10:50am Saturday 13th February 2010
WE’RE still heading towards Wembley, one Way or another, and firstly back to the 1932 FA Cup final – the one that defined unlucky Arsenal.
It was St George’s Day, April 23, and whatever else the Gunners were crying, it wasn’t for Harry, England and St George. They were crying foul.
Arsenal were leading 1-0 when Jack Allen equalised from Jimmy Richardson’s cross – the whole stadium, except for referee Harper, convinced that the ball had gone out of play before Richardson retrieved it.
Defenders stood off, waiting vainly for the whistle.
It was Harper who, a couple of years earlier, had effected a citizen’s arrest at South Shields on a supporter who called him a black so-and-so. Now incredulous Arsenal fans thought it was the referee who wanted locking up.
Even “Magpie”, the Echo’s man at the match, admitted – in black and white – that Arsenal had been robbed. “A goal should never have been allowed but Newcastle thoroughly deserved to win, so why worry when the better team won?”
Allen, subsequently landlord of the Travellers Rest in Burnopfield, then scored a second, about which Echo cartoonist Norman Edwards became quite excited – “a brilliant piece of bluff by Allen who drew the backs and goalkeeper into a ridiculous position.”
Edwards, alas, couldn’t be drawn at all on the game’s big talking point. Not so much as a line.
Elsewhere that late April weekend, Horden linesman T H Jones had to take charge of Middlesbrough’s clash with Everton after the referee was hit in the face by the ball, “unenterprising” Darlington lost 3-0 at Southport, humble Trimdon Grange Colliery beat Stockton 3-2 in the Northern League and – since it wasn’t yet May – Tow Law’s match with Esh Winning was played in “a fierce blizzard.”
It’s surprising how often memories – and mementoes – of Wembley 1932 have surfaced down the years. Jimmy Richardson’s winner’s medal sold a few years back for £6,462, his cup final shirt for £4,700.
Referee Harper’s whistle raised £1,000 at auction, a linesman’s medal was given to Newcastle United in exchange for a £1,000 donation to Barnardo’s and a 78rpm record promoting the match went for £120 only last year.
All this is promoted by the latest memorabilia – a programme from the game, cost a tanner but now expected to realise between £400-£600 in the next Methuselah auction at Marton Country Club, Middlesbrough, on February 25.
The sale also includes a programme from Sunderland’s 1937 FA Cup semi-final against Millwall at Huddersfield (guide price £250- £350, pictured left), postcards of Roker Park’s 1935-36 championship winning team and much else of a red-and-white hue. “Some really desirable items,” says organiser John Wilson. The full catalogue is available at www.methuselah.com
KNOWN for a lifetime’s service to amateur boxing, Lol Degnan in Darlington has been enjoying the Railroad to Wembley series.
Particularly it reminded him of his own journey south, April 1959.
Recently demobbed, Lol had been played for the RAF alongside Brian Keating – Crook Town’s centre forward in the FA Amateur Cup final against Barnet at Wembley.
Advised that the midnight train would be overflowing, Lol was told by his friend Matt Nicholsopn – “lovely feller, ran the Up North Combine” – that he and his mate could bunk down on the 9 30pm pigeon train from Darlington on the Friday.
Birds of a feather, they had a couple of beers in East End club, settled down into the passenger coach at the back and were soon asleep. “Next thing we knew, the train was in a siding in Welwyn Garden City and everyone else had gone. I still remember being shouted at for crossing the line.”
Keating scored, Crook won 3-2.
Homing instinct, Lol and his mate returned by more conventional means.
THE railroad continues this weekend – Marske United’s home replay with Whitehawk, Whitley Bay’s with Chertsey.
Brian Dixon in Darlington regrets that, unable to make Whitley Bay, he will be unable to ask about the Chertsey flag he saw a few years back.
“It was the standard, adapted cross of St George with Chertsey Town across the horizontal red bar but in one of the white quadrants the words ‘Birds love it’.”
“I regret to this day not having the nerve to ask ‘Why’?”
After Tuesday’s column on Marske’s trip to Brighton, the opportunity should also be taken to apologise to Gary Roberts, United’s main sponsor. Though it’s usually he who rings true, the picture of the chap with the cow bell wasn’t Gary at all. “The phone’s never stopped ringing,” he says, and is due a pint this afternoon.
SINCE we’ve been talking about the seven bottom division sides of 20 years ago who now play Premiership football, Brian Dixon recalls Darlington entertaining Fulham in November 1991.
The Quakers included the splendidly named Dugald McCarrison, on loan from Celtic, who’d scored in the previous week’s 4-0 thumping of Hartlepool.
