NORMAN WILKINSON, the very apogee of today’s flashflashy football star, has died after a long illness. He was 80, and bright shining, nonetheless.

Norman became, and remains, York City’s leading goalscorer while training on his own – “even in six foot of snow” – and continuing to work as a shoe repairer in north-west Durham.

Whatever Anfield was to Bill Shankly, to Norman Wilkinson it was Annfield Plain.

He was in the “canny” City side that took the Mighty Magpies to an FA Cup semifinal replay in 1954-55, earned £6 10s a week parttime, commuted by bus and by train in order to stay at home and look after his elderly adoptive father.

“I couldn’t gan gallivantin’ while the old feller was still here,” he once said.

“I’d had two years away in the RAF and didn’t want any more.”

He died on Saturday, as City – now in the Blue Square Conference – lost 4-0 at Bath City.

Though occasionally invited back to Bootham Crescent, he preferred to help out at the local Wearside League club – gateman in the first half, elderly ball boy in the second, his station outside the ground. The kids would have nicked the ball, otherwise.

“Without doubt one of the most loyal and outstanding players ever to appear for City,” said York’s official history in 1990.

An Annfield Plain man’s guide would also have supposed him honest, trustworthy, dedicated and friendly, possessed of an accent as distinctive as Pontop Pike mast and with a life grass-rooted in football.

He was born in Alnwick, moved to Derwentside after being adopted at an early age, attended Annfield Plain Upper Standard School – the Uppers, they called it, as well a future shoe repairer might.

Marshall Lawson, Annfield Plain FC’s secretary for the past 50 years, was two years his junior.

Norman played for the RAF alongside Ray Wood, Peter Sillett, Bryan Douglas and Derek Stonehouse, had a few Hull City games as an amateur, joined York in 1954, stayed for 12 years and scored 143 goals in almost 400 appearances. For all that, there was no season like the first.

The Third Division side beat Scarborough in the first round. In the third, Irish Sea side, they saw off the Blackpool of Matthews, Mortensen and Mudie, and in the fourth attracted a 15,000 crowd to Kingsway, Minstermen versus the Bishops. City beat the Northern League club 3-1.

In the fifth they beat the mighty Spurs, again 3-1, in what the Yorkshire Evening Press wholly dispassionately supposed the most classic football match in history.

Norman – “brilliant” said the YEP – scored twice.

Though without fame’s facile furnishings, excitement mounted nonetheless. York Co-op even gave the players free boots.

“You couldn’t move outside the shop. We couldn’t believe it was us they’d come to see,”

said Norman.

In the quarter-final they beats Notts County in front of a 47,000 Meadow Lane crowd, in the semi-final they drew Newcastle at Hillsborough, while Sunderland played Man City at Villa Park.

They drew 1-1, the great Arthur Bottom scoring for City, lost the Roker Park replay 2-0 after centre-half Alan Stewart had gone off injured.

“Nee substitutes in them days, mind,” said Norman.

We’d last seen him in 2004, Norman wholly content to potter around Annfield Plain and to do a bit of shoe repairing for his friend, Jonty Raine, down in Crook.

York City were flirting with a future outside the Football League. “It would be sad, of course,” said Norman. “But the worst news out of York these past few days is the closure of Terry’s chocolate factory.

Think of all those people.”

Modern players, he conceded, were inevitably fitter. “They’re athletes, but the faster the game is, the more mistakes you make.

Who’d have said Puskas was an athlete, but what a tremendous footballer.”

A few weeks earlier, he’d attended a players’ reunion at which 91-year-old Jack Pinder was also present.

Someone had asked Jack what he thought of the modern game; he didn’t think much.

“Hopeless, all they do is go round hugging and kissing each other,” he said, then paused for an effect of which the Theatre Royal would have been proud.

“I mean,” the old man added, “who’d want to kiss Norman Wilkinson?”

Once bushy, he’d lost his hair within a year after a friendly match collision with big Frank Brennan and split a nerve above his eye.

“It took a mile to run around Frank Brennan, never mind straight into him,” said Norman, though he was a man wholly without regrets or resentment.

Though Jack Pinder might not have kissed him, many embraced him and the age and values that he represented. Norman, who never married, still expressed surprise that he was always recognised when he went back to York.

“They tell me I should get me boots out again. I honestly wish they’d let me, but for both of us it’s probably come too late.”

RAY PARLOUR, formerly of England, Arsenal and – pretty forgettably – Middlesbrough, spoke on Friday evening at a fund raiser in Bishop Auckland for the enterprising St Mary’s Boys Club teams.

Boys will be boys, they loved him, though Norman Wilkinson wouldn’t have recognised the old game at all. Parlour spoke candidly of buzzing, betting, birds and Bergkamp, revealed that Arsene Wenger – the man they call Inspector Clousseau – has a wonderful sense of humour.

It was doubtless coincidence that he should rate Bergkamp, a man with none of those b-word vices, the finest Gunner of all.

Of Middlesbrough, he uttered not a word.

BILL HAMILTON – former Hartlepool Mail sports editor, Tyne Tees Television sports reporter and Radio Tees news ed – has written his autobiography. Ray Robertson has good reason to loan a copy.

Ray, long the Echo’s sports reporter on Teesside, was at Hampden Park for the Scotland v England game in 1966 – the third day of his honeymoon.

Joan had gone shopping.

The arrangement was that the newlyweds would meet back in Argyle Street at 6pm, Ray aiming to catch a train back into the city.

Bill, himself a Scot, insisted that he’d run him back in his hired Ford Anglia. The crowd was 134,000, the game epic – 4-3 to England – none leaving before the end.

When he tried to start the Anglia, it lay back and thought of England. It was well turned 7pm when the AA man arrived.

“Not only had I ruined someone’s honeymoon, I had visions of ending a marriage before it even started,”

writes Bill.

It survived. “After 44 years, Joan and I are still very happily married and Bill remains a good friend,” says Ray, still in the Boro. More of Bill’s book next time.

MUCH-TRAVELLED striker Tony Cunningham had a “Where are they now” piece – he’s now a solicitor in Lincoln – in last weekend’s Sunday Times.

Particularly he recalled his time with Newcastle United under Jack Charlton, a manager infamous for never remembering players’ name. Usually they were either Big Lad or Little Lad.

Cunningham was different.

“He called me Blackie Milburn, but meant no offence by it,” he says.

And finally

SATURDAY’S column noted that an Arsenal player in the 1968 League Cup final, a Scottish international athlete and a former incumbent of Auckland Castle – or “sin bosun”, as Davey Munday colourfully calls him – all had the same name. As Davey and others knew, it was David Jenkins.

Steve Moralee in Tow Law today invites the identity of four Premier League or Football League teams who full name begins and ends with the same letter of the alphabet.

The same as ever, the column returns on Saturday.