10:54am Tuesday 24th November 2009
THE venue, the occasion and the crowd could hardly have been more different. Thirty years later, only the linesmen remained the same.
The first was Hampden Park on June 2 1979, Scotland v Argentina, attendance pushing 62,000. The second was last watery Wednesday on the all-weather pitch at Ushaw Moor, New College Durham v Rotherham College and not even a man and his dog.
The Hampden match had also been the unforgettable afternoon that the 18-yearold Diego Maradona confirmed his unique ability to the world.
“It’s not very often that you’re bamboozled by pace and control, and it’s very rare in an 18-year-old,” Alan Hansen – part of the Scottish line-up – once recalled.
The match officials were all from Co Durham. Pat Partridge, farming in Cockfield, was referee, Newton Aycliffe lad Terry Farley was senior linesman with Tom Smith from Durham running diagonally opposite.
“I remember Argentina going 2-0 up, one of the Scots players asking what the soand- so was going on and his mate replying that he hadn’t a so-and-so clue,” recalls Terry, now 76.
“There’d been a lot of publicity beforehand and we knew it was going to be special, but what we saw was quite amazing.”
“He just utterly ran the show, you could tell even then he was something very special,” says 73-year-old Tom.
The world has since had much more hands-on experience of the mercurial Maradona. Until that rainy afternoon at Ushaw Moor, however, the two match officials – both still active – had never since worked together.
“It’s just been one of those things,” says Tom, “though it did give us the chance of some quality reminiscence. I slept well the night before Hampden, but hardly a wink after it.”
Scotland, whose squad included three future Sunderland defenders – George Burley, Frank Gray and Iain Munro – by all accounts played quite well. Argentina, crowned world champions the year previously, played a great deal better.
“I can honestly say that until a week before the game, I’d never even heard of Diego Maradona,” said Hansen. “According to the previews they had a wonderkid, but every week there’s a football superkid.
“After 90 minutes of that hot summer afternoon we knew that this was the real deal. He was so quick over five or six yards and had a left foot that, even at 18, deserved to be described as the wand of a genius.
“It got to the point where the Scottish fans were booing us and cheering Maradona.”
The match officials had travelled in Pat Partridge’s car, then as now REF 1. “We got lost in Glasgow and stopped to ask some lads on a pop wagon the way to the Albany Hotel,” says Terry.
“They immediately recognised Pat from his car and asked him for tickets, but took us to the hotel, anyway.”
The Echo the following Monday morning spoke of Maradona’s indelible skills, but failed wholly to mention the local lads in black.
“I said before the game that he was a brilliant player and his performance confirms it,” said Scots’ manager Jock Stein after Maradona had scored his first international goals in the visitors’ 3- 1 win.
At Ushaw Moor, it’s fair to say, the match officials struggled to spot another Maradona. Referee Steve Smith, 35, was impressed with his assistants, though.
“With a combined age of 149, it’s amazing not only that they still want to be involved but are no way just going through the motions,”
said Steve. “It mightn’t have been Hampden Park, but it was still a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.”
Terry keeps another reminder.
The Times watch given him as a memento ticks merrily on.
THOSE parallel linesmen were encountered at Bishop Auckland Referees’ Society last Thursday, the speaker top whistler Martin Atkinson, one of the UEFA elite.
Martin’s one of those to whom Sir Alex Ferguson appears to take particular objection.
Perhaps inevitably, he proved a very nice feller.
“We’re friends now. Sir Alex is sending me a watch for Christmas,” he said.
Still just 38, still a police officer though he only works one day a week – “A better job than Santa Claus,” said Terry Farley – he spent most of the evening talking through Champions’ League games.
“A mind blowing experience,”
said Martin, and particularly the police escort to the grounds. “I’m a policeman and I can tell you it’s still bloody frightening.”
Often self-critical – “We’ve had a dog for 12 months, I realised I was talking to some of the players like I was talking to the dog” – he’s tipped for still-higher things.
A full house thoroughly enjoyed his crack. “But if you think I’m crap,” said PC Atkinson, “my name is Howard Webb.”
BACK to Bishop the following evening, Jan Molby the principal speaker at St Mary’s Juniors’ latest fund raising bash.
Remarkable lads, these, Durham County Community Club of the year in 2008 and this year County Durham Junior Sports Club of the Year, any number of teams within their ever-widening embrace.
Molby recalled not just his hat-trick of penalties against Coventry in 1986 but that it was the first time that the young Steven Gerrard had been taken to watch Liverpool.
