Grass Routes

Rastafarian: Roly Gregoire

Three e-mails arrive between 7-8am, an hour when many are grabbing an extra few minutes abed. One, from veteran BBC journalist Jeff Brown, is headed “The most important story I ever wrote”; the other two call attention to it.

The story’s about Roly Gregoire,Sunderland’s first black footballer, and the incessant racial vilification which he – and others like him – endured.

Changing times dictate that the on-line version – and doubtless the 25-minute film shortly on BBC I-player – is prefaced with a warning that it contains racially offensive language and behaviour.

“It’s a story I’ve been chasing for the last 44 years, ever since I became a journalist” says Jeff, officially retired and himself a lifelong Sunderland fan.

It wasn’t he who finally tracked Gregoire down, however, but Sunderland taxi driver and dedicated autograph hunter Kevan Ball – no relation to the former club captain – who followed the time-honoured route of trawling through electoral rolls.

“Ah” says Jeff, ever self-effacing, “why didn’t I think of that?”

Face in the crowd…. Picture: Sunderland Echo

*Roly Gregoire was born in the Toxteth area of Liverpool and raised in Bradford, his parents Windrush generation immigrants from the Caribbean island of Dominica. A promising footballer, he’d played just five first team games for Halifax Town when Roker Park manager Jimmy Adamaon signed him for £5,000 on the back of a reserve team hat-trick against Sunderland.

It was November 1977 and he was 19, excited to be billeted at the club hostel in Seaburn because that’s where they went on Sunday School trips.

“He wasn’t just the only black player at the club, he was probably the only black person in the town” wrote Bill Hern, himself a Sunderland fan, in Football’s Black Pioneers, a book about the first black player at each of the 92 “league” clubs – in 1977 a fifth of the 92 had no black players at all.

“A clever ball player with a deceptive body swerve, (Gregoire) unfortunately lacked physical advantage and faded from the scene” says All the Lads, the book of potted biographies, though there was rather more to it than that.

His debut came on January 2 1978, a 2-0 home win against Hull City in which he made one of the goals – but the day became indelibly remembered for other reasons.

Several of his brothers had travelled to watch the match, headed afterwards to see Roly at the players’ hostel when accosted by a gang of youths. “Someone threw half a brick at them and shouted – they used the n-word, I’ll put it like that.

“It was a lynch mob who chased them through the park near the ground. My brothers were just teenagers, so scared but somehow they managed to escape. It was despicable – Seaburn had meant to much to us but from that day on, until the day she died, my mother never ever spoke of Sunderland again.”

Appearances were intermittent, the tenth and last when Sunderland – then top of the second division – lost at home to Blackburn Rovers, who were bottom, on Easter Monday 1979. Gregoire bore the brunt of supporter derision.

Supposing it “a nightmare experience”, Argus in the Sunderland Echo added: “He must have been absolutely shattered by the abuse and ridicule showered upon his by the crowd.”

Sunderland missed promotion by a point. Early the following season Gregoire suffered a serious knee injury in a reserve game at Murton and never played again.

*Traumatised by many other instances of racism, some within the dressing room, ” There was no loyalty. I felt abandoned,”, he was assured that the club would “look after him” if he agreed to the cancellation of his £6,000-a-year contract and returned to Bradford and later spent six months with relatives back in Dominica, becoming a Rastafarian and changing his name to Jabari Muata Ta Seti.

He worked in London, aggravated the injury, came back to Bradford where he worked as a voluntary counsellor and helped set Black against Crack, an anti-drugs charity.

After almost half a century,he was happy to talk to Jeff. “I don’t hate Sunderland but I hate what they did to me and I hate the fact that my legacy is mud.

“I’m a joke, I’m a laughing stock. What terrible thing did I do? I was just a young man – it’s easy because I was the black fellow, you see.

“The problems black players face are still much the same. People maybe don’t chant the racist things they used to but instead the write it on-line. At least now black players have a voice and can make themselves heard.”

Jeff Brown helped arrange a recent return visit, taking in the game against Manchester United and meeting Bobby Kerr, his former captain. “After all this time it was a wonderful experience” says Gregoire. “I feel purged; I’m happy.”

Almost as familiar in the thunderous letters columns of The Times as amid the blog’s benighted bletherings, Keith Nicholson is a great all-rounder.

Former Minor Counties cricket umpire and football referee, enthusiastic ground hopper and horse racing man – these days an official turf turner at Hexham – he also finds time perceptively to put pen to paper.

Anyway, on Monday Keith – who lives in West Boldon, between Sunderland and South Shields – had a double up, beginning with a letter about Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s supposed status as King o’ the North.

“Sir” he wrote. “Andy Burnham is widely referred to as King of the North. However, to those of us living in the north, Manchester is the Midlands at best, if not the south. To those of us in the old Co Durham, even places such as Middlesbrough are the south.”

Thereafter he was racing at Redcar, invited to judge the best turned out horse in the seventh, the £50 prize going to Angela Cruddes who’d groomed Where’s the Crumpet, trained by David Thompson.

PS Keith’s the one on the right.

PPS Redcar’s somewhere down south.

*The image atop the page is courtesy of former Northern Echo editor (and Arsenal supporter) Peter Barron, who now does PR for Redcar racecourse but had himself been invited to judge the best turned out at Catterick, shortly after becoming editor.

“I ignored the horses and gave the prize to the poorest, most emaciated looking stable lad who appeared most in need. It went not to the best turned out horse, but to the worst turned out stable lad.”

