Tough of the Track finds new direction

Now Tony Morrell is sharp suited, single minded and in the running to become the elected Mayor of Hartlepool.

He raced regularly against the likes of Steve Cram, David Sharp and Tom McKean, earned a hothead reputation to match his flaming red hair. While Cram and Sharp were warm weather training in Australia, Morrell was helping build a hospital in Hartlepool and lapping Billinghm Forum car park.

“I know I’m in Crammy’s shadow, but Crammy’s not welding eight hours a day,” he’d said when we talked in 1986.

Within two years he’d become the world’s fourth fastest miler, rated ninth in the 800m and was national indoor 800m champion.

We’d met again in 1993; it was the column, indeed, which sired the steel-hard soubriquet. Two knee operations were already behind him, more to come; familiar problems of attracting major sponsorship were all around.

“The last two years no-one has wanted to know me,” he said. “Just when I would think that things couldn’t get any worse, they did.”

Since then he has risen to become a high-flying regional manager with the Abbey Bank but admits an enduring affection for the Tough of the Track. “The nickname was quite appropriate really, I suppose the main difference between me and Alf Tupper was that I didn’t eat as many fish and chips.

“When I went into financial services I decided to push myself as far and as hard as I could. That’s what I’d always done, just to improve by another tenth of a second. That’s what I’ll do again.”

The mayoral field, it should be said, is as crowded as the Great North Run half way across Tyne Bridge. Twelve other candidates hope to unseat Stuart Drummond, still best remembered as H’Angus the Monkey, who seeks Hartlepool’s mandate for a third term. Seven, including Tony, are independents. It could be a photo finish.

HE’D joined the National and Provincial Building Society in Hartlepool – “the way my knees were, I knew my pipefitting days were numbered” – became branch manager, accelerated accordingly.

Soon he was branch manager in Durham, then Newcastle, then regional manager – Morrell high ground – after the former Abbey National took over. “I rose so quickly because I worked five times harder than anyone else,” he says.

Despite life in the fast lane, he never left Hartlepool, never even contemplated when – and not many people may know this – offered Belgian citizenship in order to represent that country in the 1992 Olympics.

“Let’s just say I didn’t much fancy it,” he says.

Now we’re drinking cappuccino in a swish coffee bar on Hartlepool Marina. The town, like the Tough, is much changed.

Leisure craft crowd the harbour, restaurants ride the recession, thousands of new homes have arisen on the once-derelict land behind.

Roads have names like Schooner Court, Ensign Close and Admiralty Way – if not, yet, Admiralty Arch. A sign proclaims “Stunning waterside living.”

Some appear very smart. Others would only be stunning if the owner fell from the second floor balcony.

The onetime welder removes his jacket, admits that he has “spoken” to Ray Mallon, the high-profile Mayor of Middlesbrough.

Though there are no Boro braces, gold cufflinks catch the morning sun.

“The town’s transformation in the last 15 years has been excellent but for the past three years we’ve stood still,” says Tony. “I see signs of regression, we’re not moving forward at all. Too many of those flats are standing empty.

“The town needs a strong mayor, someone with business acumen, who’s used to handling multi-million pound budgets and who can drive the chief executive. I believe I can offer a unique set of skills.”

His campaign includes a council tax freeze, a tourism drive, greater community use of school facilities – “Hartlepool hasn’t one grass running track” – and a clampdown on anti-social behaviour. The pages of that day’s Hartlepool Mail overflow with anti-social behaviour; it’s not hard to come by it in the main shopping centre, either.

“We’ve a troubled shopping centre,” says Tony.

“The police,” says a woman in the bus queue, “do nothing.”

Mayor Morrell would also urge the sale of the municipally owned Victoria Park to IOR, the football club’s owners. “I do find it strange that the present mayor seems not to have been able to do that,” he says.

Presently between jobs (“I’m focusing only on this”) he’s taking it hugely seriously, has employed a public relations consultancy – two local companies turned it down for fear of backing the wrong horse – has a carefully picked team around him.

“To be a world class athlete you have to be able to plan, to focus, to have meetings with people at very high levels and to be bloody minded.

There’s a lot in common between athletics and politics.”

THOUGH he’s 6ft 3ins tall, his running weight was around 11st 10lb.

Now he’s around two stones heavier, still seems to have nothing on him, runs three or four times a week – five or six miles a time – but only, he says, to keep the calories down.

Instead, his place on the starting line has been taken by his sons Richard, 21, and 18-year-old Adam, both trained – as their dad was – by Billingham-based veteran Gordon Surtees.

