "We always got a good laugh out of that."

We met on Tuesday at one of Bob Elliott's jolly little lunches at the Lord Nelson in Gainford for former players - cricketers, too - from the Darlington area.

Most are in their 70s. The great all-rounder Harry Clarke - not to be confused with Harry Clark but confused, of course, all the time - will be 87 next March.

It is a collective casing of replacement joints, a two-course camaraderie, a bright burnished recollection of the mud old days.

There are even memories of a former cricket colleague who really did end up travelling in ladies underwear or, if he really didn't, sedulously sold it, anyway.

Jimmy Scarborough - now 76 and bearing a marked resemblance to genial Harry Grout, satin-clad supremo of Slade Prison - was a Nottingham lad and West Brom junior until the king came along with his shilling.

"They told me I was going to Catterick. I asked my mother where Catterick was and she said she hadn't a bloody clue.

That made two of us."

He joined the 17/21 Lancers, played in the same Wensleydale League team as goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson - later of Newcastle United and Scotland - still has the championship medal somewhere.

"I suppose the Lancers had quite a good side, what with me and Ronnie. John Charles was also at Catterick at the same time, but unfortunately in a different regiment. We'd really have beaten Leyburn if we'd had him."

They'd discovered his pedigree after two days, appointed him to the PE staff - a military euphemism meaning "cushy number" - allowed him to join Darlington.

"It could have been Sunderland or Middlesbrough,"

he recalls. "I went to Darlington because it was nearer, and because by that time I knew where it was."

Demobbed, he earned £10 a week in the winter, with an extra £2 for a win and a quid for a draw, scored 15 goals in 50 appearances between 1951-53 and finally having found Darlington, discovered also that he rather liked it.

That he'd met his future wife Kathleen, who worked across the road from Feethams at Fred Robinson's auction house - "We'd stand at the back after training, causing a nuisance" - doubtless helped.

"Kathleen was the head of the family," he admits. "I probably couldn't have gone back to Nottingham even if I'd wanted to."

Scarborough were then in the Midland League. Jimmy was a part-timer, continued to train at Feethams, travelled across the moors with former Quakers' team-mate Alex Greenwood, known for some reason as Hacker - probably because of his cough - and also remembered as a nightclub drummer and Mainsforth cricketer.

On one occasion - a big cup tie - the car broke down near Whitby. "We found a taxi but he said he didn't know if he could go to Scarborough or not. He'd have to ask the wife first."

Most mementoes are in the attic, he supposes, though he brings an old Darlington blazer badge - still with a miners' pick in those days - and a programme from a 4-0 FA Cup defeat at Grimsby in which Quakers' left half was Wilf Parsley, Shildon lad.

"You should have seen Wilf's throw-ins, far post no problem,"

remembers young Harry Clark, 75 next month and thus just a bit bairn in such company.

Jimmy's most enduring memento, however, may be the registration plate - JKS 27 - on the car outside his Darlington home. It was bought in the 1950s after a successful day's racing - him, Brian Henderson and Bob Sharp - at Aintree.

They'd travelled with Pat McCarron, a jockey who clearly knew how to tip the wink. "We won a lot of money that day, then went to Manchester dogs on the way home. The others lost all their money, I went upstairs for a meal. I don't think Pat knew as much about greyhounds as he did about the horses."

Scarborough fair? "Oh aye.

There've been a lot of good times up here. I never regretted finding my way to Darlington."

OLD Harry is the only man to have played both professional cricket and football for Darlington, made 46 cricket appearances for Durham County and for the Quakers hit 50 goals in 73 appearances over three spells, playing also for Leeds United and Hartlepool.

His first Leeds match was against Wolves, marked by the fearsome Stan Cullis. "I got two kicks," he recalled over lunch, "kick-off and kicked up the arse at the end,"

Harry may also be the only subject of a poem - written to celebrate his third coming to Feethams - which found a rhyme for "opportunists."

With the waves in his hair and the bend in his nose, He was ideal to draw by cartoonists.

He is again a Darlington regular, given life membership.

"They treat him royally," said Bob Elliott.

Others shipshape in the Lord Nelson included John Heslop, Darlington cricket and now Hear All Sides regular, Graham Gregory and Jimmy McMilllan, who never got out of Darlington's reserves team but is still remembered for a slide tackle which began, and sometimes ended, in the car park.

"Not many got past," says Jim, still farming in Sedgefield.

At the end they talked only of having another one soon.

The column's feet may again be beneath the table.

ASSIDUOUS as always, John Briggs discovers evidence of Football League players called everything from Brighton to Barnsley, Charlton to Chester and Carlisle to Crewe. Oxford and Oldham lie somewhere in between. There never was a Nobby Newcastle, nor even a Bobby Boro.