*Accumulated in former times, a great A-Z of “word” books crowds, cobwebbed, on these shelves. Titles range from Balderdash and Piffle (“English words and their curious origins”) to More tea, Vicar (“an embarrassment of domestic catch phrases.”)

By no means for the first time, alas, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable – pages unnumbered, content compendious – serves only to drive the reader to drink.

Under “crumpet” it merely advises to see under “muffin” and under “muffin” simply supposes that crumpet is an unsweetened soft cake and a word of uncertain origin.

How not to say what you mean – an Oxford dictionary of euphemisms – is more helpful.- “a person or persons of the opposite sex viewed sexually” it defines.

British slang: an uncensored A-Z of the people’s language adds that “more than one beauty with brains” has been dubbed “the thinking man’s crumpet.”

It’s possible, of course, that connections of the best turned out in the seventh were simply seeking the tea tent.

Thinking: Joan Bakewell Picture: BBC

*British slang is doubtless correct but the phrase “thinking man’s crumpet” is said to have been coined in the 1960s by comedian and script writer Frank Muir in salute to author and broadcaster Joan Bakewell.

Unmoved by changing perceptions, Radio Times in 2003 held a vote for the thinking man’s crumpet of the day, the popular nomination going to Nigella Lawson. Others so saluted have included Joanna Lumley, Anne Gregg, Kate Bush and Felicity Kendall.

Dame Joan Bakewell, now 93, was once asked – probably asked very many times, truth to tell – what she thought of the appelation. “It was meant as a compliment, I suppose” she said, “but it was a little biy of a put-down, too.”

*Still with word games, we’d cause back on May 15 not only to mention the giant sequoia tree but to wonder if any word in the English language had more successive vowels.

It also prompted Sunderland FC editor Paul Dobson to send an image of sequoia leaves – enormous things – though with a commensurate copyright caveat carefully conformed.

Alan Hamilton extends it to five successive vowels – queueing, allowed by the dictionaries – but also miaoued, what a cat did in the past.

David Nichoslon wonders if he might have aieee – the sound of a beaten Bunter – adding that “euoi” is frequently and legitimately employed by Scrabble buffs anxious to get shot. “Sometimes defined as an ancient cry” says Dave. “The tally-ho of its time.”

Never knowingly short changed, Alan comes back with euouae – “a medieval musical term” he supposes.Though supposedly legitimate amid the Scrabble babble, googling discloses that it’s not just a nmenonic but a Latin nmemonic and thus outlawed around here.

A little reluctantly, Mr Hamilton has been shown a red card – serious vowel play.

Bargain price: Willis Walker in Nottinghamshire CCC blazer

Anticipating the centenary weekend of the day that it hosted Durham Big Meeting, the May 13 blog took a dander around Burnhope, a former pit village a few miles west of the city.

Among more prominent Burnhope lads, we said, had been Wally Coates – Coates of many colours – whose nomadic football career had included the winning goal when Leeds United clinched a first-ever top division promotion in 1923-24.

It reminded the compendiously knowledgable Steve Smith of an extraordinary event in Leeds football history a few years earlier, when the entiree team was sold, one by one, at auction.

One was from Esh Winning, that virtual footballer factory a few miles south of Burnhope; another was born in Gosforth, played with distinction for South Shields, had an outstanding county cricket career and ran a successful sports shop.

Since it mired the Football League in all manner of shenannigans, it might on so glorious a Spring day as today be with some certainty supposed that there’s nothing new under the sun.

*The team was Leeds City, not Leeds United. Though allowed to resume in the second division in 1919-20, City were under investigation for what formally were called “irregular practices” during the war. They were found guilty and chucked out after eight games, matters said to have been made worse because of club officials refusal to co-operate.

Among those suspended from all football was Herbert Chapman, the team manager at the start of the war, who seems to have made a remarkable comeback with Huddersfield Town and (of course) with the Arsenal.

City’s fixtures were taken over by Port Vale, Leeds United taking the place of Leeds City Reserves in the Midland League and by 1920-21 – identified only as “Leeds” – were back in the second division

At the Metropole Hotel, meanwhile, City’s team was put up for auction. “Arrangements will be made for the players to be accessible so that negotiations can be completed at once” newspaper advertisements announced.

Sixteen players were sold for a total of £9,250, others left on the shelf like the little boy who Santa Claus forgot. It sounded rather like one of those Roman slave auctions, 2,000 years earlier, ball and chain optional.

*Quite a lot, Willis Walker was born in Gosforth in November 1892 and in 1917-19 served with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve on Tyneside. On joining Nottinghamshire Cricket Club in 1913, however, he’d not only knocked a couple of years off his age but claimed that he was a local, in order to avoid residential qualification.

As a cricketer, said always immaculately to be turned out, he played until 1937, amassing 18,259 first class runs and on ten occasions topping 1,000 for the season. “He is a batsman of economy, a batsman who plays by the book of arithmetic but he adds up his runs without a blot” wrote Neville Cardus.

As a footballer he kept goal, under the hotel hammer for £800, made 192 second division appearances for the Mariners of South Shields and had spells with Bradford Park Avenue and Stockport County. He also opened a sports shop (above) in Keighley which was run by family members until 2012.

Willis Walker died in 1991, just one short of his century. Now that all this Indian Premier League bidding’s going on, wonders Steve Smith, was Walker the first cricketer to be sold at auction – and no matter as a footballer.

