Upgrading Newton Aycliffe

For the once-new town it has become the old, old story: no money, no sponsorship, no interest.

Last week, however, work began on a £300,000 upgrade of the facilities at the Moor Lane complex – with the hope that the town’s slow-starting sportsmen may at last be able to aim a little higher.

They do say that the Moor Lane clubhouse does a cracking Sunday lunch, too.

Though the population tops 30,000, the football club has never been above Wearside League level and must this season play “home” games at Shildon athletics stadium because Moor Lane’s facilities fall far short even of Wearside requirements.

The cricketers have never been above the Durham County League and are now in the North-East Durham. The rugby club, good lads, try no more stratospherically.

“Whatever else that Newton Aycliffe has become famous for in six decades, it’s certainly not sport,” says former Hartlepool United and New York Cosmos midfielder Malcolm Dawes, the man behind the new initiative.

“I was amazed that a town this size hadn’t moved forward a bit more quickly.”

The football club played in the Wearside League in the 1980s, won the Durham Alliance League – and four cups – last season and now again tops the Wearside.

“Our aim is to be in the Northern League and the cricketers should really be looking at the NYSD,” says football club chairman Gary Farley. “We want an under-18 team too. At last Newton Aycliffe’s youngsters won’t have to go elsewhere to play.”

The scheme, funded through Sedgefield Borough Council’s Local Improvement Programme, will provide floodlights, new dressing rooms and fencing for the footballers, two all-weather practice lanes for the cricketers and a refurbishment of other facilities.

“At first I just hoped for £50,000 for the cricket. It just seemed to grow,” said Dawes, 64, who has been named the borough council’s community coach of the year.

Work is expected to be finished in three months.

TERRY Farley, Gary’s dad, may be better known to Backtrack readers. Former Football League referee and elderly secretary of the Bishop Auckland Referees’ Society, he was talked out of retirement two weekends ago to take charge of a Durham University game. Terry’s 75 and in full vigour after a heart bypass a few years back. Unfortunately the match was postponed.

“I think I was probably relieved,” says Gary.

ANOTHER example of money well spent, the restored multigames facilities at Trimdon Community College in east Durham are to be named in memory of the amazing Owen Willoughby – very much the chief scout.

Owen was Spurs’ assiduous man in the North-East until his death, aged 84, five years ago. A Trimdon lad himself, he was the dynamo behind South-East Durham Boys (later Trimdon United Juniors) and the man who discovered the likes of Terry Fenwick and Colin Cooper.

Though he’d been on crutches since an horrific road accident in 1987, Owen remained an all-weather fixture at grounds throughout the region.

The college’s sports facilities, closed for two years due to vandalism, will reopen with security fencing and floodlighting after a £140,000 makeover.

The work has been funded through Sedgefield Borough Council, the Football Foundation and “neighbourhood enhancement”

money available to Trimdon councillors David Chaytor, Terry Ward and John Burton.

David’s the son of Kenny Chaytor, for a long time the Football League’s youngest hat-trick scorer, Terry’s the father of former Chelsea player and Darlington player/manager Paul Ward and young Burton reckons to have scored an awful lot of goals for Stockton.

“Owen was utterly dedicated to all the Trimdons, forever battering on Tony Blair’s door to try to get a better deal,” says Coun Chaytor.

“Right until his death he was up at the college every Friday night, selling Tote tickets for the Juniors. He was a truly extraordinary man.”

The new facilities will officially be opened at 1pm on December 19, Owen’s widow Joan in attendance. They’d been married fifty years which would probably have been a bit longer had he not stood her up on their first date. He went to a football match instead.

INSIDE story: Eric Young, former Busby Babe and Darlington’s outside left for 141 matches in the 1970s, has started football-related courses at Hassockfield Young Offenders’ Institution in north-west Durham.

“It’s not rocket science,” he insists. “They want competition and they want aggression but they need discipline, too.”

Eric, 56, has recently retired as a police officer in Stockton. “I grew tired of moving kids on so asked if they wouldn’t rather be playing football. After that I started organising it for them,” he said.

He’d also taken a year out from the police to attend Bible college – “the first time I picked up the Bible I just couldn’t put it down again.”

He was speaking at the reopening of indoor sports facilities at Eastbourne Methodist Church in Darlington.

More of that in Thursday’s John North.

FINALLY recovered from the stress fracture of the hip sustained in May, our old friend Sharon Gayter heads for Norway this weekend for her final 24-hour race of the year – held 545m beneath the Bislett Stadium.

The former Cleveland bus driver’s immediate aim is to clinch her position as Britain’s top female ultra-distance runner for the 12th successive year – which means the small matter of 212k. A mere 207k will create a new British indoor record, 213k will qualify her for the world 24k championships in Italy in May.

Sharon, Guisborough lass, has just marked her 45th birthday – and age certainly isn’t wearying her. “A lot of people had written me off for the year after the stress fracture,”

she says. “I’m still confident I can go further and faster.”

THE Times has compiled a much-talked about list of the 50 “worst famous football fans”, those whose allegiance is often perceived to be tenuous.

Self-proclaimed Newcastle United supporter John Mc- Cririck – “Sexist, Diet Cokeslurping racing pundit” – is 43rd, with fellow Magpies Ant and Dec (“professional Geordies who live in West London”) riding high at 14th.

Washington born Heather Mills, Paul McCartney’s ex, is 25th. “The Sun accused her of being a fantasist,” recalls its sister paper. “Sounds like your average Sunderland fan.”

The highest/lowest North- East placing, however, goes to the singer Meatloaf, in at number eight and a supposed Hartlepool United follower.

“Mr Loaf has never been to Hartlepool, but he was apparently considering moving to Teesside five years ago.

“He likes pies, he’s never been to a game and he’s overweight.

Two out of three aint bad.”

The winner was Adolf Hitler – allegedly a fan of Schalke 04.

AND FINALLY...

FRIDAY’S column sought the identity of six clubs who’ve played in the Premiership which have a suffix unique to any of the “League” 92. They are Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest, Queens Park Rangers, Sheffield Wednesday and Tottenham Hotspur.

Terry Wells in Whitton, Stockton, simply invites readers to fill in the gap: “1979 Sunderland, 1980…….., 1981 Villa.”

Missing link, the column returns on Friday.