Get Carter at Newcastle (From The Northern Echo)

Get Carter at Newcastle

9:18am Tuesday 30th June 2009 in

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AS if ignominy could further be aggravated, Magpies fans will have been discomforted not only to see Roker Park win the 2.35 at Newcastle’s big race meeting on Saturday – the 9-1 odds exactly the same as Sunderland’s hitherto biggest win on Tyneside, December 5, 1908 – but that Horatio Carter won the 3.45 event at 11-4.

Raich Carter was a Sunderland lad, capped 13 times for England, joint leading scorer in the 1936 Championship side and captained the FA Cup winners the following season – “it’s doubtful if a better player has ever graced the red and white stripes,” says one of the histories.

Both horses, booed to the winners’ enclosure by sections of the crowd, are owned by Seaham businessman and “avid” Sunderland supporter Trevor Alderson and trained by Kevin Ryan at Thirsk.

“It’s great to have pinched two big prizes in Newcastle’s backyard,” Trevor admits.

Only the sadistic, who remembered Hull City’s role in ultimately consigning Newcastle to their fate, would have noted that the last of the day was won by Tiger Reigns – four horse race, short head. Honest.

ON the cricket field, the match between our friends at Spout House and King James from Bishop Auckland was again washed out – “a thunderstorm off the scale,” reports King James secretary John Raw. At Spout House there are consolations, however.

“It was social match number 589 and tea number one,” says John. They try again next season.

NEWS that the FA is to stump up £10,000 to help pay for West Auckland’s “World Cup” reunion with Juventus almost did for Allen Bayles, the club’s unflappable secretary.

“I nearly fell of my chair when they rang. I had to have a drink,” he reports, however improbably.

Though the trip marks the centenary of the first occasion on which West won the Sir Thomas Lipton trophy, in 1909, it was two years later that they thrashed Juventus 6-1 in the second final and were allowed to keep the trophy.

One or two things may since have changed, not least that they’ll travel by coach – not train, as the pioneers did.

The journey’s about 24 hours each way, leaving at noon on Thursday July 30 and back the following Monday lunchtime. The match, against Juventus Under 19s, is at 5.30pm on August 1.

“As before, it’s the logistics which are the problem,” says club benefactor John Wotherspoon, who’s also persuaded Unilever – who took over the Lipton empire – handsomely to stump up. All are welcome to join them: details from Cooperative Travel in Bishop Auckland.

It’s the start of a hectic period for West, who’ll be Durham County Council’s guests at a civic reception on August 7 and plan an all-star match for Sir Bobby Robson’s cancer appeal on August 9. Somewhere amid it all, the football season starts.

Ever the traditionalist, the column plans to retrace the railway journey. We’ve not heard the last of the Italian job just yet.

DIFFERENT scale, happy coincidence, another World Cup’s planned in Darlington on July 11 – at the Model T pub run by West Auckland sponsor and Lottery millionaire Kenny Wynne.

This one’s table football, the version in which rods aren’t spared at all, and a game fast kicking off around Darlington.

“Kenny’s supportive rather than skilful,” says Martin Landers, who already runs table football leagues at the Model T and at the Wheatsheaf, on the opposite side of town.

They hope for 32 teams, each with two members, guaranteed a minimum three games each. Though most will simply “represent”

a country, they’ve a couple of Slovakians, a Jamaican, a Spaniard who’s a vet at the abattoir and a Scot who’s something high up at the Darlington-based Student Loan Company and who commutes from Motherwell.

“It’s just a bit of fun but there’ll be a really good atmosphere and a big crowd for the final,” says Martin.

No spin, he insists that the game’s pretty skilled.

“Many people will remember it from university, but it’s really becoming popular again.

“The main qualities are good hand-to-eye coordination, patience and composure; if you start mad spinning, you always lose.

“England’s football mad.

We’re just trying to tap into the national psyche with something a bit more accessible.”

He himself had just been working on a couple of new moves, including something called The Snake. “I haven’t quite mastered it,” said Martin.

The round table gathering is expected to run from around 11am-3pm; participants required to notify in advance. Details from Martin Landers on 07709 804850 or martin.landers@ntlworld.

com THOUGH there are opposing claims, table football is said first to have been patented in 1923 by Harold Thornton, a Tottenham Hotspur fan who wanted to replicate the thrills of White Hart Lane.

The idea, it’s said, came after he laid matchsticks across the top of their box.

Spurs.

His patent lapsed, table football was reinvented by Alejandro Finisterre – his father was radio-telegraphist at Finisterre lighthouse – who’d been badly injured in a bomb attack on Madrid in the Spanish Civil War and who wanted fellow football victims still to be able to enjoy the game.

Finisterre, interesting chap, was also poet, publisher, tap dancer, avowed leftie and perpetrator of one of the first plane hijacks, involving a bar of soap and some silver paper.

He also invented a foot-operated page turner for sheet music, though it appears not to have caught on in the same way. Finally settled in Guatemala, he continued to play table football, Che Guevara among his regular opponents.

Sadly, it’s not recorded who won. Finisterre died, aged 88, in 2007.

The game’s now global, often played for big money.

Formed in 2002, the International Soccer Federation is said to be seeking Olympic status.

Another world cup tournament coincides every four years with the FIFA version, Austria the holders. That the Model T may be a miniature leaves Martin Landers undaunted: today Darlington, tomorrow top of the table.

FIRST match of the season for most, the annual John Noddings Memorial Cup – Tow Law Select v Weardale Select, Brian Fowler’s lot against Tony Monkhouse’s lot – takes place on the Ironworks Ground, Tow Law on Friday, July 10 (7pm.) In aid of the British Heart Foundation, it commemorates 57- year-old John Noddings, from Ireshopeburn, who died during another charity match in 2003. Marilyn, John’s widow, will as always be in attendance.

ALL things relative, the North East Premier league derby between Stockton and Norton proved very much a family occasion.

It should have done, anyway.

“The way that the two teams have been playing it would probably have been more like a teddy bears’ picnic,”

says Stockton’s Mark Fletcher.

Norton included father and son David and Joe Kennedy, plus brothers Marty and Nick Thomas – sons of Chris Thomas, the former Durham County player.

Stockton not only fielded brothers Chris and Andrew Parr but the Ward siblings, Michael, Kevin and James.

Stephen Ward, their cousin, is second team captain.

“Stockton Cricket Club has more Wards than North Tees hospital,” says Mark. Lee Mason, another cousin, also played.

Lol Ward, the boys’ grandfather, was himself a former second team skipper and Grimsby Town footballer.

Chris and Andrew Parr are the sons of David Parr, a former first team captain.

In the event, they ended up rather unhappy families. Rain forced the game’s abandonment.

And finally...

THE sport which traditionally begins with the instruction “Tek hod” (Backtrack July 20) is Cumberland and Westmoreland wrestling. Ian Andrew in Lanchester was the first of several readers who successfully got to grips with that one.

Readers are today invited to identify the only one of the English “92” who remained unbeaten at home last season. Back where it belongs, the column returns on Saturday.