*The Esh Winning lad was Bill Hopkins who while a colliery blacksmith had played at centre half for Esh Winning Rangers, Crook Town and Stanley United before signing for Sunderland – ten appearances, no goals – in 1911. He’d subsequently joined Leeds City for £50, his £600 auction price – also paid by South Shields – a considerable mark-up.

After two seasons with the Mariners – two goals, 65 games – he joined Hartlepools United for what was supposed a “considerable” fee, so must have been £50 at least. For Pools he scored once in 56 games, moving thereafter as player/coach to Durham City – then in the Third Division North – for whom he scored five in 57.

Some knew him as Pop, apparently, others – slightly inexplicably – as Tot.

All the lads, the Sunderland potted biographies, supposes him “an efficient performer known for being strong and fearless”; A Century of Poolies reckons him to have been “gutsy”.

He later became a trainer with several other clubs, lastly with Barnsley. While preparing his team for a big FA Cup tie against Man United he became ill and died at their Blackpool hotel. He was 49.

*Headed “expansion”, the section of the Football League’s excellent centenary history covering seasons 1919-30 makes no mention of the Leeds City lot, though extolling Herbert Chapman. “It was an age that belonged to one man above all….”

The chapter starts with a quote by J B Priestley, from The Good Companions, published in 1928. “Football turned you into a member of a new community, all brothers together for an hour and a half, for not only had you escaped from the clanking machinery of this lesser life, from work, wages, rent, doles, sick pay, insurance cards, nagging wives, ailing children, bad bosses, idle workmen, but you had escaped with most of your mates and your neighbours, with half the town, and there you were, cheering together, thumping one another on the shoulders, swapping judgements like lords of the earth, having pushed your way through a turnstile into another and altogether more splendid kind of life, hurtling with Conflict and yet passionate and beautiful in the Art.”

Nothing new under the sun? It is for others to divine.

Up for the Cup: Alan Milroy leaps into action for Willington, at Crook in the FA Anateur Cup

It was the second week of the season, August 26 1961, when Alan Milroy made his debut in goal for Shildon, a Northern League game at Whitley Bay. Shildon lost 12-0, school teacher Ken Bowron – later a favourite at Berwick Rangers – hitting six.

Back home in Bishop Auckland, Alan met for commisserations with his best friend Keith Waine, Bishops’ goalie – and they’d just lost 8-4 to Ferryhill Athletic.

“At least you did better than I did” said Keith, to some incredulity. Turned out he’d been reading the Pink, in which the match report ended at half-time.

“You should have read the stop press” said Alan.

On the infrequent occcasions that our paths crossed, I always reminded Alan of that occasion – and always, always, he took it in good part. It’s a real sadness to learn that he has died, at the age of 84.

Alan had already played for Evenwood Town and Spennymoor United before joining the Railwaymen and got about a bit thereafter – sometimes at centre forward for the likes of Bishop Aucland and Willington – before playing minor league football with the likes of Bakelite, the Aycliffe plastics factory where he worked, for Old Vinovians and for Cockfield.

One of his finest hours – there were many – was for Willington in an FA Amateur Cup tie at neighbours Crook Town, January 2 1965 (above), Willington beating the holders 1-0 just as they had in 1955 when Crook were also holders.

“There were rumours after the game that all was not well at the Millfield ground and that there had been arguments over team selections” says the club history.

Alan and his family had moved up to Cockfield on the west Durham fells in 1977, loved it, gained a reputation as a champion snow shifter. He’d also played cricket, enjoyed his bowls and his golf, was said to hover between darts board and dominoes board.

His son Jonathan was himself an outstanding Northern League player, perhaps best remembered for his role in West Auckland’s magnificent run to the FA Cup first round in 1998-99.

“My dad still loved talking about that infamous game at Whitley Bay” says Jonathan.

Alan’s funeral is on Thursday June 4 at 11am at St Mary’s church in Cockfield – and alas I won’t be able to make it to pay tribute to a true sportsman, a genuine competitor and a lovely guy. Jonathan will be giving the eulogy – you can be sure, he says, that there’ll be something about that 12-0.

*On March 31 we reported the death, at 81, of former Bishop Auckland FC secretary and chairman Charlie Townsend. Last Thursday’s blog noted that a striking image of Charlie had mysteriously appeared outside the club shop, near the town’s Market Place, where he was greatly familiar.

Fellow former chairman Steve Newcomb has now provided images – but confesses still to have no idea of the identity of the artist. “The Banksy of Bishop Auckland” says Steve, “but he’s done Charlie proud.”

Houston, we have a problem….

*Westerdale Moor’s in North Yorkshirem about 12 miles south of Guisborough. Chronicling village cricket thereabouts, yesterday’s blog also recalled the occasion in 1999 when amateur astronauts Jago Packer and Alan Bullock – the White Rose Rocket Society – sought lift-off amid the lapwings.

Ray Ion, ever invaluable, provides corroboration from The Times. “Its creators looked on as the rocket turned into a giant Roman candle” wrote Russell Jenkins, adding that the inventors knew why it had gone pear-shaped (may a rocket go pear-shaped?) and that they’d be aiming high again within months.

“We learned a lot of lessons out there today, we just have to pick ourselves up” said Packer, said to have been a phamaceutical rep from York, in the manner of a football manager beaten 12-0.

“A wet fart” GMTV had less chivalrously reported.

The paper also supposed that Steve Bennett – “the rocket man of Salford” – was thus ahead in the space race and still he seems to have his nose cone in front.

Mr Bennett’s earliest attempts had been powered by sugar and “a secret vital ingredient”, thus winning him sponsorship from Tate and Lyle.

