Going for a Bevy with the FA’s communications supremo

Just 17 turned up; probably there was football on television.

A key part of his role has been looking after the England team manager, especially the present incumbent, and helping guard his privacy.

“How many would recognise her if Fabio’s wife walked in here now?” he asks his sparse audience. None would.

“How many would recognise Sven’s better half?”

“Which one?” someone says, not entirely according to script.

Bevington had been an Ayresome Park ball boy, recalls the dark days, left school at 16 – “I wasn’t particularly good” – to take a job on ICI’s in-house newspaper at Wilton, Redcar.

Last week he was promoted to managing director of Club England, the new umbrella body charged with coordinating support services – administrative, communications, medical, kit, travel, security – for all England’s 20-odd national teams. He starts immediately after the World Cup.

“A big job but not a daunting one,” he says. “I’ve been around football people a long time now.

I’ve a fair idea how they work.”

The gathering’s at the Copt Hill pub above Houghton-le- Spring, run until a couple of years back by Bobby Kerr, Sunderland’s FA Cup winning captain in 1973. Craig MacDonald, the branch chairman, tells his audience that the guest’s face will be familiar.

“He’s the feller you see sitting next to Lampard or Capello, anyone who has a bit bother.”

Still just 38, Bevington now lives in Bishops Stortford, 35 miles and getting on two hours drive from the FA’s new Wembley headquarters. He’d left the office at 2.45pm, still in good time for a pint of Guinness and our seven o’clock chat.

He’ll spend the night with his parents back in Acklam. It doesn’t need a director of communications to articulate that there’s still no place like home.

IT’S exactly 25 years, he recalls, the season he was a bouncing ball boy, that Boro lost to Darlington in the FA Cup. The average gate was 4,500; insolvency awaited.

He’d seen his first match at four – “home to Mansfield, Anglo-Scottish Cup” – admits a lifelong obsession, recalls early heroes like David Armstrong, Stuart Boam and Alan Foggon and, a little later, Craig Johnston and Graeme Souness – “still close to being my alltime favourite player.”

He remembers, too, the Rioch years – “great days for the Boro, I can still smell the pipe tobacco in the crowd” – supposes it hard to believe that it’s only three-and-a-half years since they reached the UEFA Cup final.

So can they still make the play-offs? The answer’s perfect PR. “Who knows. The league’s very competitive. Any team could put a run together.”

He himself was a left winger, played three times for Middlesbrough schoolboys in 1986 – Nick Mohan the only team mate to make the big time – and in the Teesside League for Dormans and Acklam Steelworks.

“I’ve got a job in football and communications and I love it, but I only ever wanted to be a footballer. You reach a level when you know you’re not going to be good enough and it breaks your heart, but I never played as well as an adult as I did as a kid.”

After two years on the Wilton News he held several junior local government posts – “I was going stale” – and was just a week into a Boro press office work placement when offered a permanent position. He edited the programme, helped the move to the Riverside.

In 1997 he spotted a Guardian ad for an FA press office job, thought he hadn’t a hope in hell – he says – and landed that one, too.

“When he left, Boro started going downhill,” says Craig MacDonald.

So how did a bit bairn from the Boro settle among the blazers and the bigwigs at Lancaster Gate, where then the FA held court?

The question brings both the predictable rejoinder – “I was welcomed with open arms, it’s a hugely friendly place where the staff are mostly young and of both genders” – and an admission that his four years as communications director have failed to detonate the FA’s old, old image.

“There’s an unfair perception about the FA. I’d love to have broken down all that stuff. The rest of the world’s national associations have huge respect for us but we still have this image problem domestically.

Sometimes it fits, but so often it’s just unfair.”

As communications director he has a staff of 26, enjoys daily contact with those at the very top, has himself become one of the Association’s best known faces.

“We have a profile alongside the BBC, the government, the royal family and the Met. It’s a 24/7 challenge and a global remit,” he says.

He’s happy for all that, and would be unlikely to admit it if he weren’t, to address the sort of numbers who might normally gather for a wet Wednesday “I’m still a great believer in getting off your backside and meeting people. You get a lot of respect back.”

SO HE does, save for a small altercation to which shortly we shall return.

Though their thoughts turn to South Africa, englandfans – lower case, higher profile – want to know of his life and times and, particularly about his relationship with successive national team managers.

“They’ve all been very different, you’d expect me to say that,” Bevington begins.

He didn’t get particularly close to Kevin Keegan, enjoyed Peter Taylor’s Norman Wisdom impressions but thought him “very driven”, reckoned Howard Wilkinson a great guy for whom he had nothing but respect, euphemistically supposes that Sven “faced lots of different sorts of challenges.”

“I also loved working with Sven, a tremendously great guy.

“He wasn’t some sort of ice man at all, his temperament was fine. I’ve never had a cross word with him, despite some of the Saturday night calls from the Sunday newspapers.”

