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<\/p>\nOne-time Roker Park forward Willie Watson was famously capped by England in both football and cricket, and two decades on, members of the Sunderland squad showed that they too could turn their hand to the summer sport. <\/p>\n
Chester-Le-Street\u2019s Ropery Lane, home of Chester-le-Street Cricket Club since 1866 and now just a couple of minutes\u2019 walk from Durham County Cricket Club\u2019s Riverside stadium, was the venue for a charity tournament in which several big-name figures were taking part. <\/p>\n
Popular Sunderland names of the past and present were in attendance, as were several other well-known footballers and athletes, with the event seeing local firms sponsoring participants \u00a310 for each wicket they got, \u00a310 for each catch they took, and \u00a32 for every run scored, with the proceeds going towards the costs of a new residential unit for autistic children that was to be built near Sunderland. <\/p>\n
Recently appointed Newcastle United manager Gordon Lee \u2014 who spent part of his weekend house-hunting in the area \u2014 earned \u00a344, whilst his Middlesbrough counterpart Jack Charlton pulled in \u00a350. <\/p>\n
Malcolm Macdonald, who was caught by Preston North End gaffer Bobby Charlton and about to seal a move to Arsenal in the coming days, went even better by adding \u00a370 to the pot, and come the end of the day, the total raised stood at around \u00a31,500.<\/p>\n
England Test international and local boy done good Colin Milburn was on hand to present awards to some of those that had taken part, with Alan Foggon being named \u2018Man of the Match\u2019. The Boro forward would join Sunderland later in the decade, yet The Lads were already well represented at the competition with Len Shackleton, a well-regarded club level cricketer in his day, leading the way.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Colin Todd delivers<\/p>\n
Also flying the flag was his former teammate Ken Chisholm, plus Charlie Hurley, Bob Stokoe, Ian Porterfield, Bobby Kerr, Richie Pitt, Bob Moncur, Vic Halom, Martin Harvey, Colin Todd and Jim Montgomery. <\/p>\n
Olympic medallist David Jenkins took part too, as did Derby County manager Dave Mackay, who followed up his recent Football League title with victory in this event. In the morning, The Sunday Sun had listed the small sided teams due to take part, with Mackay being in team three alongside Lee, Halom, Shackleton, Harvey and David Armstrong. <\/p>\n
Team one included Bobby Charlton, Stokoe, Porterfield, Chisholm and Moncur; team two saw Hurley, Kerr and Pitt join forces, and team four featured Todd, Jack Charlton, Montgomery, John Hickton and Jenkins. <\/p>\n
Above their piece advertising the cricket, The Sunday Sun also printed a column from Stokoe on footballing matters ahead of Sunderland\u2019s upcoming Division Two campaign. <\/p>\n
It was somewhat frank, with the manager lamenting how some players could only motivate themselves for the more attractive games whilst also bemoaning the recent departure of Dave Watson, which he felt was causing others to now question their future despite Stokoe already doing \u2018the groundwork for a new season\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s upsetting to find that something you\u2019d read and hoped wasn\u2019t true is in fact a problem you\u2019ve got to solve\u201d he opined, before opening up further.<\/p>\n
I know I haven\u2019t got the enthusiasm in the dressing room yet.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s sad but there are some who have no feeling for the club, they don\u2019t care \u2014 a great club with a great board, tremendous training facilities and potential.<\/p>\n
What is in their contract is virtually a reward for staying but if they\u2019re not satisfied they can go tomorrow, with the board\u2019s blessing, of course, because in this situation the directors take a share of the responsibility after my own recommendations.<\/p>\n
What is essential is that the club doesn\u2019t suffer. Keeping players who only want to perform in big stadiums with big crowds might leave us with the same problems when visiting smaller clubs that we had last year. <\/p>\n
There are men who would give their right arm to join us \u2013 and they\u2019re the sort I want.<\/p>\n
The cricket match wasn\u2019t Bobby Kerr\u2019s only social engagement that week, and the next edition of The Sunday Sun reported on his subsequent visit to the Ivy Leaf Club in Hendon a couple of nights later, where he was presenting sporting awards to its members. <\/p>\n
Kerr was gifted a pair of cufflinks as way of thanks, and was then surprised when club secretary Bill Todd conveyed lifetime membership onto him. Kerr\u2019s wife Catherine came from that part of town and so many of his in-laws were already regulars at the Ivy Leaf, which had recently undergone a \u00a3102,000 facelift. <\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Bobby Kerr out on the town…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One-time Roker Park forward Willie Watson was famously capped by England in both football and cricket, and two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[6907,6910,1721,6905,242,448,6909,6906,6903,1058,5778,4660,101,6908,6904,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-10517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-bob","tag-boundaries","tag-cricket","tag-day","tag-features","tag-front-page","tag-his","tag-july","tag-on","tag-report","tag-roker","tag-sets","tag-sports","tag-stokoe","tag-this","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}