The Manchester Evening News in 2024 reported that Bennett was still aiming high through his Starchaser Industries company, had turned Morecambe Bay sands into England’s Cape Canaveral but liked to launch from the Otterburn area of Northumberland, too.

“He is” the MEN concluded, “the Elon Musk of Greater Manchester”.

Ready for take off? Westerdale

Westerdale is a North Yorkshire Moors village about a dozen miles south of Guisborough, home to fewer than 200 people and more than a million midges.

It’s there on Friday evening that we essay the season’s second cricket match, Westerdale v Slingsby in the Countess of Feversham Cup, though it’s other matters which chiefly, incredulously, dominate the conversation.

As ever on these occasions, the driver and travelling companion is fellow Feversham League vice-president Richard Scruton. When applied to Richard, the term “incredulous” may be translated as “Don’t believe a bloody word of it”. And yet….

Amid the usual domestic details – confluence of three little streams known as Esklets, 19th century church, humpy-backed bridge – Westerdale’s otherwise modest Wikipedia page offers something rather more unexpected.

In July 1999, it says, high on Westerdale Moor, “amateur” rocket scientists Alan Bullock and Jago Packer attempted to win a £6,400,000 prize by becoming the first Britons to fire a rocket 20,000ft into the heavens, aka Space. Patriotically, they called the 9ft rocket White Rose – and they’d made their own fuel, too.

So great the excitement, a GMTV crew was persuaded to be in attendance for the launch, sending despatches from atop Westerdale to a waking nation combining wonderment and Weetabix.

And that’s where the Space odyssey becomes a little – well – odd. Even 27 years ago, even on the North Yorkshire moors, 20,000ft didn’t seem much of a giant leap for mankind.

The British Interplanetary Society had been formed as far back as 1933, the British space programme had been launched by the Churchill government in 1952, ten years later the first British satellite – Ariel 1 – was launched from Cape Canaveral, the National Space Centre opened soon afterwards and in 1991 Helen Sharman became the country’s first astronaut.

So what was going on atop Westerdale Moor on a summer morning in 1999 to foster such excitement about a journey into space?

The countdown continued. At zero hour, alas, the top half of the rocket burst into flames before exploding. The bottom half disintegrated. “It wasn’t even a good explosion” grumbled GMTV reporter Richard Mackney, somewhat ungraciously adding that the whole thing had resembled a “wet fart”.

Galactical googling reveals nothing more, not another mention. There was an Alan Bullock who was a prominent historian – wrote a biography of Hitler and was ennobled – another who was professior of Italian literature at Leeds University. Neither seems likely to have been up on the moors that supersonic summer morning.

The tranquil village offers no evidence that once it stood on history’s hem. There’s no blue plaque, nothing on the single notice board save news of a coffee morning and, on June 6, the visit of a “pop-up” archive. Who knows what history that might encompass.

Jago Packer is a rather more unusual moniker, of course, and there’s a gentleman of that name at a distillery in Market Weighton, opposite end of the White Rose county.

Rum do? Perhaps we should track him down; perhaps Richard Scruton will go where no man has gone before. It’s not rocket science, after all.

*Inis Blackwell may herself be heading for the stars. Not 17 until next Saturday, the all-rounder played village cricket for Westerdale’s men but latterly has been with Yorkshire’s women’s team, bagging 4-61 against Durham a couple of weeks back.

That Yorkshire still lost may partly be because the last four were all run out, something of a yes-no interlude, apparently.

On Friday afternoon Yorkshire had been playing The Blaze, formerly Lightning, nee Nottinghamshire, though Inis wasn’t in the team.

Scenically set, the village ground’s at the foot of a one-in-five, Friday’s game starting at the same time as the Blast competition nationwide. Westerdale in turn blast away, 137-3 from their allotted 16 overs.

Seldom seriously challenging, Slingsby, including Feversham League chairman John Hatfield, close on 97-6 but should not be discouraged. There’ve been bigger disasters on Westerdale moor.

*More on the glorious Gunners, not least that the younger bairn – unable for various reasons to have much of a family celebration last Tuesday evening – made up for it today with a barbecue party at the family home in Hemel Hempstead. He made his own rather splendid banner – above – too.

Not everyone at Arsenal’s so greatly on the ball, however. Blog reader John Briggs forwards a report that last Saturday’s Under 18s game at Brighton had to be postponed because the team bus ended up at Bournemouth, 75 miles away.

Newcastle United fan Neil McKay, meanwhile, notes that if Arsenal lift the Champions League next Saturday they’ll be the first English team to lift a European trophy in Budapest for 57 years.

“I forget who the last one was” he adds.

A load of….Hawkesbury Ronaldo

It’s ten years ago today since my last FA Vase final as Northern League chairman. Morpeth Town, known as the Highwaymen, played Hereford United, known for more obvious reasons as the Bulls and with a great big bovine – answered to Hawkesbury Ronaldo – as mascot.

“He’s a big boy” Hereford manager Peter Beale had observed, though as much was self-evident.

United wanted to parade Ronaldo around Wembley before the match – other clubs had little kids in oversized shorts – and after the sort of rigorous risk assesment reserved for big beasts in football stadiums, the FA somewhat surprisingly agreed.

This, of course, was the organisation which not many years previously had refused Tow Law Town’s mascot permission to appear at the FA Vase final on that grounds that – well – he was a little kid in oversized shorts.

Bull by the horns, the papers loved it. Others didn’t. “Hawkesbury Ronaldo will likely be terrified and alarmed when subject to that amount of shouting” said PETA, more expansively People for the Ethtical Treatment of Animals.

