Searching for something else, as is the way, I come across a September 2004 column following the death of Brian Clough. With a cover captioned “Tales of young big’ ead”, the Northern League magazine (above) carried a similar report.
Clough, of course, had started his senior career with Billingham Synthonia, three goals in five games at the end of 1952-53, but only one in the 9-2 defeat of Stanley United on April 25.
He’d also played in a pioneering floodlit match against Evewood Town on Synners’ old Belasis Lane ground. The late and lovely Jackie Weatherall still kept the report from the Billingham Express: ” Not only was the lighting good but the soccer was grand to watch, too. Clough combined the skill, vigour and guile of a veteran campaigner.”
Clough, the only member of his large family to fail the 11+, had been an ICI appretice alongside that great Synners stalwart Peter Lax, pictured above in conversation with Jackie Weatherall.
Peter recalled that, as young apprentices, he and Cloughy would meet at fortnightly education sessions enlivened by debates between one side of the room and the other.
“It was hopeless” said Peter. “No one else could get a word in edgeways.”
Peter also remembered that, while on National Service, he’d picked up a paper in an Egyptian NAAFI which recorded a Clough hat-trick for Middlesbrough. “I thought it couldn’t be my mate who could only score one against Stanley United” he said. “History shows I was mistaken.”
*My column had more. Had Cloughy really come close to becoming Labour parliamentary candidate for Richmond, the Tory fiefdom in North Yorkshire presently nursed by Rishi Sunak? Certainly he had.
It was 1965, Clough was manager of Hartlepools United and John Curry, the club chairman, was also leader of the Conservative group on the borough council. His own left wing views notwithstanding, the manager would speak in the chairman’s support.
“Brian wasn’t one to let politics or religion get in the way of ambition” Curry once observed.
The Labour Party in Richmond tried hard to get their man. “”He was famous, well liked and talked a lot” said Richard Hoyle, who’d twice previously tilted at that electoral windmill. “He’d have rubbed shoulders with men like Gaitskell and Wilson, a great experience for a beginner.”
Cloughy finally decided against it. Labour lost as usual.
*The league magazine in November 2004 also reported that a huge crater had opened in the bottom goalmouth at Tow Law’s Ironworks Road ground. “If it had been at the other end the pitch would have been flat for the first time ever” said Steve Moralee, club secretary then as now.
Consett were on the verge of leaving Belle Vue, their home for 54 years; Newcastle Benfield’s Sam Smith’s ground had had an £85,000 makeover, Vince Kirkup had become manager at Brandon United and Northern League clubs had overwhelmingly opted against promotion under the FA’s “geographically chaotic” system.
Esh Winning general manager Roli Bell spoke for very many. “If the Northern League is clarts, then we’re very little pigs” he said.
*The magazine in November 2004 also reported that membership of the Northern League Club, tirelessly run by Martin and Denise Haworth, had surpassed its seasonal best as early as September.
Martin died on March 15. His funeral at the Northumberland Woodland Burial Centre (NE65 9QJ) is at 1 45pm on Thursday April 4 and not 1 15pm as earlier recorded.
*Tom Lynn, a passionate Sunderland man and a fanzine pioneer, died on Tuesday. He was just 66 and will be remembered with a minute’s applause in the 66th minute of next Monday’s home match with Blackburn Rovers.
Tom was one of that wonderful band whose input for so many years helped keep my Northern Echo head above water, particularly when he edited the Wearside Roar fanzine. Under the byline Touchline Tommy he also contributed regular columns of his own to the Sunderland Star.
“He was immensely proud of his home city as well as its football team” says Paul Dobson, editor of A Love Supreme fanzine to which Tom also contributed.
Others recall his role in the 1996 record Cheer up Peter Reid – “We once thought of you as a Scouser dressed in blue” – sung to the tune of the Monkees’ Daydream believer. That’s Tom, second right in the chorus, with the Sunderland manager.
He’d run a television shop in the city centre, had been greatly enthused at the prospect of the new film studios envisaged for Wearside, followed Sunderland everywhere and still found time to mark my column’s card. Rest in peace, old friend.
Grass Routes 