St James' in a suitcase (From The Northern Echo)

St James' in a suitcase

6:20am Friday 11th November 2011 in Echo Memories By Chris Lloyd, Deputy Editor

THIS is probably very dangerous territory, but in the corner of my room is a battered suitcase containing a collection of old pictures. There's no rhyme or reason to them - they're just random, and largely uncaptioned.

Yet when the news of the St James' Park name change came through, I remembered that a couple of them show action at the ground before the First World War.

The best of them has what I guess to be Leazes Terrace peering over the top of a writhing, seething bank of spectators. On the back, someone once pencilled: "Scattergood, the Derby County goalkeeper, makes a good save from Shepherd."

Someone recently retired from this office has made off with his Newcastle United books - as is his right - and so on I am all alone with the internet.

www.toon1892.co.uk leads me to believe that the match - a 1-1 draw - was played on April 25, 1914. It looks to me to have been the last of 123 appearances by Albert Shepherd.

He must have been a legend. He was signed from his native Bolton in 1908 for a record £800, and led the line in those pre-war glory days, winning a League Championship and an FA Cup final. In fact, he made history: the first player ever to score a penalty in an FA Cup final.

Wikipedia tells a magnificent tale about him which has come from Arthur Appleton's book, The Hotbed of Soccer: "At half time in an away match at Notts County, with the score at 0-0, Shepherd asked the Newcastle officials if he could leave the field of play early so as to catch a train to Bolton to visit his family. Newcastle Chairman Joe Bell told him that if he scored four goals he could leave as soon as he liked. Shepherd duly scored four goals in the second half and according to the sports writer Arthur Appleton, "developed a sudden limp" and asked the referee if he could leave the field of play. Shepherd was allowed to leave and soon after caught his train to Bolton on time."

His scoring record for Newcastle was impressive: 92 goals in his 123 appearances. He did even better for England: a goal in each of his two appearances, the first in 1906, the second in 1911.

In the picture, Shepherd is being thwarted by Ernald Scattergood, Derby's keeper who in 1913 made his only appearance for England. He shipped three goals in a narrow win over Wales, and was never invited between the international sticks again.

The two other pictures here appear to be from the same match. In the third one, I'm guessing that's the Gallowgate End with a primitive scoreboard overhead. If memory serves me right, the end looked very much the same when I paid my first visit to St James' in the early 1990s, dragged along by a friend to see Mickey Quinn. I remember climbing this awkward hump and suddenly finding the pitch laid out before me. We stood uncovered in the sparsely-populated Gallowgate, on a grizzly grey day that soaked us to the skin without actually raining, and Quinn looked extremely round and unthreatening. I don't think I witnessed a goal that day.

Any real information would be most welcome.