Others were less sure, Giles Smith in The Times anxious to point out that Vase final crowds weren’t usually all that big. “In terms of noise and crowding, Ronaldo will probably have known a more intense time of it at the Herefordshire Country Fair, particularly if he’s been located next to the generator for the ice cream van.”

Was he bound to hate it, Smith wondered. “Maybe he’ll end up having fun.”

He didn’t.

*The match kicked off on the Sunday lunchtime, several thousand Morpeth fans – or it seemed – colonising the Morpeth Arms, a pub on the Thames embankment, the night before.

Immediately across the river stood MI5 headquarters, marked on the London A-Z simply as “government offices” but so open a secret that they might as well have put a giant neon sign on the roof and sold advertising space to sponsors.

The pub overflowed with folk in black and yellow shirts. The brewery, forewarned, had rebadged London Pride ale as Morpeth Pride, Town’s magnificently magnanimous chairman Ken Beattie seemingly standing about six rounds simultaneously.

The Highwaymen had a mascot dressed as Dick Turpin, permission refused for him to carry a pistol – even a replica – for fear it might rile Ronaldo. “We’ve now got our mascot a sword” said Ken, “cut the bugger’s head off instead.”

*Seven years earlier, Hereford had been playing the likes of Leicester City in League One. The club had folded, re-formed in the Midland Alliance and had won their previous 22 games before Wembley. “Aye” said Morpeth manager Nick Gray, “but they haven’t played a Northern League team, have they?”

Five years earlier Morpeth had been bottom of the Northern League second division, four wins in 38 games, would have been relegated had anyone been thought suitable to take their place. Then they appointed Nick Gray.

In 2015-16, yet wetter than usual, they’d not played a league match for three months, began the second half of their fixtures on March 21 and had played 17 games in the 41 days before the final.

In the Bobby Moore suite at the stadium the bookies were offering 9-2 against a Morpeth win after 90 minutes, the first six names on the list of “opening scorer” possibilities all Hereford men.

So it proved, United taking the lead barely before the lass had finished singing the National Anthem. Puns like “Taurus apart” came fleetingly to mind, the thought of a final FA protest on the grounds that Hereford was in Wales, or had been, or might have been.

Then on 31 minutes, bull by the horns, Chris Swales equalised. Swales was 45, known to team mates as Uncle Albert and to the media as the Bionic Man, so complex the medical Meccano set which every morning got him out of bed.

The second half proved almost wholly one-sided, and perhaps as only Nick Gray had anticipated, goals from Luke Carr, Shaun Taylor and Sean Bell sending the Highwaymen happily homeward. Hawkesbury Ronaldo, of course, went off with tail between his legs.

It was the Northern League’s seventh Vase win in eight seasons, the 12th time in my 20 years as chairman that at least one team had been at Wenbley. Northern League clubs, said the programme, had lit up the Vase.

Two weeks later I formally retired. After 20 years in the royal box, it was back to the bob end.

*Morpeth’s semi-final celebration pictured on the cover, the occasion also marked the end after 28 years of Northern Ventures Northern Gains, the league magazine.

The editorial explained why “League” had always been capitalised. “It always seemed to me to be stylisticaly correct. This wasn’t just any old football league it was the league, simply the best.”

Elsewhere the league was preparing to welcome Blyth Town from the Northern Alliance and Stockton Town from the Wearside League, Bedlington Terriers had won the annual programme competition – North Shields second – the Secret Shopper initiative was closing the shutters, and former Amateur Cup winners like Jack Snowdon (Willington) and Frank Palmer and Bobby Watson had all died.

Back on the road, the Last Legs walks when I , accompanied by some willing volunteers, walked to all 42 grounds, had topped £20,000 and would finish on £28,000. Thanks to the volunteers, the clubs and supporters. It was the end of the road.

Rush job: Simon Rushworth at Sporting Memories Picture: Peter Jackson

Sports journalist Simon Rushworth, a bright burnished raconteur de force, spoke at today’s Sporting Memories session at Bishop Auckland FC.

Mostly he wrote about football, mostly the Mags, but has had a 30-year association with Newcastle Eagles basketball team and also waxes lyrical on the music scene, his favourites Def Leppard (etymologically uncertain, probably misspelt.)

Chiefly, though, Simon told of testing times with successive Newcastle United managers – KK, Kenny, even the blessed Sir Bob. “I wouldn’t say I enjoyed getting told off by Sir Bobby but I probably did” he observed, enigmatically.

He’d started on the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle in 1996, the early days at least free of the pestilential posse of media minders now employed by top football clubs – bottom ones, too – in an arm-twisting, access endangering attempt to ensure that the press stays on-message.

Simon was a Blyth boy, followed the Spartans, as a 12-year-old produced his own little newspaper – “sold it to my granny and granddad for 5p” – never wanted to do anything else.

“If I’d heard of him I’d have wanted to be Mike Amos” he said, kindly.

Among his first jobs was to help turn out United, a weekly magazine funded by the club but produced by the Chronicle and its sisters. An 8 30 appearance at the training ground ensured unfettered access to other early arrivals, the players usually happy to talk and to seek columns of their own.

Steve Howey had a cookery column – “you can imagine the abuse off some of the lads” – Robbie Elliott had a music column; everyone else wanted one.

There was a calendar, too, and everyone wanted to be on that – “there were only 12 months, of course, and Davide Ginola had about three of them. I don’t think anyone was going to make a fortune.”

