Winning ways stir the memories

He sounded canny; the Deerness Valley is Lorelei lovely. We ambled up on Tuesday evening for a midsummer night's blether.

Like Iveson's buses, the firm his grandfather began after making a few quid emptying muck and money middens with his horse and cart, the conversation went all over the place. Like Iveson's, probably, it was a transport of delight.

Hospitality included a supper of Fields' finger licking fish and chips, coal fired and straight from the paper. "You're our guest," they said, and declined every offer of payment. Different warmth, different world.

Robbie, 71, had called after last week's picture of the Reserves, stripped for improbable action, walking down Cornsay Colliery front street from the pub to play Park Albion on the football field they built on top of an ash tip.

It was February 22 1958, Durham Challenge Cup second round. Crowds lined the route, kids craned, flags waved. Ninety minutes later the players would be back in the Royal Oak, wash in the tin bath in front of the fire, be offered as much ale as they could sup and probably a bit more beside.

Cornsay were in the Durham Central League, alongside Ransome and Marles and Mackays Sports Club. Sunderland fielded two Scottish internationals, including Charlie Fleming - known as Cannonball for reasons which left little to the imagination - and seven players with first team experience.

It ended 1-1 - fair result, concedes Robbie - four buses away for the replay the following Saturday. "I suppose that's how I became a Sunderland fan," says Robbie, "I could always get on my grandad's bus for nowt.

"I imagine I wanted Sunderland to win that time an' all, but only because we thought that Cornsay didn't stand a chance."

On Saturday March 1, Joe Dumigham scored twice in the reserves' 4-2 win, the Kirby brothers each scoring for Cornsay. "They didn't go down without a huge struggle," recorded the Echo. "It was one of the best reserve games seen at Roker Park all season."

Robbie still has the old red-and-white striped programme, price twopence, kept it in his wallet all those years down Esh Winning pit and showing signs of having a hard shift.

Many other Sunderland programmes overflow elderly carrier bags. "You can't get stirred. I keep on telling him to get rid of them," says Ellen. "Will he....?" The question flies upwards in the direction of St Jude, patron saint of lost causes.

Robbie was born ower the beck, as Esh Winning folk still know it. Tommy Walker, a relative from that quarter, scored 38 goals in 204 post-war appearances on Newcastle United's right wing.

"When they'd got beat," Robbie recalls, "we always went round their house to ask how they'd gone on."

Ellen was from Stanley Hill Top, remembers affectionately the Little House on the Prairie and how they'd stand on the back door step to listen to her father shouting "Why yer dirty bugger" at the Stanley United match, getting on quarter of a mile away.

They met at the Langley Park dance, courted at Durham ice rink - "Ronnie was a brilliant skater," recalls Ellen, "they wanted him to play for the Wasps" - have shared the same terraced home since marrying 40 years ago.

The proposal was planned. "He asked me if I wanted to go to the match and I remember saying I could do," says Ellen. "We got the ring at Blacklock's near the bridge in Sunderland, it's still there. He put it on my finger before the match, then we went to tell our parents."

Ronnie, bless him, remembers it well. "I think Brian Clough was playing . . ."

It is impossible to visit Esh Winning, or Waterhouses and them places, without reminiscing about Harold Wharton - councillor, churchwarden and for 60 years the villages' penny-a-line correspondent for a rather larger rack of titles than presently hangs outside the paper shop.

Harold died 13 years ago, aged 82. "A beautiful man, I'd have trusted him with my life," says Robbie.

Inevitably also, the discourse is steered towards buses and how, on Saturday mornings, young Robbie would go to his grandfather's garage in Esh Village - to sweep out the fleet and, proprietorially, to sit in the drivers' seat making noises of an automotive nature.

We also learn that Gypsy Queen, long familiar on the routes around Durham, earned its unlikely name after Langley Park carrier and off-licence owner Billy Benton staked much more than he should have done on a horse in the early 1920s.

The favourite fell, Gypsy Queen came home and allowed Billy to buy his first bus. There were an awful lot of miles in Gypsy Queen.

We talk of the pit ("Oh, terrible down there"), of Cornsay Park Albion - "Good side, lot of players from the Newcastle area mind, I think Matty Stephenson, the pub landlord, was slipping them a few bob" - and of the time that Robbie got spoken to by the polliss for being a bit fruity while watching Esh Winning Pineapple.

"He asked me my name," he says. "I told him I was Santy Claus."

A 1949 Iveson's bus was found recently in a barn in Broompark, restored and was driven to Bradford a fortnight back.

"It shows how well they made things in them days," says Robbie. The old ones, as we know, are the best.

The only respect in which Robbie Rayner may dispute history - or the view of the Northern Echo correspondent that early March Saturday in 1958 - is in his recall of Cannonball Fleming, known otherwise as Legs.

