PERHAPS in a spirit of schadenfreude, for he is a Magpie among Mackems, king of the groundhoppers John Dawson has been toting around a book chronicling Newcastle United’s best days. None may have been more enjoyable than April 25, 1903.

United hosted Sunderland, final game of the first division season. Had they won, Sunderland would have been champions.

McColl’s goal early in the second half gave victory to Newcastle and handed the title to Sheffield Wednesday, who’d already finished their fixtures. The crowd was 26,500.

“News of the defeat quickly reached the Owlerton ground (Sheffield) and much enthusiasm was manifested once it was known,” reported the Echo the following Monday morning.

It’s to Robert Smyth McColl, known universally as Toffee Bob, to whom John Dawson draws particular attention, however.

Born in Glasgow in 1876, McColl and his brother Tom opened their first sweetie shop in 1901 – with the £300 signing-on fee after he’d moved from strictly amateur Queens Park to Newcastle for a reported £5 a week – £1 more than Liverpool’s offer. The local press reported that United had signed “the smartest dribbler and goal scorer in Scotland.”

Nikodemus in the Evening Chronicle was yet more excited: “A compound of philosopher, scientist and artist,” he wrote.

Over four seasons Toffee Bob scored 20 goals in 67 appearances but was frequently injured. “The Anglo cloggers kept crocking him,” a history records. Unlucky for some, McColl had also scored 13 in 13 international appearances, including hat-tricks against all three home nations within 13 months.

He returned to Queens Park, scoring six – still a club record – in his final game in 1912.

Thereafter the bobbing and weaving continued. By 1931, when they sold out to Cadbury’s, the confectionery and newsagency chain had more than 150 shops. Though now part of a bigger corporation, still the name lives on – around 200 R S McColl shops north of the border, simply McColls further south.

“It’s a great story,” says prolific United historian Paul Joannou, who lives in Edinburgh and still nips out to R S McColl’s for his paper.

It's also with thanks to Paul Joannou we reproduce Toffee Bob’s image. On the latter day internet, alas, toffee bob appears only to be a haircut.

APRIL 25, 1903? Darlington beat West Hartlepool in a Northern League game described as “very uninteresting”, Nil Desperandum live up to their classical name by edging past Scots Free in the Whitby Cup final and 10,000 watch Middlesbrough draw 0-0 with Stoke City in the final game at what the Echo liked to call the Linthorpe Road enclosure. Thereafter the Boro moved to Ayresome Park – the enclosure, we added with echoes of more recent times, “will fall into the hands of the speculative builder.”

FORTY-odd years after last a ball was kicked there, they’ve been digging up Bradford Park Avenue. “It’s the Angkor Wat of football” – the Angkor what?– says archaeologist Jason Wood.

Among the more startling discoveries, however, is that arch-Middlesbrough fan Rob Nichols – editor for 29 years of the Fly Me to the Moon fanzine – is among those who’ve regularly been on their knees.

“Park Avenue was a people’s palace. I hope we’ve opened a portal for 1,000 memories but equally started a new chapter,” says Rob, whose house stands where the Ayresome Park centre circle once was.

The one thing he knows about,. He adds, is that football grounds still have a life long after the last ball was kicked.

The original Park Avenue went bust in 1974, a restrictive covenant limiting future ground use to sport. When Wood and his team began work in 2013, they not only discovered overgrown terracing and a bit of the netty wall but a chalk board advertising the five bob admission for the final Football League game, a 5-0 defeat to a Scunthorpe United side that included the young Kevin Keegan.

Other finds included studs, marbles – projectiles aimed at the visiting keeper – and, perhaps most surprisingly, a nappy pin.

PA goalie Chick Farr, it was recalled, had once needed trainer’s attention after his shorts elastic snapped during a match. Stretching things a bit, the pins were thereafter routinely aimed in his direction.

Funded by fans and with an initial print run of just 500, a book about the great dig – Ground Breaking: Art, Archaeology and Mythology – has been nominated for the William Hill Sports Bok of the Year award. The ground’s now used for cricket.

IT'S nearly 20 years since the column was at Bradford Park Avenue, then as now at the Horsfall Stadium (named after a deceased chairman of the parks and cemeteries committee.)

It was early September 1998, playing Easington Colliery in the FA Cup. Though the home side still appeared to the song We’re Going to Walk Down to Electric Avenue, one or two fuses appeared to have blown.

“At Bradford (Park Avenue) it’s just like old times”, the subsequent column began. “They’ve not scored a goal all season and the crowd aren’t rart happy.”

Against Easington they scored four, a fecundity perhaps helped because leading Easington scorer Andy McKenna had spent the previous night as a guest of Halifax police, having got a bit too excited at the Friday evening match with Hartlepool United.

The ground’s in Cemetery Road. One foot in the grave, old hands had recalled former PA men like Trevor Atkinson – “a rart old yard dog” – still affectionately remembered at Darlington, like Tommy Henderson, signed from Tow Law in 1969 to do what Canute couldn’t and like dear old Laurie Brown, briefly team manager in 1969.

Shildon lad, wonderful guy, Laurie played for Arsenal, Spurs and Norwich City but swore that the greatest club in the world was Bishop Auckland.

They also recalled former Middlesbrough goalkeeper Esmond Million, discovered to have taken a £300 bribe while with Bristol Rovers in 1963 to throw a match with PA. They could still only manage a 2-2 draw.

Park Avenue were thrown out of the Football League in 1970, after four successive re-election applications. These days they’re seventh in National League North. Electric Avenue may be warming up again.

FINALLY back to Newcastle United: a thronged funeral service for hugely popular former Magpies’ publications editor and Northern Echo journalist Paul Tully was held at the West Road crematorium on Tuesday, followed by a wake at St James’ Park. Much more of that next week.