The players loved it all, Kevin Keegan didn’t, refusing an interview and eventually demanding that the rookie Rushworth be shown a red card and never again work in the inky trade. “I was devastated” said Simon. “He was my absolute hero as a kid.”

Happily the Chronicle editor decreed that it was he and not the United manager who decided which journalists he should employ.

Sir Bobby was different, often, surprisingly, assailing the right to independence and to objectivity – “sometimes he’d be absolutely furious” – but always agreeable and obliging thereafter.

And Kenny Dalglish? “He just sulked and stewed”.

Simon also ghosted Supermac’s column, based on Friday morning chats in Pumphrey’s coffee shop – “he was very erudite, a very clever man.”

These days he’s self-employed – sport, music, bit of PR – and was responsible for media coverage of the Princess Royal’s recent visit to Colman’s fish and chip palace at South Shields. It’s said, of course that today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping They wouldn’t be if young Rushworth still held the back page.

*Back on the May bank holiday,it may be recalled, we reported on the Alan Hood Cup final – a Wearside League competition – between Barnard Castle and South Moor.

Alan Hood, we said, had been a local league player in the east Durham area before becoming a Football League linesman. He was killed in a road accident.

Among today’s Sporting Memories men is Barry Poole, a Bishops player more than half a century ago, who recalled a match at Blyth Spartans (them again) in 1970-71. Alan Hood was Bishops’ captain.

“We were losing 3-2, thought we’d had it, when Alan scored this wonderful goal from 40 yards out. The next day’s Sunday Sun said it had been scored by Barry Poole, the centre half.”

Barry pauses – “it was probably the best goal I ever scored” he says – then pauses again. “Come to think, it was probably the only one, an’ all.”

Action station Picture: LNER

*The day begins with a platonically loving Spoonsful in Darlington and a chance to read the Northern Echo – questions asked about the value for money of the repurposed Darlington railway station (about £140m) and of the new Bishop Auckland bus station (about £11.8m, estimates vary.)

There’s also a story about Durham’s new bus station, opened two years ago, scaffolded almost ever since and now to be subject of a seven-month repair job. “Hugely disappointing, a constant blot on the city” says local MP Mary Kelly Foy.

After Sporting Memories I hoof back into Bishop for a first visit to the new bus station, lose track when trying to count the nail bars in that once-bustling main street, find the bus station well signed, decently seated and with chance to spend a penny for those who have ten bob.

But £11.8m?

Thereafter back down the street to the railway station and the 1 53 to Darlington, arriving not at one of the new platforms as intended but at the platform where it’s stopped for donkeys’ years.

A bit early to judge, maybe, but was that journey really necessary? Did they really need to spend £140m? The king’s new clothes grow more expensive every day.

*Between bus station and railway station in Bishop there’s just time for a quick one in the re-opened Cumberland Arms – “a warm welcome and a mighty fine pint” it says outside.

The welcome’s best termed tepid, the pint’s John Smith’s Smooth.

Outside again, I bump into Pete Sixsmith, as familiar hereabouts as at the Stadium of Light, who recalls being barried from the selfsame pub in 1969 for having long hair.

It would not be a reason for his exclusion today.

*At the end of March we lamented the death of former Bishop Auckland FC chairman Chariie Townsend. Steve Newcomb, another former chairman, reports at today’s Memories meeting that a rather fetching memorial drawing of Charlie has appeared on the wall of the Bishops shop and museum. He has it on his phone and promises to forward it.

“It’s lovely but no one knows who did it. It’s the Banksy of Bishop Auckland” says Steve.

The shop’s not 200 yards from the bus station, a slight detour confirming the artistic appeal. Sadly, however, Steve’s phone’s on the blink and the image can’t now be sent. Tomorrow’s blog if he fixes it.

Trip hazard: Eddie Cavanagh on the run

The elder bairn’s playing a blinder. Not only did he uncork the champagne in the wake of the glorious Gunners’ Premier League triumph – more of that happy event shortly – but mention of Eddie Cavanagh’s incursion in Monday’s blog prompted the lad to send a link (below) to its Fantasy Football League reincarnation.

If you do nothing else this merry May day, do watch Baddiel and Skinner’s hilarious re-enactment.

All this started, remember, with a passing remark that adult West Auckland fans at the 1961 FA Amateur Cup final at Wembley seemed universally – the menfolk, anyway – to be wearing collar and tie.

So, when Everton met Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup final five years later, was former Everton reserve team player Eddie Cavanagh – though he lost his jacket when unsuccessfully pursued by the polliss after a one-man pitch invasion.

Before proceeding, however, it’s only right to acknowledge Penrith FC president and eek-long Wednesday fan Ian White who protests at being reminded of that Wembley day. “You can go off people” he says.

Everton had fought back from two down, the score 2-2 when Eddie decided to make his presence felt. It made him a Goodison legend. For £12 99 it’s still possible to buy an Eddie Cavanagh mug.

The Everton Encyclopaedia supposed him “hysterically jubilant”, noted how he’d wriggled out of his jacket and continued his progress before eventually being thrown out. Evicted, he “indomitably” returned, in time to see Derek Temple’s winner and Brian Labone lift the cup.

Toffeeweb supposed him “a balding, rather overweight little man – football’s first hooligan.”

“The move with the coat was a moment of brilliance as the copper who grabbed it fell in a heap while Eddie ran on in his shirt and braces, a move better suited to Twickenham than to Wembley. Eventually about six of them pinned him down, like he was one of the Great Train robbers.”

