Nostalgia sets in again

Posted by Tony Hutton

Although football is very low on my list of priorities these days, I still have lots of football memories from the dim and distant past when men were men and not constant whingers and moaners.

I can well understand John Winn's pride in Darlington's great Wembley victory, which I had already read about in this morning's Northern Echo, bought really for it's excellent league cricket coverage.

It reminded me of another great day I attended at Wembley in 1975 to be precise, when Matlock Town, where I was living at the time, also reached the F.A. Trophy final and beat the favourites, Scarborough 4-0. A marvellous day for almost the entire population of the town.

However back to the cricket and Johnny Bairstow's maiden century took me back to 1976
when I was fortunate enough to be present at Acklam Park, Middlesborough when David Bairstow scored his maiden century for Yorkshire.


It was a remarkable high-scoring game in the days of three day championship cricket, when the first innings was limited to 100 overs per side. Glamorgan had batted first and scored 349-7 with captain Alan Jones making 132. That was on the Saturday and on Sunday the teams decamped to Headingley for a John Player league game which Yorkshire won by five wickets.

I went to Middlesborough for the second days's play on Monday and Bairstow, batting unusually high in the order at number four, had been joined by night watchman Geoff Cope when Yorkshire slumped to 60-3. The two of them put on an unlikely partnership of 164, Cope making only 57 (so very similar to Bairstow junior and Sidebottom last week). Bairstow made 106 and Yorkshire just took a first innings lead with 352-8 declared.

That was excitement enough, but on Tuesday, when I was back at work, after Jones made his second hundred of the match, 156 not out in fact, Glamorgan declared on 320-3 setting Yorkshire the seemingly impossible target of 318 in three and a quarter hours. This time it was captain Boycott who was the hero.

Boycott played one of his best ever innings for the county, scoring 156 not out.
He scored his last 99 runs off only 81 balls and timed his effort to perfection with Yorkshire winning with just ten balls to spare. Wisden made the following acerbic comment - 'Glamorgan paid the price for some fielding that fell well below the expected standards.'

Amazing how these memories of so long ago can be triggered by today's events.