Olympics re-run

Last Saturday it again headed north, to Morpeth, they being the only Ebac Northern League survivors in the FA Vase quarter-finals, and my mate Kit especially glad to be out of the house.

“The central heating’s been bust since Thursday morning,” he said.

Five years ago, Morpeth Town were bottom of the Northern League second division, would have been relegated had anyone been in a position to take their place. Saturday’s tie with Bristol Manor Farm may have been the biggest sporting event thereabouts since the Morpeth Olympics.

BIG DAY: The Morpeth bench gets involved

They ran – and jumped, and punched, and wrestled – for 80 years until 1958, professional games which attracted crowds of up to 15,000 and failed in less copyright-conscious days to attract the wrath of the IOC. There was a “bar and bolster” event too, but that was probably just pillow fighting. The Northumberland town still has an Olympic Hill and an Olympic Terrace, still has old men who may remember a more triumphant age.

Among Morpeth’s other claims to fame is that it’s the resting place of Emily Wilding Davison, the suffragette killed in 1913 when she threw herself beneath the hooves of the King’s horse in the Derby.

A 20,000 crowd gathered around St Mary’s Church for the funeral. The band played the Marseillaise. No one seems to know why.

HEAVING at 11am – mostly breakfast and coffee – the Wetherspoons in Morpeth is named The Electrical Wizard after Walford Bodie, a musical hall turn popular there in the days when it was the Coliseum and health and safety hadn’t been invented.

On the next table, an aged couple are attempting the general knowledge crossword in one of the tabloids. “Synthetic fabric used to make stockings – five letters,” reads gaffer across the egg and bacon. “Elastic,” says gammer. “Too many letters,” he says, and moves to the next clue.

“Single cell orgasm,” says gaffer. Gammer may suspect it’s an amoeba, but just laughs gently and – who knows – nostalgically.

The next clue’s “card game.” It’s tempting to ask if they know the world’s greatest Geordie joke – you know, ice hockey – but I return to the pre-match hash browns.

WELL breakfasted, we take a blow around the Bagpipe Museum.

That none other appears to be around may be because, that very day, a conference in Edinburgh was being told that the pipes began not in Scotland, but in England.

A machine offers to play When The Boat Comes In or Lambton Worm in exchange for a coin.

We invest £2, but are disappointed that, while it may be true that he who pays the piper calls the tune, the tune lasts for approximately five seconds. Chants would be a fine thing.

Nearby is an excellent micropub called The Office – as in hard day at The Office – from which we call a taxi to the Craik Park ground.

The driver’s a bit surprised. “Is there something on?” he asks.

THE club’s led by Ken Beattie, an internationally successful businessman who last summer took his troops on a tour of Dubai and this year plans a team break in Brazil.

Such the relentlessness of the rain, and the Stygian depths of the clarts, it’s Morpeth’s first home game for 108 days.

Our boys lead after ten minutes, the scorer 45-year-old central defender Chris Swailes whose lengthy Football League career included more than 200 games for Rotherham and a six-inch screw to help hold his heel together.

In 2012 he helped Dunston UTS win the Vase but soon afterwards was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a serious heart condition which required four operations and, unsurprisingly, compelled his retirement.

Now he’s back, billed “Bionic man” on the FA’s own website.

“I’m not as quick as I was, but what I lack in pace I make up for upstairs,” he told them.

“My brain against a 20-year-old’s pace, and I’d back myself.”

No matter that a former Morpeth Olympian might even now have scored the goal, Swailes’s celebration suggests that still he can shift.

A second goal in added time ensures that Morpeth will play Bowers and Pitsea in the two-legged semi-final.

It’s Basildon way, 36 minutes from Fenchurch Street, a chance at last for the Railroad to get up serious steam.

Kit’s also had a call from his partner back in Darlington to say that the central heating’s been fixed.

Unalone, he heads happily homeward.

….and finally, the only English international footballer to come from Ripon (Backtrack, February 25) was Derek Kevan, principally of West Bromwich Albion, where fans knew him, affectionately, as The Tank. He died three years ago.

Neil Mackay in Lanchester today invites readers to name – preferably without looking it up – the four Premier League clubs who were founder members of the Football League.

Founded AD 1985, the column returns next week.