In the circumstances we shall disregard Messrs Fullam, Wiggan and Lester, substitute Dwight Yorke and drop Alf, John and Norman Berry who over the years have played, homophonically, for the Shakers.

Excluding Charlie Aston, a formidable pairing with Ricardo Villa, only seven players have appeared for clubs with exactly identical spellings.

Blackburn Rovers had both Arthur and Fred of that ilk, at much the same time as Wanderers had a Bolton.

Len Bradford played for City after the war, Burton Swifts had a Vic Burton in the league's early days, Lincoln City briefly fielded Andy Lincoln and Sid Swindon appeared eponymously in 1937- 38. Whatever's in a name, that's it.

Hole boss digs himself out after taunts rile goalkeeper FIRST time in ages, word seeps through from the Hole in the Wall, the Darlington pub football team of which the column is president.

It's not very good.

For one thing, they've won only one game in the Church and Friendly League, for another the league's down to just nine sides - threatening to wither like Saturday afternoon grass roots football in general and like the Darlington and District League before it.

Then there was the unfortunate incident during the match against the anachronistically named Grammar School Old Boys - the one our lads won - after which the GSOB goalie seems set to learn his lesson the hard way.

Suffice that it wasn't overtly Christian, nor terribly friendly, either.

Hole in the Wall manager Graham Weir had, shall we say, been comparing the rival keeper for size.

Club secretary Alan Smith, whose image of the offending gentleman may help readers get the big idea, recalls a familiar Elton John number.

"Elton sang Saturday night's all right for fighting' but said nothing about the preceding afternoon. He certainly didn't condone leaving your post between the sticks to seek vengeance over the opposition manager's sideline taunts, throwing down your gauntlets en route."

Superior footwork is said to have made Weir the winner on points. Though no punches were landed, the red card was shown and Durham FA is investigating, Hole truth and nothing but. It's just not done, Old Boy.

THE Arngrove Northern League magazine reports that Whitley Bay have a new striker - the entirely appropriately named Gavin Hattrick, keen to do things in triplicate. So far, says club secretary Derek Breakwell, he's not got more than one in a game.

AFIRST chance on Tuesday evening to see the impressive developments at Billingham Town FC, handsomely funded by Hartlepool United as a longterm home for their youth and reserve teams.

The pitch is laser-levelled, the sophisticated sprinkler system digitally controlled, the refurbished changing rooms immaculate. Within ten seconds of our arrival, however, the recharged floodlights went out.

Though the match with Northallerton finally started at 8pm, it lasted just four minutes before power again failed and the referee called it a night.

The fault, it transpires, was that whoever refurbished the floodlights put in a fuse too small for that purpose. We quoted them the nursery rhyme about "For want of a nail the horse was lost." They still seemed in the dark.

DEBRA Smurthwaite, daughter of long-serving former Bishop Auckland Cricket Club captain and secretary Harry Smurthwaite, has raised a splendid £2,119 in the Great North Run. In memory of her father, who died on Barnard Castle golf course, the money will go to the British Heart Foundation.

"I'm sure dad was with us in spirit," says Debra, a teacher in Middlesex. "He'd have loved the Red Arrows."

COUNDON Conservative Club, England's Sunday best, begin their FA Sunday Cup defence this weekend with a second round game against Ford Motors - Crook Town FC, 1pm.

"We're taking nothing for granted. We know everyone will be out to beat us," says team manager Paul Aldsworth, forever Pele.

The North-East is also represented by Hetton Lyons Cricket Club, winners two years ago, by Dawdon CW and by the Victoria, from Murton.

Others on seventh day duty include Canada, Nicosia, Obiter Falls 4, Loft Style Sinners, Western Approaches and Nicholas Wybacks. They do things differently on the Sabbath.

. . . AND FINALLY

TERRY Wells in Whitton, near Stockton, was first to name the 11 sets of fathers and sons who (Backtrack, October 30) have played cricket for England.

They include Norton-based David Townsend - the last man to represent England without playing for a first-class county - and his father Charles, whose two Tests came in 1899.

The others are Leonard and Richard Hutton, Colin and Christopher Cowdrey, Alan and Mark Butcher, Micky and Alex Stewart, Joe Hardstaff and Jim Parks - both with sons of the same name - Maurice and Fred Tate, George and Francis Mann, Arnie and Ryan Sidebottom and Jeff and Simon Jones.

Again maintaining the French connection, former Etherley cricket captain David Wilson - now in Grenoble - invites the identity of the current striker who has played for four different clubs, in four different countries, all of whom have won the European Cup or Champions League.

More bridge-building on Tuesday.