Former Echo man Robertson will be a big miss in the box

It’s because of a family golden wedding, but his hot line’s in cold storage, too.

“I’ve just been told that the last paper I did freelance work for is dropping me.

Economies,” says Ray.

Widely remembered, greatly regarded, he was the Echo’s Boro boy for 33 years, his debut on August 20 1960 at Bristol Rovers.

Barely 18 and never even having played for the Reserves, Joe Livingstone also made his debut – Brian Clough having gone on strike or something, Ray recalls.

Cloughie sent the youngster a good luck telegram, though.

Alan Peacock scored twice in Boro’s 3-2 win, Eddie Holliday getting the other.

Every North-East team save Hartlepool also got off to a winning start, the rest of the back page taken over by Sir Stanley Rous’s opposition to substitutes.

“We want no sharp practice or gamesmanship here,” said the FA’s far-seeing chairman.

Ray had been the Echo’s Northern League man in the 1950s, spent wondrous Wembley afternoons watching the Amateur Cup ritually return to south Durham, officially retired in January 1993 but continued to freelance.

Coming up 79, looking much younger, he continues to stride the North Yorkshire moors. He’ll keep his press box seat, too – “I’m writing a series for the programme.”

LINDY Delapenha, the first Jamaican to play in the Football League, was Boro’s top scorer for three seasons in the 1950s – even before Ray’s time.

He’s recalled by Keith Bell after a passing reference hereabouts – the story of how Durham County Cricket Club scorer Brian Hunt got into a Jamaican test match on a Northern League grounds pass.

Keith worked in Jamaica in the 1990s. The ground’s Sabina Park, he says, not the Kingston Oval, as we supposed. Maybe that was Kennington, or even the Kensington Oval, in Barbados.

Keith, at any rate, remembers the infamous Sabina Park test between the West Indies and England in 1998, abandoned after just 18 balls of the first day – England 17-3, the physio already six times on the pitch – because the pitch was nigh-on murderous.

“The Jamaican prime minister asked England fans to a garden party as consolation,” he says – and Delapenha, then the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation’s director of sport, had a great deal to say about it.

He was an all-round sportsman who became a PTI in the British army, won a first division championship medal with Portsmouth in 1948 and joined Boro for £12,000 in 1950.

Ron Tomlinson, a dartblowing theatrical from West Auckland, recalled in his autobiography ten years ago that Delapenha and the young Brian Clough could earn £15 a week playing head tennis on stage at the Middlesbrough Empire.

Albert Roxborough tells in his history of Wolviston Cricket Club, near Billingham, how Lindy played for the club because it represented an inside track to Cleveland Park dogs.

“He’d make more money on information received on the greyhounds than he would playing professional cricket,” the book noted.

He returned to Jamaica, spent 30 years in broadcasting, is now 83 and was subject last September of a remarkable eulogy in the Jamaica Gleaner.

It embraced his childhood – “congenitally mischievous and averse to academics” – his sporting prowess, his “unparalleled leadership and sterling example.”

Only Stanley Matthews kept him out of the England side, the Gleaner supposed.

It praised his modesty, his unrivalled on-air command of the language, his initial refusal to leave Middlesbrough because it would “dislocate” his wife-tobe.

There’s even a reference to another of the Caribbean’s great passions. Lloyd Lindbergh Delapenha, it says, should have been world domino champion as well.

STILL with the Boro, items autographed by many former players – right back to George Camsell, Cloughie included – will be auctioned on August 26 at Marton Country Club.

Top bidding, however, may be reserved for a fully signed copy of Kenneth Wolstenholme’s autobiography – “They think it’s all over. It is now.”

It’s Methuselah’s first dedicated autograph auction – other signings including World Cup men like Peters, Hurst, Banks, Stiles and Bobby Charlton. Details on www.methuselahltd.com Richmond lass and proud of it, top swimmer Jo Jackson is interviewed in The Guardian’s “Small Talk”

series. Where, they ask, would she go for a good night out in her home town?

“There aren’t any nights out in Richmond,” says Jo.

“It’s a very little town with a couple of pubs and places to eat, but that’s about it.”

For a quick drink, she adds, try Wetherspoon’s.

WE’D been pondering, remember, the identity of the now-familiar quintet of football fans on the front and back covers of The Far Corner, Harry Pearson’s best seller. Two were Cliff Carter and Frank Siddle. Perhaps because of the column’s restricted readership in Belgium it’s only now that we hear from a third, the young chap in the cap. He’s Neil Jameson, now in Olsene. The match was Doncaster Rovers 3 Darlington 2, FA Cup December 5 1959. “The original photographs were printed in John Bull magazine,” he recalls. The image has become now global. Neil may be among the world’s most famous Belgians.

