PORTSMOUTH'S first FA Cup final since 1939 chimed with Tom Peacock - before collecting his Wembley winner's medal, says Tom, Pompey goalkeeper Harry Walker had won 13 in the Wensleydale League.

The 1939 final, in truth, was something of a North-East occasion. Billy Rochford, Portsmouth's left back, had learned his trade with Esh Winning Juniors and Cockfield while Wolves players Joe Gardiner and Ted Maguire were Co Durham lads, too.

Tommy Thompson, the ref, was from Northumberland.

"The referee," said the Echo report, "had the rare experience of going through the match without having a single decision questioned by crowd or players."

If that's an example of changing times, so was Portsmouth's £20 a player for thrashing Wolves 4-1. The band, it transpired, had been on more.

"We'd have been better off playing the cornet," grumbled Pompey skipper Jimmy Guthrie.

The final was played alongside a full league programme - Sunderland attracting just 8,000 for their first division match with Huddersfield, Newcastle 14,000 for the game with Luton - with Wolves the hottest favourites since Huddersfield had been beaten by Blackburn Rovers 11 years earlier.

Experts had said the match would be one-sided. "The prediction was accurate, but not in the way the football punditii foretold," said the Echo, employing a most singular plural.

Perhaps it was all down to luck. Portsmouth outside right Worrall, the following Monday's paper reported, had a small horseshoe in his shirt pocket, a sprig of heather in each sock and a small white elephant tied to one of his garters.

What we forgot to mention - honest - was the lucky sixpence carried in his boot.

Other finals were being played, too. South Bank St Peter's beat Carlin How in the North Riding Junior Cup, Sedgefield St Edmund's drew with Merrington Lane in the Ferryhill and District League Cup and in the Lady Eden Hospital Cup, Shildon RA beat Binchester SC 1-0.

Elsewhere Dr Alwyn Williams, the new Bishop of Durham, was suggesting that Auckland Castle be turned into a hostel for trainee priests and that he might even get the phone in.

Back at Wembley, said the Echo, Wolves had been "unaccountably outplayed,"

young Walker "never giving his colleagues the slightest ground for anxiety."

He was from Aysgarth, worked as a motor mechanic at Leyburn, was 19 when he became a part-time professional with Darlington, making 50 league appearances before moving to Portsmouth where sometimes he was known as The Cat and sometimes as The Gobbler. Both were terms of endearment.

In 1947 he signed for Nottingham Forest, made 250 appearances before retiring at 38 and becoming a Methodist local preacher. Tom Peacock, himself a former Wensleydale League goalkeeper, met him in Nottingham.

"A really nice, gentle man, obviously someone who practised what he preached,"

says Tom. Harry died in 1976.

Billy Rochford, colloquially said by The Northern Echo to belong to Esh Winning and reckoned by Alf Ramsey to have been one of the finest tacticians he ever saw, was Southampton's captain after the war and represented the Football League. He became a farmer in the Gateshead area and died in 1984.

Ted Maguire, from Brandon, played his football for St Leonard's RC school at Langley Moor and in the Northern League for Willington, saw wartime service in the RAF and died eight years ago.

Less is known of Joe Gardiner, though he was from Bearpark, west of Durham.

Their pre-war final, said the Echo, had witnessed the finest Wembley football for many years. They will be hoping for something similar on May 17.

Struggling Etherley look for new players

FORMED in 1850, when a player could be fined sixpence for swearing and a shilling for the altogether more serious offence of entering the field other than by the gate, Etherley Cricket Club is struggling more greatly than at any time in its 158 years.

"I'm really concerned about how they can raise two teams, the start of the season's only a fortnight away," says Durham County League secretary Roy Coates.

The club's three miles up the road from Bishop Auckland, last mentioned hereabouts on August 31 last year when bighitting Shikhar Dhawan, a recently-arrived Indian professional, was smashing most of the club records and half the neighbours' windows.

"It was like going back to the days when professionals were on the verge of Test selection and the league was a shop window," Roy Coates said at the time.

This season they can't afford a professional at all. "The smoking ban has hit us really hard," says club secretary David Crane. "The second team had to concede five fixtures last season and it may be that we can't fulfil fixtures this year."

Apart from being a thoroughly good bunch, Etherley also boast one of the finest cricket club histories of all time - "Franklin", compiled by David Wilson and published in 1993.

It was named after William and Gordon Franklin, father and son, who represented the club for half its lifetime.

Gordon was even around when I T Botham came to visit.

"What was it like to meet the Great Man?" someone asked Gordon.

"I don't know," said Gordon, "he didn't say."

Danny Hinge, who with Shikhar established a new league seventh wicket record last season, remains hopeful.

"We'll certainly get a team out at the start. I'm a bit more concerned if it gets to May and we've had lots of heavy defeats.

"There are one or two people who've said they won't see us let down, but things are still on a knife edge."

Danny would love to hear from any prospective players.

He's on 07796 778044.

Pole position slips in more ways than one for uncertain Quakers

ANXIOUSLY seeking to attract bigger crowds, Darlington FC have been wooing the town's growing Polish community.

Plans to include a Polish column in tomorrow's bigmatch programme against Hereford United have been pulled at the last minute, however - because no one's quite sure what it's all about.