Baddiel and Skinner appear to have caught up with him rather more easily, though anxious to urge caution because (they said) he was quite old.

Eddie the Invader died in December 1999, his daughter Andrea telling the Bootle Times that everything in the house had been blue. “We weren’t even allowed to have tomato ketchup, what with it being red, that’s how bad it was.”

Her father, she added, always wore a shirt, tie, suit and braces – “that’s how respectful he was”. Fashions fluctuate, times change.

* Everton’s first two goals had been scored by Mike Trebilcock, a Cornishman, Baddiel and Skinner anxious to pronounce his surname Treb-il-co. In Shildon it was different.

In Shildon back in the day there was a lovely, legendary, laughing policeman – another Cornishman – called Tommy Trebilcok, who’d flown with the Dambusters and been awarded the DFC. The correct pronunciation, he insisted, was Treble-cock – and in Shildon you never argued with Tom Trebilcock.

*Yesterday’s blog recalled my first visit to Highbury, against West Bromwich Albion on September 1 1956. “It’s to be hoped that you enjoyed it more than The Times reporter did” writes Ray Ion, attaching the following Monday’s rather stylish match report (above).

“Anyone remembering the great days of these two sides might have been tempted to leave Highbury at half-time” the report began, continuing in similar vein.

“Worse than Regent’s Park on a Sunday morning” someone else had observed, though whether a reference to football or some other Sabbath activity is unfortunately unclear.

*The blog also reproduced the programme (6d) from that apparently forgettable game – it’s true, save for the ham sandwich I can hardly remember a thing about it – prompting lifelong Middlesbrough fan Eddie Roxburgh to send the programme cover (4d) from his Ayresome Park debut in October 1958.

Boro hosted Fulham, Brian Clough scoring twice but outdone on the day by the Cottagers’ Scottish international striker Graham Leggat, who hit a hat-trick in the 3-2 win.

It wasn’t Leggatt’s only Fulham hat-trick, his three in three minutes against Ipswich Town on Boxing Day 1963 long a speed record until overtaken by Sadio Mane of Southampton, his hat-trick in a 6-1 win over Aston Villa in 2015 timed at 176 seconds – but probably we shouldn’t mention Southampton right now.

We’d also recalled the great Bobby Robson’s part in that Highbury game – signed a few months earlier for £25,000 from Fulham, recalls Baggies fan Steve Smith, and capped 20 times before returning in 1962 to Craven Cottage. Bob was also a good cricketer, says Steve, playing for West Bromwich in the “highly regarded” Birmingham League.

*Thanks for all the genuinely kind messages about the Premier League triumph, though most felt the need to add that it had been an awfully long time coming. Former Hartlepool United chief scout Tommy Miller adds to my list of Highbury experiences the time that I was his directors’ box guest for an FA Cup tie against Cambridge United – Pools being United’s opponents in the next game. It was awfully posh, though perhaps not as thronged as N5 on Tuesday evening.

It’s been a long time away, the Premier League title, and its return is celebrated almost as riotously, as raucously and as royally in DL14 as it is in London N5.

None, of course, is prouder to be a Shildon lad – a Co Durham lad – than I am. So why this lifelong allegiance to the Arsenal (and don’t even ask about Somerset County Cricket Club)?

Probably it began on September 1 1956. Our dear old dad, a Londoner who’d served with the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders but who’d become a Shildon man by marriage, took us on a maiden visit to Highbury, hosting West Bromwich Albion.

Probably it made a greater impression on the elder of the twins. Our kidder still supports Newcastle.

North Bank entry was five shillings, a ham sandwich from a van near the Tube station was a shilling – burgers were still confined to nascent Wimpy bars – the programme (above) a tanner. Volume XXXVII No 3, it said. The crowd was 39,973, only the “three” from Shildon.

The sixpenny programme rued gently how the previous Saturday at Birmingham City the Gunners had led 2-0 with 20 minutes remaining but lost 4-2 – “these things happen from time to time” – offered opposing views on the use of floodlights and noted among the visiting ranks another Co Durham lad, Bobby Robson.

“Albion dived deep into their bank balance to sign this skiful inside forward” it said.

The Metropolitan Police Central Band played Oklahama and The Jolly Jugglers and Viva Mexico, the first division was led by Luton Town followed by Blackpool and another team from North London, the Gunners won 4-1 with goals from Don Roper (2), Derek Tapscott and, perhaps less well remembeed, Mike Tiddy.

Tiddy was a Cornishman who returned to the Grand Duchy, became postmaster, preacher and parish council chairman, played until well into his 50s for the splendidly named Lizard Argyle.

Truth to tell, there were to have been further Cornish connections in today’s blog – and a joyous reprise of Eddie Cavanagh, the pitch invader at the 1966 FA Cup final. It all must wait; today of all days, they’d understand.

*So the infatuation entered adulthood, though almost always from a distance. If the question’s “Where were you when Ray Kennedy headed the title-clinching winner against Spurs in 1971 the answer’s around an elderly transistor radio in the back room of the Red Lion at Shildon but if the supplementary seeks double dealing whereabouts four days later the answer’s at Wembley with, indelibly, Charlie George.

Probably I’ve seen Arsenal more at Wembley than I have at Highbury or the Emirates, though there was always the league match against Sunderland during the course of which Mr Pete Sixsmith sought single-handedly to demolish the dear old stadium (and damn near succeeded.)

There was the 1978 final ( after which it was said that I sulked), the contrasting joy of the 1979 final – for so long the last time Sunderland scored at Wembley – the disappointment of 1980, though some blow bubbles yet.