It’s coincidental that at this point the music machine in the next room plays Big Girls Don’t Cry, to which might be added the rider “unless in receipt of a substantial cheque from the News of the World.”

Bevington says he’s conscious that Sven wasn’t everyone’s favourite. “Some of the press conferences when the going was tough were incredibly difficult, terribly vitriolic affairs.”

And Fabio? Fabio, says the director of communications, is a walk in the park.

The evening’s mostly a gentle stroll, too, as combative as a friendly between England and Monaco, until someone recalls the time on the Moscow underground that he and a few fellow England supporters were jumped by 25 Russians. The FA, he says, didn’t even acknowledge the complaint.

“I’ve come all this way and you’re being aggressive,” says Bevington, a little surprisingly.

After several trips to South Africa, he much anticipates the kick-off in June. “It’s going to be a great tournament, really special.

“The atmosphere in the country is really incredible, the people are so excited.”

After the beer break it becomes bogged down in ticketing issues, like a five-foot full back in a clarty penalty area.

Warmly and deservedly applauded, Bevington departs shortly before 10pm for his old bed in Acklam, leaving FA colleague Jamie Craig to sort out the tickets.

They’re still chewing the small print when I leave at 10.15pm. Today Copt Hill, tomorrow the worlds.

Gone but not forgotten, Doris

DORIS Rewcastle, a smashing lady honoured late in life – “getting on but not letting on”

said the column in December 2006 – has died. Very probably she was 92.

“I went to her 90th birthday gathering two years ago,” says Jill Jones, secretary of Durham County women’s bowls.

“She thought no one knew, but it was the worst kept secret in Durham. She got 80 cards on her 90th birthday.”

Doris, from Bishop Auckland was a champion bowls player and inexhaustible administrator.

Joe Rewcastle, her father-in-law, scored for West Auckland in the 1911 World Cup win over Juventus.

She was also a renowned baker. “Doris could have baked for England,” says Jill Jones. “Spice loaf, fruit scones, perfect meringues. No one ever went hungry when Doris was around.”

In the autumn of 2006 she’d become only the second woman bowls player in 44 years to win a Torch Trophy award, presented by the Countess of Wessex, for services to sport. The citation talked of her “home goodies”, too.

She’d been charming – “a lovely, lively octogenarian who wears the accolade as lightly as the ladies; captain might wear a straw hat” – but had had to be ticed, as they say in these parts, to talk about it.

Doris had taken up bowls in 1959, was in the Durham County ‘A’ team within seven years and stayed there for 35 – travelling to most games on a succession of buses, carrying her woods and, quite likely, some home baking, too.

Her first county singles game was at East Boldon, where she beat the visitors’ star performer. “One of their officials told me I’d no business beating their top player,”

she said. “I asked her if she thought I’d trailed around all day just to lose the match.”

In 2006 she was still county competitions secretary and held office in the Bishop Auckland club – “I’ve never really thought about retiring, I’d be climbing the walls if I did” – but had recently been in a care home.

“She was hugely respected, hugely efficient, just a marvellous person,” says Jill Jones.

Doris was also essentially private. Her funeral will be private, too.

New take on an old story

PLAY it again, Sam, Mike Blake kindly sends a copy of the new edition of his biography of Sam Bartram, among England’s greatest goalkeepers.

It’s beautifully and affectionately done. Published by Tempus, the first edition;s already out of print. Mike’s published the second himself.

Sam was a Boldon Colliery lad, played wing half for England schoolboys, earned 7/6d a week from North Shields in the North Eastern league and a hit a hat-trick as his debut, centre forward, for Easington Colliery.

He left school at 14, became a miner, was spotted by Anthony Seed – brother of Whitburn- born Charlton manager Jimmy Seed – after taking over from the injured goalie in a local cup final.

The rest is south London legend. His red hair as familiar as his roll-topped green jumper, Sam made 800 first team appearances for the Addicks, never played for England though he had trials until he was 40, had a statue posthumously unveiled outside the Valley in 2005.

Word is, says Mike Blake, that Picasso even used him as a model because of his athleticism.

He was also number 45, of 48, in the Chix bubble gum cards of our sticky-fingered youth. “Athletic without Bartram would be Laurel without Hardy,” it said on the back.

Mike’s delighted at the book’s success. “Sam Bartram in goal for Charlton was a national institution, like Two Way Family Favourites or the Billy Cotton Band Show. I’m delighted that others seem to think the same way.”

The new edition’s £16 95.

And finally...

THE last time before Peterborough in December that a team came back from 4-0 down at half-time to draw 4-4 (Backtrack, January 19) was in 1997, when Port Vale did it against QPR at Vale Park.

Fred Alderton in Peterlee today identifies 12 different venues in London which have staged full England internationals.

Adrian Bevington could doubtless identify them; readers are invited to do the same. Back on Tuesday.