Gordon’s team flying flag for Darlington at Wembley

There’s still one Darlington team set to run out at Wembley, however – and for the second successive season.

Top coats not necessary, the five-a-side boys representing Glenwood Paints will play before the Johnstone’s Paint final on March 28, defending the trophy they won last year.

“It’s a brilliant occasion,”

says team manager Gordon Fraser. “They lay on a 49-seat coach to take you to Wembley, drive you in the way all the top teams go, video everything that goes on at the stadium and give everyone a copy.

“Last year there must have been between 20,000-30,000 watching us, normally there’s no one. You’d say that it was a once in a lifetime experience, except for the fact that most of them will have done it twice.”

It is by no means to take the gloss off the achievement, however, to admit that the only paint brush any of these lads have had is decorating the back kitchen at home.

Last year’s team had one Glenwood employee, delivery driver Richard Merry. This year even that requirement has been lifted. The competition’s open to anyone.

The eight-strong squad – Ian Fraser, Gareth Boyes, Andy Walker, Rob Moore, Kieran Megran, Kyle Sankey, Steve Sinclair and Danny Bowles – all play for one or other of the five teams which Gordon runs at the Oak Leaf sports centre in Newton Aycliffe.

Particularly they’re delighted for Gareth, who missed last year’s final through injury.

At Trafford Park last Sunday they won the northern section qualifiers – including Scottish and Irish teams – without conceding a goal in the quarter-final, semi-final or final. Megran and Swankie hit the goals; goalkeeper Ian Fraser, the manager’s son, made the save which saw them through the semi-finals on penalties.

“This year it’s been open to everyone, so it’s been even harder and the lads have done brilliantly,” says Gordon.

“Glenwood have been very good to us, so we decided to stick with them.”

In the Brandon United side that reached the FA Sunday Cup final in the 1970s, Gordon has steered his five-a-side teams – playing as Card News – to more than 200 cup and league triumphs.

Himself a veteran five-aside player, Glenwood Paints boss Charlie Greenhalgh is a shade chuffed. “There mightn’t any longer be a direct connection, but they wear our shirts with pride.”

Last year they beat Super Nova, the previous season’s winners. At Wembley on March 28 they play the no-less stellar Milton Keynes All Stars. “We’ve got some great lads, we’re confident,” says Gordon – and whatever happens, they’ll paint the town red.

THE occasion perhaps a little less glamorous, the venue a mite humbler, there’s still real excitement among our friends at Wearhead United about the Norman Wright Cup final, too.

Norman was the club’s secretary and treasurer from 1937-38, when he was 16, until 1977. He’d also been secretary of the village cricket club until it folded in 1971. He died in 1978, aged 56.

In his memory, a splendid trophy was given to the Crook and District League and replaced the league cup from 1979-80. The club’s new pavilion – opened in 1995 by Field Marshall Sir Peter Inge Chief of the Defence Staff – was also named after Norman, a former Green Howard.

Since 1979, Wearhead have longed to get their hands on the Norman Wright Cup again. “We used to win the league cup regularly, but no one can ever remember us even reaching the semi-finals of the Norman Wright,” says long-serving club secretary Raymond Snaith.

Since completing the double in 1970-71, indeed, all they’ve ever lifted was the Colin Wates trophy in 1991- 92.

Now they’re in the Norman Wright final – Good Friday, Crook Town’s ground, 11am – against Elm Road WMC from Shildon.

Ray’s also writing a 160- page history of the club, hoping for a grant towards printing costs and will include this season’s efforts.

“It would be great if the final chapter could have us winning the Norman Wright Cup.”

Painting the history of Bishop’s glory days

CLEARLY a man of many talents, Alan Adamthwaite has not only completed his biography of Bob Hardisty – the fruiterer’s son who became arguably the greatest amateur footballer in history – but 19 oil paintings on the theme of The Glory Days of Bishop Auckland FC.

The paintings will be exhibited at Bishop Auckland Town Hall for three weeks from April 26, though two have been donated to the famous old club’s new home at Tindale Crescent. The stadium is due to be handed over on October 11.

The other paintings are on offer at between £220-£300.

The 350-page book, somewhat ambiguously called Never Again, will be launched at another town hall bash on September 15, also the day of the former players’ annual – and probably last – reunion.

“We’re getting a bit long in the tooth,” says Derek Lewin, the organiser.

It coincides with the Durham Amateur Football Trust’s major Hardisty exhibition, kicking off two days earlier.

Privately published, the 127,000 word book will sell for £18. “At that price I should just about a small loss instead of a thumbing great big one,” says Alan.

MORE book news: recently departed for South Africa, Ray Gowan – for many years among the most familiar (and vocal) of Northern League managers – has begun work on his autobiography.

It begins, as these things probably should, with his birth at St James’ hospital in Balham on Saturday April 15 1944.

The arrival was considerably delayed, young Gowan reluctant to make an appearance. “I was a big bugger,” he writes, “even then.”

AN unlikely revelation from the Northern League magazine, meanwhile: a West Allotment Celtic player is doubling as a male escort. “It pays him more than his day job and certainly more than he’ll ever earn with us,” says Celtic secretary Ted Ilderton.

Word is that the usual fee is £300.

Mr Ilderton is suitably discreet, declining to disclose the gentleman’s identity, though there are concerns that he may – how may this be put? – be underperforming elsewhere.

After a recent Tuesday evening booking, he lasted just 33 minutes on the Saturday. “I think he was knackered,” says Ted.

At Blue Flames – the club’s home ground – he now answers to The Gigolo.

BROWSING Crook library, John Phelan comes across the brief Football League career of goalkeeper Les Fridge. Just 17 when he made his only Chelsea appearance, a 5-1 home defeat to Watford on May 5 1986, poor Fridge was thereafter frozen out.

Cold facts, he played subsequently for eight Scottish League clubs – principally St Mirren, Clyde and Inverness Caley – and is now in the hot seat at Nairn County.

AS WELL he might, Norman Robinson in Annfield Plain queries the recent quiz question which supposed Pat Jennings to be the first man to make 1,000 Football league appearances. It was, of course, Peter Shilton who racked up 1,005, and never with a club north of Nottingham Forest.

Jennings, though he claimed 1,000 senior appearances, made but 757 in the league and never for a club north of Watford.

Unlike Shilton, however, he did score a goal – in the 1967 FA Charity Shield.

Norman adds a North-East connection. Tony Ford, second in the all-time appearance list with 931, made eight of them on loan for Sunderland at the end of 1985-86. They decided not to keep him.

And finally...

TUESDAY’S column wondered why the former Liverpool and England winger John Barnes came to be nicknamed Digger, and in so doing unearthed a difference of opinion.

The answer we had was that it was after his initials, JCB Barnes. Some internet sources, however, insist that he wasn’t John Charles Bryan Barnes at all, but John Kenny Felton Barnes.

Several readers alternatively suggest that the soubriquet is a nod towards Willard Barnes – aka Digger – a character in the long-running television series Dallas. Steve Moralee even sends his photograph.

The real Digger, at any rate, was appointed Tranmere Rovers’ manager last June, with Jason McAteer as his number two. McAteer’s nickname at Liverpool was Trigger – after a not conspicuously cranial character in Only Fools and Horses – sparking the inevitable headlines. Sadly, Digger and Trigger were soon jiggered.

With an eye on the present test match in Bangladesh, readers are today invited to suggest the last time England played two off spinners in a test – and their identities.

No off days here, the column returns on Tuesday.