Then there was the “Up for grabs now” moment, Michael Thomas, though I was in the pub for that one, too.

Tonight I’m following events at Bournemouth on the BBC text service. Twenty-two years, two little ducks. Can we now get them in a row?

*Anticipation, we’re headed to the elder lad’s home in Richmond when Haaland equalises in added time and still en route when the final whistle ends the agony.

Confident, he’s put a bottle of champagne – proper champagne – in the fridge at half-time. Proper fill-the-fluter glasses, too. His daughters (bless them) have been persuaded to wear Arsenal shirts. His lovely wife, though herself a Mag and never likely to wear the red and white, is gracious. Alexa has been instructed to play Good old Arsenal, that great anthem of the 1970s. It reverberates around Richmond.

Messages arrive. Penrith FC president Ian White, who just weeks earlier had written not of bottle but of bottlers, is among the first to offer congratulations. “Never in doubt” he says.

Anxious Spurs fan Gary Brand’s text encompasses just four words. “Congratulations. Bugger. Cheers, Gary.”

Champagne supped, we head suitably scarved to Spoons in the town where none other seems aware of the evening’s epochal events. Somewhat to my surprise, the lad fails to ask – as he and his brother did all the time when younger – who I’d support in the (admittedly improbable) event of Arsenal drawing Shildon in the FA Cup.

Tough call, but the answer would still be Shildon.

Brace yourself: Eddie Kavanagh on the run

The death of Brian Bowmaker, West Auckland’s goalkeeper in the 1961 FA Amateur Cup final, prompted what we supposed a trilogy of Amateur Cup blogs but with the self-mocking caveat that there might be a fourth.

A trilogy, of course, is a work in three parts. There’s a band called Trilogy, just as there was a band called the Temperance Seven, though that was a mite misleading because there were nine of them – you know, one over the eight.

Alert readers pointed out that a trilogy couldn’t have four parts. Our kidder, the brains of the twinset, offered mitigation of sorts. “Douglas Adams, in the fourth book of his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, claimed that it had become “a trilogy in four parts.”

One or other of the earlier posts noted how much had changed since 1961 – not least that almost every adult West supporter, pictured singing in the Wembley rain, was wearing collar and tie.

So they did at 1960s FA Cup finals – even the suitably suited silly beggars who invaded the pitch, as Steve Smith kindly points out.

It was Everton v Sheffield Wedmesday, 1966, the Toffees coming from two down to win 3-2 in what became known (says Steve) as the Trebilcock final – Mike Trebilcock, a Cornishman, scoring twice.

The intruder – well turned out but not what you’d suppose very smart – was Eddie Kavanagh. Even the polliss looked presentable sixty years ago.

Kavanagh, says Steve, went down in Everton folklore. “A very good friend, an Evertonian, told me that one of the players that day became godfather to one of Kavanagh’s children.”

And that wraps up the Toffees.

*Brian Bowmaker’s funeral service will be held on Tuesday May 19 at 1 30pm in the chapel of Charles Mace and Sons, 42 Castlegate, Berwick-upon-Tweed TD15 iJT. It will also be streamed.

Losing count? The Temperance Seven

*The Temperance Seven were chiefly Chelsea art students, though “Whispering” Paul; McDowell – the lead singer – had been a road sweeper.

They had a No 1 hit with You’re driving me crazy, a No 4 with Pasadena and several other chart entries. I saw them in 2017 at Middlesbrough Theatre, which for long years was called Middlesbrough Little Theatre until someone counted 484 seats and decided that Middlesbrough Middle-sized Theatre sounded a bit clunky.

By 2017 there appeared to be eight of the Seven – none of them original band members and dressed, as the subsequent column observed, like an illustration from a Just William story – spats, smoking jackets and those two-tone co-respondent shoes shod for the late Brian Johnston when holding forth on Test Match Special.

We chatted in the bar beforehand – abstinence not particularly evident then either. Their music was memorable, age rather than ale compelling rather stiff jointed walking, like an elderly retainer in an Eric Sykes film.

It was a memorable night; here’s to Temperance.

*Still with the Test Match Special team – from our own co-respondent, it might almost be supposed – the Sunday Times devotes 500-or-so words to the news that former England quickie Jonathan Agnew has taken to the euphonium, playing with the Melton Band in Leicestershire.

Their favourite piece, apparently, is called Barnard Castle – as if the old place hadn’t had enough publicity of late – written by the late Goff Richards, like Mike Trebilcock a Cornishman.

Supplication to Stephen Brenkley, Barney boy and president of the town’s cricket club, fails to produce a note of clarification but takes us back to Jimmy Delaney, recalled the other day as perhaps the only footballer to win national cups – Scotland, England, Ireland – in three different decades.

Maybe so, says Steve, but what of Barney boy Jimmy Welford who either side of 1900 won league titles with Aston Villa, Glasgow Celtic and Lisburn and also won cup finals with Villa and Celtic – though he missed out on Villa’s double win when his place was taken by Albie Evans, another Barney boy.

Reputedly a hard drinker, Welford is also the only Celtic player to have scored a first-class cricket century – for Warwickshire – before returning home to smite, mighty, for Barnard Castle.

*Since we’ve been recalling the centenary of the 1926 general strike, and of Burnhope big meeting, it would be unchivalrous not to mention Stephen Brenkley’s excellent book A striking summer sub-titled “How cricket united a divided nation” – which masterfully chronicles those difficult days. Published by Fairfield Books, it costs £20.