His Feethams career was to be short, however, his last kick in a Darlington shirt the one aimed at the backside of a visiting player deemed earlier to have stood on him.
The ten-man Quakers won 3-1, nonetheless, 18-year-old Lee Ellison said by Brian to have been in his pomp. Fulham were managed by Alan Dicks, prompting travelling fans to call for his departure, though not quite in those terms.
The two words they actually used may have to be imagined, but see under “netty”, (pictured).
SPEAKING of flags and banners, which we were, the bairn spots on the When Saturday Comes website a memory of Newcastle United’s visit to Monaco – millionaires’ playground – in the 1990s. Spotted on television, the Magpie banner said: “BMX bike for sale, £8 ono.”
IF not Wembley then every bit as smart, we reported in September 2007 on the new £700,000 sports facilities at Lythe, population 200, up the coast from Whitby.
The eco-friendly development was driven by Sandsend shopkeeper and Sport Mulgrave chairman Doug Raine, who retires from the shop this weekend, and made possible by the generosity of the Marquis of Normanby, the local landowner.
Doug reports that the cricket pitch has now been passed to Yorkshire second team standard and that when the winter was at its worst, Lythe staged the only football between Middlesbrough and Scarborough.
“You could pour anything you want on that pitch and it would still be bone dry,” he says.
The crown green bowling facilities will officially be opened in June, it’s to be hoped by Lord Normanby. Like the rest of the complex, they’ll also serve neighbouring communities.
Many others have helped, of course, Many hands make Lythe work.
A COUPLE of columns back, we sought information on a medal awarded to Dawdon Colliery player John Connolly in the 1921- 22 DC and SEI Cup. Dawdon Colliery would itself be a good betfor the first bit, but the second?
Sunderland Eye Infirmary, says the far-sighted Ian McGrath in Spennymoor, whose dad worked 47 years at Dawdon. Other information much welcomed.
SINCE it was snowing outside, the familiar muffled whisper went around the packed congregation as Gordon Nicholson’s coffin was carried into Bishop Auckland Methodist church on Wednesday.
It was a late kick-off, five past eleven, quite likely the only time Gordon had been late for anything. Surely the league would have to take action, they said. Too true; only the level of fine has yet to be decided.
That one had a Wembley connection, too. We sang Abide With Me, urged in the order of service to make it sound like Amateur Cup finals of old.
Northern League secretary from 1966-1990 but first and foremost a cricket man, Gordon had insisted that there should be no mourning. “He was quite stern about it,” said Stuart, his son.
“Northern League folk will know that dad did stern very well.”
The order of service – “ a colourful order of service for a colourful character,” said Keith Phipps, the minister – observed that wickets had been pitched on May 10 1926 and stumps drawn on January 30 2010.
The coffin was preceded by a floral set of stumps and a floral football, strictly in that order.
Stuart spoke in a wonderfully crafted eulogy of his dad’s passions, his insistence on doing things by the book, his ability as a wicketkeeper/ batsman.
Legendary skipper Bill Proud, he recalled, had once declared Bishop Auckland’s innings with Gordon unbeaten on 96, a decision cheerfully accepted because it was for the good of the team.
Nic got his maiden century the following week.
He’d also be remembered for his prodigious appetite, not least a love of knickerbocker glories which – his surname irrelevant – earned him the nickname Nickerbo.
One season, said Stuart, celebrated Bishop Auckland café owner Eddie Rossi had sponsored Gordon with a knickerbocker glory every time he scored 50. “Dad had a vintage year. When he hit that 100, he went to Eddie’s and demanded two.”
Jim Coates, secretary of Evenwood Town FC when Gordon was chairman in the 1990s, recalled that the ever-industrious Nic took on so many jobs around the ground that he was always last into the clubhouse.
Given the likelihood that the post-match spread would have been devoured by the less deserving, Gordon insisted that a plate – a very large plate, probably – be kept beneath the counter for him. One day they forgot.
“He’d threatened to do it man times,” said Jim, “but the day Gordon went without his tea was the nearest he ever came to resigning.”
The wake was at Bishop Auckland Cricket Club, which he’d loved since first visiting as an eight-year-old. The spread was splendid. Gordon would be happy that that’s the way it ended.
THE football club presently in the Premiership which has won titles in five different divisions (Backtrack, February 9) is Wolves – the old first division in 1958-59, the second in 1976-77, the fourth in 1987-88, the third the following season and the Championship last year.
Brian Shaw in Shildon today invites readers to identify the only player to have won an FA Cup medal – back to Wembley, see, and with a North-East connection – either side of World War II.
Another step nearer the great stadium, it’s much to be hoped, the column returns on Tuesday.
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