'Nothing will stop him...' - Veteran footballer set for landmark 400th appearance

On a nondescript Saturday morning in 2007, Colin Wharton laced up his boots to play a football match for a team he wasn’t part of. Ravaged by injury, Trimdon Veterans had called on him as a favour, coaxing him out of retirement for what he believed would be a one-time arrangement. Fast forward 18 years, Colin is still on the books at Trimdon, and this weekend, will make his 400th appearance for the club.

It’s a milestone that few would have forecast nearly two decades ago, and least of all, the man himself. “It was very much, ‘I’ll help you out on this occasion’”, he explains. “I hadn’t played for a few seasons, and didn’t expect to have any impact on the game. I just expected to be a body on the pitch.”

But make an impact Colin did, scoring the equalising goal in a 1-1 draw against Heaton Winstons. By the time he got back to the changing rooms, his new teammates were already pressuring him to put pen to paper on the registration forms that would make him an official member of their squad. “I don’t think I did myself any favours!”, he quips during a chat with The Echo.

That heroic debut would prove to be the first in a long line of notable moments during Colin’s storied career with Trimdon in the Sunderland and District Over 40’s league; there was, among many others, the game in which scored an opening goal against DSS Darsley Park inside 12 seconds - a club record that still stands to this day - and the morning that he netted all five in a 5-0 demolition of Mill View Social Club.

There have, however, also been difficult spells. In 2019, Colin was ruled out for a long period after suffering a serious knee injury. “It was a strange one”, he reflects. “It was a particularly cold morning, I went in for a tackle and just felt a pain in my knee. I couldn’t play on, went home and put ice on it for a while, but thought, ‘There’s something not right here, I need to go to hospital’. When I go the MRI, I had a grade three tear of the meniscus and a fractured tibia... I didn’t think I would play again, but the surgeon did a really good job and I was back after six months.”

Five years later, Colin would tear his other meniscus, requiring him to go under the knife for a second time, but perhaps the biggest challenge he has faced came in the form of a prostate cancer diagnosis last year.

“It came as a shock, to be honest”, he admits. “I had an operation on the prostate. I thought I was fixed, but when I went back to see the consultant he said that they’d found stage three cancer. It was a hell of a shock. I had to have aggressive radiotherapy, which I’ve completed now, and I’m in the recovery stage.”

But throughout all of his health and fitness concerns, football - and more specifically, Trimdon Vets as a club - have remained a steady presence and a guiding light in his recovery. Speaking about his time on the sidelines, Colin says: “We have a lot of camaraderie between the players, and I’ll be honest, the care they have shown me has been remarkable - phone calls, visits, that sort of thing. I guess that’s what friends do. There’s been a lot of care.

“[Returning to football was] probably the main motivation. I will be honest, I sat and had a few really bad days when I was told I had the cancer, and it was like, ‘Right, you need to get on with your life, you need to have some goals to aim for. You can’t just sit around or this thing will take over you, and you’ve got to beat it’. That’s my logic anyway.”

And that determination to carry on no matter what is a trait that club secretary Paul Stephens recognises in his friend with great admiration. Speaking ahead of Colin’s 400th game, he says: “He’s like my right-hand man, if I’m perfectly honest. He’s invaluable. He’s instrumental in the running of the club, not just playing for us. He’s always there to help and he’s been a huge stalwart of the club for many years - never lets anyone down, is always there.

“He won’t stop playing. Even in spite of his injuries and everything else, his determination has always shone through. Nothing will stop him. He said to me that once he gets his 400 games in, he might retire, but we’re at a point where we’ve only got six games left this season, and we’re on a run where we’ve only been beaten once in 12 matches. If we won our last six that would be a record run for Trimdon Veterans... in that respect, he won’t pack in.”

When asked about Colin’s love for Trimdon, he responds: “He’s 60 now. He gets that there are younger lads, but if he’s needed to put a strip on, he’ll put a strip on. There’s no question of that whatsoever. Nothing would stop him from playing football. If he’s able to play football, he will play football.

“It’s reciprocated from the club to him. All of the lads think he’s brilliant. He’s quite firm with people - if you don’t pay your subs you will be named and shamed! But he does it in a way where nobody takes offence. He just wants the club to be run right.”

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It is this mutual devotion that has brought Colin to the brink of his 400th outing for a club he was never really supposed to play for in the first place. All being well, he will achieve his quadruple century against Catchgate FC on Saturday, March 22nd - a game for which his teammates have arranged a number of surprises.

But according to Colin himself, even after his herculean effort in the red and black of Trimdon, he isn’t done just yet. “I got to the 350, and I thought, ‘That must be it now’”, he chuckles. “But it’s like everything else, what’s the next milestone? I needed to get to 400. It hasn’t really been playing on my mind much until the last few months. All the lads in the changing rooms have been asking me, ‘What number is this one, Colin? What number is this one?’ I’m excited by it now, to be honest. It’s a good milestone.

“I would love to get to 500, but you’re talking another three to four seasons... I’ll be getting on for 65 years old by then. I think that might be a bridge too far, but you’ve got to have these targets.”