Happy birthday to a great sportsman who made a real impact

WHEN you’re young and brim full of optimism, success seems just round the next corner.

So it was when I first joined the Chron as a young whipper snapper before I shot off to Fleet Street and returned to travel with Newcastle United.

I was covering Gateshead in those far-off days as they tried to adapt to life after being cruelly voted out of the Football League.

A player I got close to was Jacky Herron, a big barn of a man who closed the door on the oppoosition with a reverberating bang. Well, this evening at Ashington Cricket Club Jacky is having a party to mark his 80th birthday and I wish him well.

My memories are of the Gateshead team under player-manager Bobby Mitchell – Newcastle’s FA Cup-winning hero of the 50s – going to Darlington, who were then a Football League club, and thrashing them 4-1 and then leading 3-1 at Carlisle United in the next round, only for part-timers to run out of steam and get caught 4-3.

Jacky signed professional forms with Leeds United many moons ago before the maximum wage was abolished but left shortly afterwards, largely because he could earn more as a miner and was homesick – the girlfriend he left behind, Lexa Watson, became his wife but she sadly died in April 2015.

When Herron returned to the North East from Leeds he worked in the mines but continued to play football with Gateshead for seven years, starting when they were still a Football League team. He later played for Ashington.

Jacky was also a good cricketer who was ever-present when Bomarsund won the Haig National Village Cricket Championship in September of 1974.

He had taken a hat-trick on the way to the final.

The season after Bomarsund won the national trophy they lost in the semi-finals away to Isleham despite Jacky taking six wickets for just 20 runs in his nine-over spell.

Bit of a shame since that year the final did actually take place at Lord’s.

Happy 80th big man.