Gerrard himself has an eighty-odd per cent penalty success rate. “Just think what it would have been,”
said Molby, “if he’d been paying attention.”
Someone also asked about the greatest player he ever saw. Beckenbauer was third, he reckoned, Cruyff runnerup.
The best – “mind-blowing”
– was our old friend Mr Maradona.
ON sodden Saturday to Shildon v Spennymoor where Ray Gowan, for 40 years one of the great characters of Northern League football, made a rather soaked swansong. He and Pauline emigrate to Cape Town tomorrow.
He watched the incessant rain, mused that the following Saturday he’d be sitting on a sun-blessed terrace drinking a gin and tonic.
“I’m going to miss it like mad,” he said.
Ray’s a Londoner, accent undiluted despite 40 years of wet winters, scored a lastminute winner on his Northern League debut for Crook against Billingham Synthonia, 1966. “Synners have never let me forget it,” he said.
Subsequently he played for Bishop Auckland, Gateshead – under the great George Hardwick – and for one or two others, was player/ manager of Silesians during five earlier years in South Africa and led Brandon, Spennymoor and Shildon to FA Cup first round appearances.
He’d also had two years managing Ashington, several times weekly making the 240-mile round trip from his home in Leeds, and was at Esh Winning and West Auckland.
Neither the going rate nor the return fare changed it a bit. Ray did it for nothing.
“Football management at this level shouldn’t be about money,” he said.
Now 65, he hopes the South African sunshine will help ease in his new hip.
“The country gets an undeservedly bad press. There are parts of South Africa I wouldn’t go to, but there are parts of the UK I wouldn’t go to.”
Most of the time he’s worked for a national garage door company, who’ve offered him consultancy in Cape Town – one door closes, another one opens – and who held a dinner in his honour on Friday.
They stayed in the same Durham hotel as the Arsenal.
“Arsene came to ask my advice about Sunderland,”
insisted Ray. “For some reason he doesn’t seem to have taken it.”
SATURDAY’S column talked of the Northern League Cup tie between Newton Aycliffe and West Auckland - effectively a West Auckland reunion in Aycliffe colours.
One problem: it’s not tonight, as we said, it’s tomorrow at Moore Lane.
Apologies.
TONY PARRY, said to be the player who saved Hartlepool United from extinction, has died suddenly. He was 64.
“He was a very nice lad and a good player. It’s a terrible shock,” said former Pools goalkeeper Ken Simpkins, who’d been his best man.
Transferred from his home-town Burton Albion in December 1965 – Brian Clough’s first signing for Hartlepool – the central defender made 211 first team starts. It was the manner of his leaving, however, for which he may best be remembered.
Len Ashurst was team manager in 1972 when Pools perennial financial problems reached crisis point. Bottom of the table, just beaten 5-0 by Stockport County, they had to sell to survive – trouble was, there were precious few takers.
Clough, then at Derby County, agreed to pay £2,500 for Parry and though he played just four matches for County, it paid the wages bill.
Sky Sports presenter and familiar Hartlepool fan Jeff Stelling was also an admirer.
“Tony was a fantastic, cultured player in a decent sort of side,” he recalled. “He was a big favourite of mine. I could never understand why we didn’t do better than we did.”
After a 35-year absence, he’d returned to Victoria Park for a reunion in January this year. “I was given a fantastic reception,”
he told the column.
Subsequently he’d made a number of reappearances at dinners and other functions.
“He was just sitting in my house a few weeks ago,” said Ken Simpkins. “Tony always looked the same, always so fit. He didn’t seem to ail a thing.”
Tony, who watched Pools beat Orient at Victoria Park ten days ago, had enjoyed both the reunion and the story of his saving transfer.
“It was nice to know,” he said, “that I was so valuable after all.”
The club will hold a minute of silence before tonight’s game with Southampton.
LESS well known except to those of us on the Northern League circuit, Dave Lish has also died. A passionate football man, knowledgeable and opinionated, he held a Sunderland season ticket but still tried before Christmas each season to see a match on all 42 Northern League grounds.
Dave, who lived in Sunderland, was one of those people whom it was always a reassuring pleasure to see among the crowd or in the queue for the tea hut. He was just 50, and will be missed tremendously.
THE somewhat unusual place that the FA Cup spent the war after Portsmouth won it in 1939 (Backtrack November 21) was wrapped in a blanket beneath the club chairman’s bed. Terry Wells knew.
One today from the St Mary’s Juniors quiz: what connects Ian Botham, Graham Hill, Joe Frazier and Brian Clough?
More connections when the column returns on Saturday.
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