Thirsty work

It’s John Herdman, 38, born in Consett and now, after a successful spell in charge of New Zealand women’s football, doing a similar job at the opposite end of the Commonwealth.

The Echo interviewed him when Canada played Sweden at St James’ Park in the 2012 Olympics, in which they finished third. The Vancouver Sun heralded him, too, the feature’s first word describing industrial Consett as “hardscrabble”.

Beg pardon, Sir?

Keith’s American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it as “Earning a bare subsistence, as on the land”. Grimmer yet, the Oxford supposes the “American colloquialism” to be “A place thought of as the acme of barrenness”.

Keith – from Flint Hill, near Stanley – supposes that to be appropriate in his formative years though Consett may be hardscrabble no longer.

John Herdman, a former teacher who played Northern League football for Prudhoe Town, continues to grow his reputation across the Atlantic. Canada hosts the Women’s World Cup in 2015, the Under-20 Women’s World Cup this year. “Expectations are high,” says Keith.

“He is credited with a total transformation of the women’s game.”

HAMILTON, Ontario, was like Consett – heavily dependent on the steel industry and a place where a man might sweat half a stone a shift.

“If you went into a pub,”

says Keith Bell, “you’d see salt cellars on the tables and men pouring salt into their ale or lager before drinking it.

“I don’t know if that was the practice in Consett – we’d left Flint Hill before I reached drinking age – but did they do it in Hartlepool and on Teesside?”

If they did, what in heaven’s name for?

HAMILTON, coincidentally, was the venue back in 1930 for the first British Empire Games. Whereas in Glasgow from today there are 4,900 competitors from 71 countries in 17 different sports, back in the pink-map days just 11 countries were represented. There were six sports and 400 competitors, but whether thereafter they added salt to the celebratory IPA is sadly unrecorded.

AFTER last week’s column on the drookit disaster that was the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, Cliff Tunstall chips in with the joke – possibly even older than that – about the Scottish athletics official greeting a new arrival at an international tournament.

“Are you a pole vaulter?” he asks. “No, I’m a German,” he replies, “but how did you know my name was Valter?”

ON Monday, coincidentally, the column again found itself in Edinburgh – a beer with Garry Gibson, former high-profile chairman of Hartlepool United, who now lives over the border.

Mr Gibson, it should be made clear, has nothing to do with the Commonwealth. He’s from the People’s Republic of Wheatley Hill. It’s a passing curiosity that, an English in Scotland, he is allowed to vote in the Union referendum. Were he a Scot in England, he wouldn’t be.

The capital, perversely, seems to want even less to do with the 20th Games than it did with the 13th, an unlucky-for-some event described in a new book as “the most bizarre, and the most troubled, Commonwealth Games ever staged”.

Smith’s bookstall on Waverley station still tries to shift great waves of World Cup magazines, offers even more on someone called George and stocks a couple of Nelson Mandela.

A? Architecture, anthropology.

B? Body building, badminton. C?

Co….? Cosmopolitan, anyone?

Elsewhere the focus is on the Festival, though Mr Ashley’s sports shop does sell Commonwealth Games flags – “£2, mega.” Scotland’s best represented, then Jamaica. There are no England flags at all.

The Edinburgh Evening News promises more the following day – “12-page guide to Lothian’s aces”

– but on Monday has but a single paragraph on the Games – the diving.

The diving will be held in Edinburgh.

The headline “Getting the party started” refers to the Festival, too.

There’s also a page lead about a cat cafe.

Glasgow is 40 miles to the west, but might as well be 400. Like England, Glasgow is another country.

…and finally, the column two weeks ago sought the year in which cycle road racing was made legal in Britain. It was 1959.

Little noticed amid the England cricket team’s many problems last weekend, the 19 byes in South Africa’s first innings meant that wicket keeper Matt Prior had conceded a total of 717 – the second highest in test cricket history.

Extras time, readers are suggested who has let through the most.

Still seeking the Commonwealth of experience, the column hopes next week to have been talking to Barnard Castle swimmer and aspiring model Cathy White – as was – one of the North-East stars in the Edinburgh Games.