RateTheRef

Northern Echo, 16th August 2012

By Mike Amos

George's final whistle

Todd's Law: Former football referee George Todd

George Todd, the country’s oldest former Football League referee, has died just months after his 100th birthday.

He was also a former president of the National Operatic and Dramatic Association, a high office holder in Freemasonry and a vice-president of Durham F.A., in which capacity he still weekly received the list of players’ misdemeanours and from time to time fretted over it.

Todd’s law? “If you’re going to do something,” George liked to say, “then do it with enthusiasm.”

He was born in Darlington, played football for Ferryhill Athletic and for Spennymoor, became a referee in 1943 – 2/6 a week and nothing for his bike.

The “examination” had been a half-hour chat with some Durham F.A. bloke in a room above the Golden ****, a local league official waiting to offer him a game in the inevitable event of his passing.

The greater problem was kit, and no way that wife Peggy was going to waste precious wartime clothing coupons on officialdom’s full fig.

Instead, she truncated an old pair of grey flannels above the knee and dyed them black. George, in turn, was given a black alpaca jacket by a Rolling Mills workmate who’d used it for cycling. Recognisably, he was a referee.

He progressed swiftly, Class 3 to 1 in successive seasons, through the North Eastern League, on to the Central League, the Football League line (in 1948) and just seven years after the Golden **** crowed, the Football League middle, five guineas a match and maybe a drop of whisky at half time.

In March 1950, he’d also been linesman in the match between the Football League and Scottish League at Ayresome Park, a game in which he hoped he’d done rather better than most of the players. Mandale, the Echo’s man at the match, shared his dismissive opinion.

In 1952, however, George was sent back to the North Eastern League, supposing that he must have had bad club marks. The occasion at St. James’ Park when he’d fallen A over T over his flag – “the crowd was quite amused” – probably had nothing to do with it.

Two years later, he quit, his last match producing his first sending off. “I believed in talking to players, ”he said.

He was a draughtsman, an all round sportsman and a keen theatrical.

In 1951, he not only refereed a Festival of Britain football match, but was assistant producer and chief understudy in the Festival production of Hamlet.

This column had attended his 95th birthday celebration in 2007, “as smart as a Sharratt, as bright as an Acme Thunderer, and looked in again to mark his centenary on February 16 this year.

By then George was in a care home, “In my day, sheltered accommodation was a bus stop”, but remained bright, articulate and full of that endless enthusiasm.

We talked of the challenge of cameras at every match, “in my day, the only cameras were the ones you got from the Nig-Nog Club”, of money and of mercenaries, of Darlington F.C. of whom he remained an avid follower. “I would be very pleased if they survived, but I have my doubts, they’ve lived on a knife edge for so long.”

Peggy had died after 62 years of marriage. “I’d rather be starting all over again, rather not be spending so much time here on my own, but I have to get on with it,” said George.

“If I die tomorrow, I can’t complain, can I?”

George’s funeral is at Holy Trinity Church, Darlington, at 10a.m. on Tuesday.