Altitude sickness

Great lads at Wearhead but, whatever other lofty epithets might be appropriate, they may not be supposed high and mighty. Last season they played 21 games in the Crook and District League second division – there isn’t a third division – drew four, lost the rest, and for failing to fulfil the 22nd were dropped three points to finish with just one.

Before Saturday they’d played five league matches, scored two and conceded 26, but hovered above bottom place because Ferryhill Town, similarly pointless, had been deducted three which they didn’t have in the first place.

No matter that the breath of fresh air was to prove akin to a sub-Siberian gale, it was time to essay a change of fortune.

“IT’S that card I’ve had to gan oot and buy a pair of gloves,” an elderly chap tells his mate on the 101 bus from Crook to Stanhope.

“I’ve got thoosands of gloves,” says his marrer, “but the buggers is all at home.”

The 101 gets its pipe at Stanhope – damp, dank and Saturday morning squally – before heading further westward up the dale.

A notice in the travel agent’s advertises day trips to Lapland for £489. It seems rather an expensive way to escape the cold.

Back on the bus, fish and chips aromatically borne homeward, another chap tells his mate that there’s been snow up at Killhope – on the Durham/Cumbria border – and, lest his word be doubted, adds that he heard it in the butcher’s.

The route heads up through places like Daddry Shield, St John’s Chapel and Ireshopeburn, past Brotherlee where, lifetime ambition, I still hope to source a romantic story – golden wedding, postman’s knock, anything – to justify the headline “Brotherlee love.”

“Weardale’s the best bus company in the world, they’ll drop you anywhere,” says a lady alighting at Wearhead, a reminder of the time that the driver stopped at his middle-of-nowhere house, let the dog out for a constitutional and whatever else it is that dogs need to do when the cat's away, and continued cheerfully on his way.

The column gets off at Cowshill, next village up, a pint at the Cowshill Hotel, known universally as Tiffy’s.

By the blazing fire, a Summer Wine trio is discussing the weather – “Oh aye, six foot in Killhope,” they suppose.

“Once,” says Compo, “we’d be sitting here discussing sex and drinking. Now all we can talk about is keeping warm.”

ONCE, too, Wearhead was a populous lead mining village. Once there were two chapels, a Co-op – the Penrith Co-op – a railway which chuffered up from Bishop Auckland before collapsing, jiggered, against the buffers.

There were four or five shops, a pub, filling station, doctor, polliss, picture house and a garage door on which, every Friday evening, the following day’s team would, amid much anticipation, be posted.

Now there’s a phone box, a defibrillator and a (very convenient) public convenience which, come to think, is one more than in the whole of Darlington.

The village football club was formed in 1907, a remarkable survivor. Raymond Snaith’s magnificent, 172-page club history records that in the first season a concert raised £2 0s 6d, less half a crown for the singer and half a guinea for hiring the joanna.

Once there was a Weardale League, players allowed only to represent the parish in which they lived. In 1956-57, Wearhead played in the Auckland and District League but left after other clubs feared that by travelling so far west they might fall off the end of the earth.

Since then they’ve been in the Crook and District and with little recent success, though they did win a trophy in the 1990s for reaching the quarter-final of the Weardale Cup – geographically the sole dale survivor.

“It’s important for the community that we survive, some of the older residents still ask the score every week,” says Ray Snaith before Saturday’s match. “The way things have been going, mind, I’m not sure how much longer we can carry on like this.”

THEY’VE been in the column several times before. This is the club whose centenary coincided with Sunderland Air Show, which wrote suggesting that the Red Arrows might like to make an up-river detour to offer wing-dipping salute to village football and which was amazed when the RAF agreed.

What time would they be overhead, asked treasurer Cliff Dalton, expecting to be told that it would be somewhere between 2pm and 4pm.

“15.21,” said the squadron leader, and at 15.21 precisely a formation emerged over the North Pennines.

This is the club which might have got the council chairman to open the new pavilion but got Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge, Chief of the Defence Staff, instead.

This is the club which, most memorably of all, in 2001 played a bottom-of-the-table match against Crook Town Rangers at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light because both their own grounds were closed through foot and mouth disease.

The crowd was 913, a league record by about 900, the score 2-2. “You can tell it’s a big match,” the column observed at the time, “because one of the Stanhope players has forsaken his lunchtime pork pie and is eating a banana instead.”

Memories of the great day are framed large on the pavilion wall. There’s also a sign urging not to kick footballs against the windows because they might break. What they don’t have is a trophy cabinet.

That they also claim the world record for the number of players in a Ford Capri – nine for an away trip to Bishop Auckland – is perhaps less well documented.

Team manager Colin Coulthard insists that they haven’t been playing badly. “It’s just been the last ten minutes, that and getting a team together. I’m sure we’ll win a cup one day; right now, I’d just like to win a game.”

THEY’RE playing Barnard Castle Glaxo Rangers. Kelly Goodfellow, who’s 43, scores for Wearhead after just five minutes. “Howay lads,” someone urges, “the next 20 minutes are vital.”

After 25 minutes Wearhead are 4-1 down. It’s not what you’d call a masterclass in defending a lead.

After 30 minutes it’s 4-2, after 31 5-2. “Their first goal was a foul on the keeper and the other four you just gave them,” Colin tells his troops at half-time.

“Aye,” someone says, “and the second half we’re kicking up.”

It’s sunny but perishing cold, the wind raw-boned. The crowd says he’s going home at half-time.

The Barney goalkeeper wears a bobble hat, prompting one of the subs to recall that the Faroe Islands keeper did, too. In the second half his two outstanding saves ensure that Wearhead score just once more, Goodfellow’s hat-trick and the only further goal.

For at least two reasons it’s tempting to break into “Faroese a jolly good fellow,” but it’s really not the weather for it.

Nets down, the lads shiver back to the pavilion. Ray Snaith, 68, is sorting out the Christmas draw tickets. From within the home dressing room, encouraging words can be heard. “Come on, lads, we won the second half. All we need to do now is win two in a row.”

At 1,107ft, the only way is up.