10:06am Tuesday 31st August 2010
OTHER towns have statues to the great and the good, and possibly to the half-decent. Wakefield has a statue to rhubarb.
For those who hitherto had believed that the city’s greatest claim to fame was as the biggest place in England never to have been home to a Football League club – a dubious distinction in any case disputed by Croydon– this may come as a bitter-sweet surprise.
For West Yorkshiremen it’s part of their culture.
Wakefield’s the centre of the Rhubarb Triangle, holds an annual Festival of Food, Drink and Rhubarb. Once the Great Northern Railway laid on a nightly train to hurry 200 tons of the stuff to London.
Still the tourist information centre sells a jolly little booklet called Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle, pictured below, from which it may be ascertained that the plant originated in Siberia 30,000 years ago, found West Yorkshire winters pretty similar and thus quickly mucked in.
The booklet also has a couple of pages on Prophet Wroe, a 19th Century horseback preacher who was going quite well – and making rather a lot of money, as they do – until persuading seven virgins of Ashton-under- Lyne to join him on his travels. Allegations of “misconduct” followed.
Wroe, rude, rued, rode.
His connection with rhubarb is not altogether clear. A queer stick, nonetheless.
Growth’s forced, not voluntary at all. After a couple of years minding its own business in the fields, the stuff’s taken to huge sheds, kept completely in the dark – aren’t we all? – and even now picked by candlelight so as not to upset it.
It’s so quiet in those sheds, it’s said, that you can hear the pop as new buds burst open.
Now, it’s reckoned, rhubarb is enjoying a revival; the Triangle points in all directions. Sales this January were 100 per cent up on the year previously.
Yorkshire-forced rhubarb has achieved European protected status, like Parma ham and Stilton cheese. It has become a niche product; the force fields flourish once more.
WAKEFIELD, inexplicably nicknamed the Bears but sometimes just Wakey, are playing Ashington – more obviously the Colliers – in the FA Cup preliminary round. It’s the second qualifier, whatever it says on the programme, to be followed in a fortnight by the first.
The elder bairn’s there, too, says that there’s a notvery- good pub called the Rhubarb Triangle near the M62 and that he once saw Bruce Grobbelaar on Wakefield Westgate railway station.
“He travelled second class,” he adds.
After a couple in the Black Rock, an excellent place above which a long gone Archbishop of Canterbury was born, we head to the College Grove ground.
The Collier Army sing “There’s only one Mike Amos.” This may or may not be gratifying.
To the tune of When the Saints, they also sing “It’s all pubs, bookies and chip shops, Oh Ashington is wonderful.”
Gavin Perry, the Ashington programme editor, ponders briefly.
“They’ve forgotten the charity shops,” he says.
Informed of the area’s rhubarb roots, Colliers secretary Brian Robinson says he’s not keen on the stuff because he knows what’s put on it. “And its not custard,” he adds, unnecessarily.
He should count himself lucky. In the 19th Century they used what euphemistically was called night soil. So much for horses’ for courses.
WAKEFIELD are in the Evostik – formerly Unibond, nee Northern Premier League.
Ashington are in the skilltrainingltd Northern League first division, structurally a step below.
It’s the town of the Charltons and the Milburns, the place where it was said that you shouted down a pit shaft and brought up a centre forward. In the 1920s they were in the Third Division North; so far this season they’ve won one out of four.
“A team in transition,”
says Brian.
Wakefield FC’s great problem, probably the chief reason why a district of 315,000 people has never had a Football League club, is that it’s subsumed by the Rugby League Triangle, too.
The Wakefield Express has pages about Wildcats and Rhinos and sundry other betes noir. Of the poor Bears there’s not so much as a paragraph.
That 13 is manifestly unlucky for some is reflected both in the crowds – the first home league game of the season attracted just 83 – and in the venue, the attractive former College Grove rugby union ground.
Outflanked and outnumbered, the club folded in 2004.
The travelling support sings “What’s it like to see a crowd” but, even then, College Grove seems not to have achieved its seasonal pb. Half of those present are in the clubhouse, watching the Rugby League Cup final on telly.
Among the travelling fans is Ashington lad Steve Harmison, whose brother James is in the team.
The ever-affable Harmi is over the far side. “It’s hard enough supporting Ashington without standing with that lot,” he says.