"Hopeless, a plank," insists Robbie. Damp squib? The records demur.

Fleming joined East Fife after the war, helped them to the Scottish B division championship and to three senior cup finals, winning the League Cup in 1950. Sunderland signed him in 1955, for £7,000 plus fellow Scottish international forward Tommy Wright, who returned across the border.

Old Cannonball fired 71 goals in 122 appearances, including two on his instant-hit debut - against Newcastle. In 1955-56 he hit 32 league goals and the following season 27.

He died, aged 70, on August 15, 1997 - the day that Sunderland played their first league game at the Stadium of Light.

March 1, 1958? Though he'd played Test cricket for four years, 21-year-old Garfield Sobers had still to score a century when he strode to the wicket in the third Test between the West Indies and Pakistan.

He strode back with an undefeated 366, beating Len Hutton's world record. Conrad Hunte's 260 helped add 446, a West Indian record for any wicket.

Brian Clough scored both goals in Middlesbrough's 2-1 win over Swansea, Aston Villa hit two in the last minute to win 4-2 at Newcastle and Sunderland's continuous membership of the old first division seemed ever more in danger after a 3-0 defeat at Preston.

Post-Munich, meanwhile, a 15,000 Old Trafford crowd saw Bishop Auckland players Bob Hardisty, Warren Bradley and Derek Lewin make their Manchester United debuts in the reserves' 1-1 draw with Burnley.

"Hardisty stood out above everyone," the Echo recorded, "guiding his young players with a wave of the hand or giving them words of encouragement."

The late Bob Hardisty, then 37, continued to tutor United's youthful resurgence. Warren Bradley, 73 last month, scored 20 goals in 63 games on the senior right wing. He remains for all time the only English footballer to win amateur and full international caps in the same season.

Just time for a late night beer in Esh Winning Cricket Club, almost the first visit since the annual presentation in 1990 when Bobby Hull - cricketer, footballer, polliss - banged on for an hour and a quarter and the turn fell asleep in the bottle store.

On Tuesday evening it was quiet, save for a cree planning a hen weekend - "Lucy's Esh Winning Looney's" - and the eager build-up to Sunday's Durham County League Cup final, at Evenwood. They're putting a bus, and some beer, on.

The last visit of all had been for the 1991 presentation, Nadim Ghauri rewarded for a record-shattering 280 wickets. PC Hull had again risen to his six feet. "By popular demand I'm going to say nothing," he said. It brought the house down.

BACKTRACK BRIEFS...

Cornsay Park Albion apart, the week's biggest talking point may have been M Zidane's assault on that innocent Italian chap.

That almost all the media have described it as a "head-butt" concerns - "enrages", he says - retired orthopaedic surgeon Tim Stahl, from Darlington.

The action, says Tim, was merely a butt - no ifs. A butt is by definition with the head. "The 'head' in head-butt refers to the target, not the weapon."

Much correspondence has ensued, much consulting of learned tomes. Twenty years ago, none of the dictionaries included "head-butt". Now almost all do. Tim, not one to Glasgow kiss and make up, refuses to yield to the lexicographical bully boys.

"Head-butt may have passed into common usage but that doesn't alter the fact that it's an absurd piece of tautology. Fantasies excluded, it's the only part one can use to butt.

"It presumably won't be long before we speak of hand punches and foot kicks. Nor do we speak of knee butts and elbow butts, we simply convert the striking part into a verb."

And if eyesight butts in? "I won't let that dent my argument," says Tim.

Graham Smith in Newcastle, the location perhaps crucial, forwards a widely travelled e-mail following research at the University of Paris into what exactly Materazzi said. The lip readers have now spoken. It was "I believe you are going to Sunderland."

Same tournament of tears, Martin Birtle in Billingham forwards an extract from David Downing's book "Best of Enemies", chronicling the football rivalry between England and Germany.

Since we beat them in the 1966 World Cup final, the two countries have been 17 times together in the finals of major tournaments. Germany have done better than England in every one.

Cricket news: Stafford Place - named, it will be recalled, after a 19th century pottery in Thornaby - on Wednesday evening won the Gjers Cup for the second successive season. East Harsley managed 91-7 from 22 overs, our old friend Brent "Bomber" Smith claiming 5-48. Stafford reached 94-5 off 18.3, Liam Donohue scoring 31. Bomber, known throughout North-East cricket, was named man of the match. He's 54. "You know what they say about the old 'uns," he says.

And finally...

the footballers who in 2000 joined Bobby Charlton as the only men to win World Cup, European Cup and FA Cup winners' medals (Backtrack, July 11) were Chelsea's Didier Deschamps and Marcel Desailly.

Since Andrew Strauss is presently captaining England against Pakistan, readers are today invited to name the last Middlesex player to enjoy that honour.

From deep within the East Durham Triangle, the column returns on Tuesday.