LUCKY for some, the indispensable Dale Daniel stumbles across a wonderful image of Bishop Auckland’s carrot-smart mascot ahead of the 1946 FA Amateur Cup final, against Barnet.

Not only can we answer Dale’s question about the lad’s identity but – amid considerable surprise – the identity of Barnet’s mascot, too.

Post-war papers were, well, paper-thin. The four-page Northern Echo on the morning of the match spared it but a single paragraph and that, happily, was to wish well to the mascots.

Bishop Auckland’s was five-year-old James Salkeld, from Nelson Street, said – however improbably – to have travelled with the team on the midnight train to London. Barnet’s was Anna Neagle.

Born Florence Marjorie Robson in 1904, the future Dame Anna was already a big theatrical name – “known for providing glamour and sophistication to war-torn London audiences,” says one of the websites.

In 1949 she was voted Britain’s most popular star; on April 20, 1946 – Easter just about as late as it gets – she had an audience of 53,382 at Stamford Bridge. The £4,483 gate was an Amateur Cup record.

Dale also sends the programme, carrying ads for Procea – “the bread that Chelsea train on” – for Afrikander tobacco at 2/3d an ounce and for the Grand at Clapham Junction, where the Jerry Builders were appearing in Frills and Scanties. (The last bit, upon reflection, might have been better put.) Easter Monday’s paper offered rather more space to the match report than it had to the build-up, though still nowhere near as much as to Stockton Races. Bishops had played brilliantly, we reported, though clearly not brilliantly enough.

The north London side won 3-2, the third coming when Middlestone Moor lad and future Hartlepool favourite Fred Richardson – who died recently – was off the field receiving treatment.

Three of the Northern League side were soldiers based with the Royal Artillery near Barnard Castle, a fourth was an airman at Middleton St George.

Barnet fair, Anna Neagle continued to be one of the country’s biggest names, particularly remembered for her long-running stage role in Charlie Girl. Despite suffering from Parkinson’s disease, she played the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella at the London Palladium in 1985 and died the following year.

All that’s well recorded – but whatever happened to the perky little lad in the cap?

DALE Daniel, proud historian of Witton Park, also picks up on the column’s recent note on Ralph Ord – former manager of Eastgate leisure centre and of Wearhead United who’s now one of the top administrators of the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.

Could it, wonders Dale, be the same Ralph Ord of whom he has a 60-year-old photograph with a dog called Buster – taken outside the Vulcan pub in the village?

Witton Park, a once-thirsty ironworks village near Bishop Auckland, had so many pubs that it appeared to run out of names. In 1890 there were 21 – that’s not including the beer houses – of which two were the Puddlers Arms, a third and fourth the Cambrian and the Welsh Harp and a fifth the Ironworks Inn.

Ralph confirms that it is he. His maternal grandparents had the Vulcan, though the dog, he says, was called Winnie, not Buster.

Dale concedes the point. “If I don’t know a dog’s name, it’s always Buster,” he says.

Clerihew’s who

ONCE a major force in North-East non-league football – folk still fondly recall an FA Cup first round tie with Blackpool – Horden CW pick thinner seams these days.

Relegated two summers ago from the Northern League, they’re now second bottom of the Wearside – one win from 11, 39 goals conceded – have left the former Colliery Welfare Ground that was home since 1908 and are embroiled in Appeal Court action with their parish council landlords.

They fight on. Despite a 3-0 defeat to Wolviston on Saturday, and notwithstanding that they had Hadyn Pace up front, the paper supposed goalkeeper Robert Clerihew to have been outstanding.

“He’s very good, the only problem is that his work pattern sometimes rules him out,” says Norman Stephens, the club’s sacrificially valiant chairman, secretary, kitman, mini-bus driver and (he says) agony aunt.

The keeper’s surname is rare, the written clerihew more familiar. It’s a four-line verse of irregular metre, usually with the subject’s name in the first line – often whimsical, never objectionable, devised in the late 19th century by 16-year-old Edward Clerihew Bentley when he was supposed to have been listening at St Paul’s School in London to a science lesson about Sir Humphry Davy.

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy,
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

The style proved so popular – top of the form, as it were – that Bentley published three books of them. The best known may be:

Sir Christopher Wren
Said “I’m going to dine with some men.
“If anyone calls,
“Say I’m designing St Paul’s.”

Norman Stephens, of course, has much more on his mind than silly little rhymes. “There might be one or two who do, but we certainly can’t afford to pay players, not with all that’s going on elsewhere.” he says. “Our lads play for the love of it.”

The club now plays home games in Hartlepool, but may shortly be on the move once again – but not yet back to Horden.

It’s in an attempt to lighten the burden, that the column offers a clerihew for a Clerihew: Goalie Bob Clerihew Would not wish to worry you, But ace keeper for Horden?

They couldn’t possibly afford ‘un.

Other clerihews involving Horden CW, their goalkeeper or indeed any other North-East sporting figure much welcomed. Email address at the top of the column.