It was to have been written by Lukasz Samek, 28, who had expected his Pole position to become a regular feature.

The club is concerned, however, at what might be lost in the translation.

Lukasz, who has a BA degree but now works as a cleaner, came to England three years ago after his girlfriend got a job here.

They're now married; he also helps on the Echo's Polish column.

Darlington's standard of play is high, he says, their stadium fantastic. And the chances of an automatic promotion place?

"It'll be easier to say after Saturday's game. We've had a lot of injuries, especially to forwards, but I'm confident we can still do it."

A club spokesman said they hoped that the column could be included next season.

"We decided to take the column out and spoke to Lukasz about it. We want to sit down in the close season and do something to promote the club to the Polish community for next season, so the column isn't terminated, said Grahame McDonnell, commercial director.

"We recognise there is Polish support in the town, and we need to develop a bond between the club and the Polish community. We'd like to speak to the guys, perhaps get them together in the sports bar. I would rather do it properly for next season rather than not right for the last two games of this season."

The Quakers would not have been the first Football League club to produce a column in a second language.

Wrexham, clinging on to membership, have a regular feature in Welsh.

NEEDING more fans - and more finance - is nothing new, of course. Digging back to 1939 for the piece on Portsmouth's finest, we come across similar problems for Darlington.

The directors were desperate, warning in March of the "utter impossibility of carrying on the club with the totally inadequate support which has been given to it this season."

A few days later they circulated townspeople, claiming that closure was inevitable unless supporters bought a vice-presidency for three guineas or, at least, some shilling shares.

The town's mayor also launched an appeal, in a bid to raise £600.

The war intervened, Quakers lived to fight again. In 1938-39 they finished eighteenth; that season they didn't even make the play-offs.

NOW manager of West Auckland, former Quakers goalkeeper Phil Owers - 53 later this month - returned to Arngrove Northern League action last week against Sunderland Nissan, keeping a clean sheet in West's 2-0 win.

"The lads were magnificent in protecting me," says Phil - also with Hartlepool and Gillingham - though Nissan did hit the bar after just two minutes. "I got there just when the crossbar stopped rattling," he insists.

WHILE the jury remains out - barely in - on Fabio Capello, the England chief coach already has his friends in football.

The Arngrove Northern League magazine reports that league secretary Tony Golightly was outside Soho Square - vainly trying to fathom the high-tech, push button access system - when the Italian appeared on the scene with a sort of international open sesame.

Doors flew open at once, Tony duly impressed. "Mr Capello was absolutely charming," he says.

AS REGRETTABLE as it is inarguable, all these columns have recently carried far too many obituaries. A note from Neville Hare in Darlington makes a three-fold suggestion - get a sponsorship deal with the Co-op Funeral Service, triple your own life insurance polices and (thanks, Neville) keep up the good work.

LAST week's note on former Sunderland hero George Herd, who'd hobbled from Hampden Park to the bus station with broken ankle and boots in a brown paper bag, reminded Jim Sayers in Spennymoor of post-war days watching Newcastle United.

Those were the days, says Jim, when boots were all a player carried and the maximum wage was £10, falling to £8 in the winter.

He never missed a home match, usually returning on the five past six bus from Newcastle to Bishop Auckland and hoping to sit next to the great Charlie Wayman, or England international Doug Wright, who both lived in the Coundon area.

"These days," says Jim, "they'd be going home in a Ferrari."

ALAN Barrett, himself a St James' Park regular while at Fenham Barracks after the war - "You'd just get off the tram and be swept along, your feet never touched the ground"

- sends a cutting from the Manx Independent about Jack Gair.

Jack was Bishop Auckland's full back when hostilities ceased.

Jack Tate, another Manxman, played alongside him.

Jack Gair, at any rate, has just received an award for 75 years' membership of the NUT, having turned down an offer from Bradford City - that maximum wage again - to concentrate on teaching.

Mr Barrett, now 88 and still working as a roofer - "I'm a snob, I like to look down on people," he says, doubtless not for the first time - was based in Darlington with the Ordnance Corps during the war, the depot in Stevenson Street and the billet in St Matthew's church hall.

A colleague was the affectionately remembered Peter Jaconelli - future ice cream king, mayor of Scarborough and the only private to be taken home each weekend in a chauffeured limousine.

THE last person the column had spoken to on the Isle of Man was Sir Norman Wisdom - diminutive comedian, actor, former Army boxing and cross country champion and Newcastle United nut.

It was 1992, shortly after Kevin Keegan's first coming.

"People at St James' Park still recognise me, which is nice even though I don't wear the cap," said the wholly engaging Sir Norman. Though still on the island, he is now unwell and in a residential home.

Always reluctant to reveal his age, the great little man is 93.

...and finally

TUESDAY'S column asked what the three scorers in this year's Carling Cup final had in common and thus flummoxed everybody.

All three - Woodgate, Berbatov and Drogba - wore headbands.

Since we've been talking about the Portsmouth v Wolves FA Cup final, John Briggs in Darlington today invites the identity of the future England cricket captain born in Wolverhampton in 1939.

To allow a bit more thinking time, the column returns on April 22.

10:36am Friday 11th April 2008

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