“No one knows how old Gordon is, but he won’t see 70 again,” says Tony.

Richard, a radiographer at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, is a miler, has won his first three races of the season and competes regularly against Steve Cram’s son.

“A bit ironic that,” says Tony. Adam concentrates on 800m. Both, says their father, will win England vests.

The daughters by his second marriage are five and four. Runners, too? “Only when I chase them,” says Tony.

After another frothy coffee – who’d have thought it of Hartlepool, Andy cappuccino? – he’s off, forever on his toes, to visit an Asian community centre and to further his hopes of victory in the June 4 poll.

Tough at the top? “I’ve been all over the world but never left Hartlepool, never wanted to. I’m absolutely convinced I can win this one, too.”

PAST the finishing post with Tony Morrell, we head back into town to take in the Art of Football exhibition at the municipal art gallery.

It’s a handsome former church, the pulpit still intact. They have resisted the temptation to install an effigy of Brian Clough – still Pools’ most deified former manager – or to wrap a blue and white scarf round the neck of the resident bronze Buddha.

Nor happily, does the music machine play the Match of the Day theme. Mozart comes on as sub.

The exhibitiomn marks Hartlepool United’s centenary, though many of the exhibits are from the National Football Museum in Preston.

It probably explains what Tom Finney’s doing there.

There are football-themed paintings by everyone from Ithell Colquhoun to Cecil Beaten – wasn’t he the Queen’s dressmaker? – early parlour games liker Kickari, Kickit and Finga Footy, a pair of hobs-of-hell boots from a less subtle age.

Even Fatty Foulke squeezes in there somewhere.

Another display offers evidence of all that Pools have won over the past 100 years. Sadly, it’s not a very big case at all.

■ The exhibition, admission free, runs at Hartlepool Art Gallery in Church Square from Tuesday to Saturday, 10am-5pm, until May 30.

ALF TUPPER first appeared in Rover comic in 1949; like Tony Morrell, he was a welder. He lived with his Aunt Meg in Anchor Alley, Greystone – that could almost have been in Hartlepool, too – usually working night shifts before falling asleep on the train, bagging some newspaper-wrapped fish and chips before the race and winning comfortably.

“I ran ‘em,” he’d exult.

Alf was later transferred to the Victor, ran a one-man welding business beneath the railway arches and was last seen in the Sunday Post in 1992, training for the Barcelona Olympics. Like Tony Morrell, it probably wasn’t for Belgium.

Backtrack briefs...

MILLIE LEIGHTON may be appropriately named.

Two weeks overdue, the bonny bairn finally made an appearance on Tuesday – just as her father was preparing to play in the most important football match of his life.

Kevin Leighton’s captain of Newcastle Benfield, who needed to win at Penrith that night to claim the skilltrainingltd Northern League first division title just six years after joining the second.

“I could almost have put money on what was going to happen but there was no way I could leave my partner,”

says Kevin. “I knew the lads could win without me.”

Finally they did, the game’s solitary goal coming five minutes from the end of the league’s final game of the season. Had Benfield drawn, Consett would have been champions.

“I’d just got home from the hospital when someone rang,” says Kevin. “All I could hear was the bedlam of people singing ‘Champion- eez’, but I got the message, anyway.”

Better Leighton never, Millie and her mum, Lisa Fiddes, are both fine – though unlikely to be present next Friday when Benfield again meet Penrith in the league cup final.

Already they’ve had a sight of the championship trophy; dad’s cup simply overflows.

“One way and another it was the most eventful day of my life,” says Kevin.

“One thing’s certain, I’m never ever going to forget my little girl’s birthday.”

THE FOLLOWING evening to the Ernest Armstrong Cup final, Horden v Sunderland RCA at Chester-le- Street, where former Premiership referee and Chester lad Alan Wilkie could be observed on the gate selling programmes.

They won’t have his services for much longer, however. The man who had to sort out kung-fu Cantona has been offered the job of head of refereeing in Japan.

There’s a danger, he admits, of losing something in the translation. “I only speak three languages – English, Geordie and bad language. After all my time in refereeing, I’m a particular expert in the last.”

... and finally

The Scottish club which plays on the Springkerse industrial estate (Backtrack, May 5) is Stirling Albion, at the Forthbank Stadium.

Since we’ll be heading down for the FA Vase final – Whitley Bay v Glossop – tomorrow, readers are invited to suggest how many toilets there are in the new Wembley stadium.

With the final installment of an eventful railroad to Wembley, the column returns on Tuesday.