Midden men

Since the Al Jolson version of When the Red Red Robin apparently still attracts copyright issues, they’ve even had a new version recorded by a local band called The Middens.

The who? A bit earthy isn’t it?

“It’s not what you think,” insists club chairman Alan Matthews. “The Black Middens are notorious rocks near the Tyne estuary where many a ship has come to grief.”

So it proves. In three blizzard-blown days of November 1864 alone, five ships were wrecked and 34 lives lost on the Black Middens, though only a few yards from the shore.

On December 5, a meeting in North Shields Town Hall formed the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade, 140 men immediately coming forward. It operates still.

Though the Oxford English Dictionary devotes a decent section to the word “midden” – as in the once-familiar midnight men – it offers no other definition other than a dung hill or refuse heap

Rock and a hard place, presumably the name comes from the self-satisfied skipper’s reaction when, believing he’d safely negotiated the estuary, he found himself, wretched, wrecked.

“Oh, ****.”

The piece on the page opposite recalls how Stockton centre forward Ralph “Bullet” Smith was suspended for a year back in 1932 after telling the FA president where he might relocate his Amateur Cup loser’s medal. These days they’re more sophisticated. A West Auckland loser’s medal from the 2012 FA Vase final against Dunston was sold on eBay last week for £181 50.

Recording the death of former Sunderland striker Nick Sharkey – and his five goals against Norwich City, March 20 1963 – last week’s column noted that Sunderland had finished third in the second division that season, fractionally behind Chelsea on goal average.

Robert Bacon, the column’s resident mathematician, has been on. It wasn’t that fractional, he says.

Chelsea scored 81 and conceded 41, a goal average of 1.929. Sunderland scored 84 but conceded 55, an average of 1.527.

Goal difference was used experimentally in the 1970 World Cup and introduced into the Football League in 1975, in an attempt to encourage more goals.

Martin Birtle points out that, but for Brian Clough’s career-ending injury on Boxing Day 1962, none need have worried about goal average. Old Big Head had scored 28 that season already. Robert, himself a Sunderland fan, agrees. “If only we had Nick Sharkey now.”

Malcolm Dawes was one of seven players signed by Hartlepool United manager John Simpson in the ever-hopeful summer of 1879. Nick Sharkey was a second. “Dominic Sharkey was one of the best strikers of a ball I ever played with,” he says,

Malcolm had also been in the Roker Park crowd for the Norwich match. “City’s centre half was Ken Brown, who’d just come from West Ham as player/manager. He probably didn’t think he set a good example.”

The other five arrivals were Peter Barlow, Malcolm Clarke, Les Crook, Sunderland favourite George Herd and our old friend Ralph Wright, he who once left the Spennymoor United coach at an M1 service station after being told he was simply the sub.

Between the six of them they started 188 games. Malcolm Dawes started 211 and then headed off to New York Cosmos.

Cautionary tale, last week’s column noted that referee Martin Robinson had booked a player after just five seconds of the Wear Valley Sunday League Cup tie between West Auckland and Cockfield. A record? Of course not.

Brian Dixon in Darlington recalls watching an FA Cup fifth round tie between Chelsea and Sheffield United in 1982 in which Vinnie Jones, playing for Chelsea, went into the book after just four seconds. “Took him out lock, stock and two smoking barrels,” says Brian.

Chelsea lost 1-0 but went down to Sunderland, Wembley bound, in the quarter-final. Vinnie was suspended. “His absence proved costly,” wrote Peter Lovering in Chelsea Player by Player.

Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland remembers Keith Gillespie of Sheffield United coming on as a sub in 2009, elbowing an opponent and being sent off before the game had even re-started.

The same thing (with thanks to Richard Jones) happened in the fourth tier match between Swansea and Darlington in 2000. Walter Boyd, a Jamaican, was summoned as City sub, took the opportunity to thump Darlington’s Martin Gray and was returned whence he came. The dismissal was timed at 0 seconds.

Gray became the Quakers’ manager. Boyd went back to Jamaica.

…and finally, last week’s column sought the identity of the last team to win the FA Cup final while wearing stripes. It was Coventry City in 1987 – that unforgettable picture of Keith Houchen at full stretch might help prove it. “I saw that goal on multiple screes in Binns,” recalls Brian Dixon.

Similar theme, Neil Mackay in Lanchester seeks the identity of the only current Premier League side never to have appeared in an FA Cup final.

The column will itself be on the Railroad to Wembley on Saturday – bob, bob bobbing along, we’re off to Erith and Belevedere.