ANDREW Smart in Hartlepool asks us to mention a charity golf challenge he’s organising on Sunday September 12 in memory of his mate David “Spiderman” Dodds. It’s at the Cocken Lodge course at Leamside, near Durham, £50 entry for a team of three, only three clubs apiece and everyone playing off scratch.

It’s all in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care – details from andrew@asmart61.fsnet.co.uk or on 01429 894966.

WE said last Saturday that the final of the Ellis Cup, contested around South Bank since 1889, was to be on August 8. It’s now been put back to 11am on August 15 at the Harcourt Road ground in South Bank. North Ormesby Institute play Grangetown Boys Club.

Fond memories of a Waddle thunderbolt

THERE’S a picture of Chris Waddle in the last Football League game at Roker Park that Debbie Spencer particularly likes. Debbie, it should be said, admits to not knowing much about football.

“Waddle’s shooting the ball and all the other gentlemen are holding their bits,” she explains. “It’s a very good photograph.”

It was May 3 1997, Sunderland needing to beat Everton to have a chance of Premiership survival.

Waddle was 36, improbable in red and white, though as a youngster he’d twice had Roker trials and been rejected.

His “thunderous” 67th minute free kick – the one that caused the Everton gentlemen to hold their bits – had been awarded after goalkeeper Neville Southall carried the ball out of the area.

“If I’d missed the target I’d probably have killed someone standing in the Fulwell End,.” He said, somewhat ambiguously.

Sunderland won 3-0.

Everything would depend on the season’s final game, against Wimbledon at Crystal Palace the following week.

The last chance saloon was beginning to look familiar.

Debbie’s interest is very much personal. Signed by Britain’s best known sausage maker, the photograph is one of a bundle given by a wellwisher in Newcastle to help send her ten-year-old son Mitchell for a vital operation in America.

Bright, cheery and intelligent, Mitchell has cerebral palsy, needs physiotherapy four times a day and wears leg splints.

Though he can walk and run, it’s on tiptoe and with bent legs. Frequently he falls over.

“The simplest things like climbing stairs, getting into the car, even putting his socks on become momentous struggles,” says Debbie.

The £50,000 treatment – “not without its risks” – is only performed in Missouri.

Though he will need a second, more minor, operation it would completely cure him.

The family lives in Hartlepool, launched an appeal six weeks and have already raised £15,000 – everything from bingo to bungee jumping, quizzes to clairvoyance.

“It’s really snowballed, got to the point where it’s just about all I do. When we get back from America they might even get fed,” says Debbie.

Someone called Geoff Hurst even plans a “21 mile”

sponsored row – on a rowing machine – on August 29.

“Even I know it’s not THE Geoff Hurst,” says Debbie.

The gift from Newcastle includes autographed picture of Boro boy Stephen Downing playing for England against Trinidad and Tobago, of Peter Beardsley scoring against Nottingham Forest in 1986 and of Gazza, looking innocent.

There’s also an England shirt, signed by Stephen Gerrard. “I don’t suppose he’s worn it but it’s the genuine article, not one of those cheap and nasty things,” says Debbie.

Mitchell knows he’s going to America in October, knows why. “He’s fine, very laid back, understands exactly what’s going to happen. To tell you the truth, he’s a bit bored by it all.

“People have been amazing. I can’t believe the generosity, especially when everyone is supposed to be strapped for cash.”

If successful, the operations will offer a permanent cure. “He’ll get on that plane on tiptoe and come off it again flat footed,” says Debbie. “He’ll walk down that road just like any other kid. It’ll be the best day of our lives.”

As for Sunderland, followed by 13,000 fans down to London, they lost to an 86th minute Jason Euell goal and were relegated. It was Waddle’s seventh and last game for the club he’d supported as a boy. He became player/manager at Burnley.

■ Full details of the fund to help Mitchell, and how to help, are at www.getmitchelltoamerica.org.uk

And finally...

TUESDAY’S column invited the identity of the football team that’s had most seasons in the top flight – by whatever name – without ever winning the title. It’s Bolton Wanderers, 69, and it did everyone.

Brian Shaw in Shildon today asks readers to name the only team that, in the twentieth century, won both the FA and FA Amateur Cups.

Winning streak, the column returns in three days.