After 27 minutes, the team in transition is 2-0 down. The Collier Army’s drum appears to be playing a death march, the two managers, little and large, are at one another’s throats like, well, wildcats.
The psycho-babblers call its creative tension. The fans call it fun.
Soon afterwards, however, home goalkeeper Zolna is guilty of such doleful dithering that Stephen Young nips in, has time to ponder his great good fortune and perhaps to place a bet on the 3 30 and walks the ball into the net.
Zolna kicks the post so hard that the reverberations may be heard in Pontefract.
At half-time, hosts warmly hospitable, there’s talk of bringing in Steve Harmison at centre half, where in former times he played. It is not a move of which Durham County Cricket Club is likely to approve.
After 70 minutes, however, the rejuvenated Young heads an equaliser from a corner.
Wakefield appear almost confused, wakey Wakey, like they think it’s still RL and no one’s remembered the decoder. Zolna twice athletically atones.
Far into the anxiousness of added time, however, Young skips through for a wonderful winner, briefly exults but is covered by his team-mates like a lorry load of night soil.
It’s a great win, a memorable day. The Collier Army sings a rather rude song about where their Evo-stik may be relocated – that may be quite forcible, too – the Bears fumble forlornly back to their pit.
They’ll live to fight again, of course. It’s just the way the rhubarb crumbles.
There’s a breathless hush in the close tonight
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumpy pitch and a blinding light
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
Play up, play up and play the game.
Sir Henry Newbolt: Vitai Lampada
THE Darlington and District Cricket League marked its golden jubilee with Sunday lunch, wonderfully convivial and effortlessly nostalgic, in a marquee at Charlie Walker’s.
Charlie, the dear old Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme, has played in each of those 50 seasons. Not one to waste a weekend under canvas, he’d hosted a family wedding there the day previously and a church do on the Sunday evening.
Formed with seven clubs at the instigation of a Mr Buckton of Spennymoor, the league retains three divisions, cricket’s grassroots richly nourished.
Though they reminisced for England, the real talk of the tent revolved around a match just the previous day – Barningham II v Eryholme II, division C, and the Demon off dancing at the wedding.
Eryholme, batting first, managed 106-6 – Terry Simpson 37 – from their 35 overs.
Barningham had been 56-0, crumbled to 97-9. Like Sir Henry’s celebrated side, they, too, needed ten to win, and with almost seven overs remaining.
Trouble was, they only had ten men.
That’s quite literally where Wendy Lawson came in. The captain’s hand smote the shoulder of his 38-year-old partner and mother of their son Joe, eight months.
Properly padded, Wendy came to the wicket in green shirt and white trousers, 64- year-old Lawrie Swiers at the other end and the skipper literally left holding the baby in the pavilion.
Wendy had played cricket just twice in her life, once on a beach in the West Indies and once, three years earlier, in a similar emergency at Rockliffe Park. “It became clear about an hour before the match that I just couldn’t find anyone else,” said Ian.
Somehow they held on, Lawrie doing his best to farm the bowling. From the last ball, Wendy on strike, Barningham still needed two to win.
“She really caught it in the middle of the bat, out towards mid-wicket,” recalls Terry Simpson.
“It would have gone for four but our chap dived full length and they ran a single to tie. It was really quite dramatic.”
Ian’s a proud man. “She did an awful lot better than almost all of us,” he says.
“We’d played some crazy shots; Wendy managed the forward defensive perfectly and still has the bruises.
“They didn’t make any allowance for her.”
Old hands reckon that in 50 years there’ve been no more than a couple of instances of female participation. Aldbrough St John occasionally fielded a woman; Heidi Weir, captain of Darlington Ladies, has played this season for Cockerton.
Never, however, has feminine intervention proved so crucial.
When the Darlington and District reaches its century, still playing the game, they’ll talk of this one yet.
THE five West Indies Test players who’ve played in the county championship for Durham (Backtrack, August 28) are Anderson Cummins, Sherwin Campbell, Ottis Gibson, Shiv Chanderpaul and Gareth Breese.
Since most of the column has been spent on the rhubarb patch, readers are today invited to name the famous sports club whose colours are said to be rhubarb and custard.
Just desserts, the column returns on Saturday.
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