A WINNERS medal from the first football World Cup is set to be auctioned next week after it ended up in New Zealand.

Alf “Tot” Gubbins was a member of West Auckland winning team which won the competition in Italy in 1909.

The County Durham team represented Britain in the inaugural World Cup competition in Torino, which involved clubs Italy, Switzerland and Germany.

The trophy was named after tea merchant Sir Thomas Lipton, who insisted Britain was represented in the competition after the English Football Association declined.

Auctioneers Anderson & Garland, in Newcastle, will be selling the medal on Tuesday, with an estimate of between £4,000 and £6,000.

Gubbins, of Bishop Auckland, married Jane Hannah Henderson in the parish church in New Shildon in 1907 and worked as a miner.

In 1912, after his footballing exploits, he, his wife and daughter emigrated to New Zealand where he worked on the railways and continued playing football.

His grandson Philip Anderson, who lives in New Zealand, has offered the medal for auction.

The West Auckland team, mainly made up of miners, beat Stuttgart of Germany 2-0 in the semi-final and repeated the performance against Swiss side F.C Winterhouse in the final.

The West Auckland team was Jimmy Dickinson, Rob Gill, Jack Greenwell, Rob Jones, Tom Gill, Charlie ‘Dirty’ Hogg, Ben Whittingham, Douglas Crawford, Bob Guthrie, Alf ‘Tot’ Gubbins, Jock Jones, David ‘Ticer’ Thomas and Tucker Gill.

In 1911, West Auckland returned to Italy to defend their trophy. They beat FC Zurich in the semi-final by 2-0 and in the final defeated Juventus by 6-1.

A statue commemorating the miners winning the trophy was installed more than 100 years after the competition.

The three-metre bronze statue was unveiled on the village green in West Auckland, in 2013 afternoon, under the watchful eye of sculptor Nigel Boonham.

Work on the plans started in 2009, the centenary of victory but the project stalled while funding was secured.

Funding was received from councillors neighbourhood budgets, West Auckland Parish Council, the Arts Council, and Section 106 agreements made with housing developers.