My own stellar football career – Ending up playing alongside Peter Beardsley… | OneFootball

Time to tell all loyal readers about my own stellar footfall career, into which will be interwoven a very short – but very difficult – quiz.

The first question is actually quite easy – everyone should get this one.

I was born in Dunston, where my father kept a butcher’s shop (His best customer for a while was a famous gangster, but that’s another – and quite gruesome – story).

Question: which other famous footballer was also born in Dunston (All quiz answers are at the end of the article but if you can, please try and work the answers out before you look)?

Our family moved to Swalwell when I was two, although my father kept the shop, and I and my siblings started school at Dunston Hill School. All my home friends went to Swalwell Secondary Modern. I moved on to the RGS in Jesmond – a rugby playing school. I remember watching the 1955 Cup Final on our brand new 14 inch telly (14 inch was posh, believe me) but I wasn’t that interested. All I remember is that it was a very hot day.

I became interested in football as soon as I went to my first Newcastle United game, despite the hailstorm halfway through. Then I started playing with my friends, on the street, or on the Swalwell school pitch, which was opposite our house – we sneaked through a hole in the fence.

By the time I was sixteen I realised I was never going to be much good. The only way I could get a game was to start a junior club, so one of my pals and I formed the (very) short lived Swalwell Boys, and enrolled us in the North Tyneside Methodist league.

At long last we come to the second question. We (Swalwell) had a centre forward who lived to score goals. Apart from that he wasn’t so good. However, a Middlesborough scout saw something in him and he signed junior forms for them. He went on to have a pretty successful career, playing for Boro (late 60s/early 70s) in the old First Division, then for Carlisle (1972-1976) when they were quite good. As he got on a bit he made his way down the lower leagues, but could always get a game somewhere: latterly in the midfield, somewhat surprisingly. I last remember him at Mansfield in the early 1980s. Question: who was he (Again, answer down below if you can’t get it)?

Some years later I taught law at Nottingham University. The law students ran a very good Sunday League side and I got a game at left back (I ask you: a tricky left winger like me, playing left back). Our best player’s uncle was David Nish, of Leicester City and no, I don’t want our best player’s name.

However, I do want the name of the university’s best player at that time. He gave up his university studies in 1982 to play for Watford but didn’t make the Cup Final side (losing finalists to Everton in 1984). He played about 600 games for pretty good clubs, including Oldham, Leeds, and Manchester City. He made the England squad twice, but never played. Question: who is he (Again, answer down below)?

As for me, I went to California, where I played in the sunshine long before US soccer became what it now is. Then it was mainly popular with women, children, Mexicans and ex-pats. The best player I ever played with had been a reserve for Hibernian, but couldn’t get a game because Pat Stanton, the Scottish international, was in the way.

That’s apart from one other. In my early fifties I paid to play in a charity match at St James’ Park. We were given personalised shirts, use of the main changing rooms, and a star player from the St James’s staff. Our star was Peter Beardsley. We won. Enough said.