Final countdown

PREVARICATION is pointless, no journalistic licence from stoking the suspense. You know the score already: the Railroad to Wembley will have a double header, two STL Northern League teams in the FA Vase final.

Dunston UTS play West Auckland on Sunday, May 13, 3pm. Just this once, one joyfully egregious exception, may an occasion be almost unique?

It is only the second time in the national stadium’s 90-year history that two North-East teams will have met there, the first since the Vase budded in 1974 that both finalists have been from the same league.

For 16 years I have had the great honour of being Northern League chairman, the euphoria at 4.50pm on Saturday wholly beyond description. It is even said that I kissed a bloke, something that may best be described as out of character.

Fifteen minutes earlier, things had seemed very different, such advanced symptoms of uncontrollable agitation usually addressed by a medically- induced coma. These are the high and the lows, the very joy of football.

DUNSTON are at Staveley Miners Welfare, a couple of miles outside Chesterfield. We leave Darlington on the 10.05, the elder bairn having booked the journey in short stages – such the myriad mysteries of the ticketing system – in order to save a small fortune.

In truth, he has more singles than an online dating agency.

That the train’s a bit late may be explained by the announcement as it heads southwards out of York. “The next station stop will be Darlington,” says the guard.

At York we’re joined by yet another party of giggly nuns – PVC nuns, a nun sequitur – though the hen party does little to distract the conversation from Wrestlemania XXVIII, Undertaker v Triple-H, on television the following evening.

Sky is asking £15 extra and not even discounts for bus pass holders, as the two combatants must surely be.

At Sheffield station, 11.30am, we alight for a swift one in The Tap. Mr Tim Duncan, also in attendance, is ordered by the bouncer to cover up his Newcastle Falcons shirt. The gentleman glances at my Northern League tie and nods, approvingly. That’ll do nicely.

On the short journey from Sheffield to Chesterfield, the town of the skewiff spire, the PA has been replaced by one of those orange message boards. “Our next and final station stop,” it announces, “will be Leeds.”

STAVELEY was Derbyshire colliery country, the sort of place where you half expect Mr Tony Benn – or, possibly, the Beast of Bolsover – to walk proprietorially down the main street, scattering concessionary coal in his wake.

Most websites claim few famous citizens, though Uncle Staveley – memory suggests – was one of Mr Peter Tinniswood’s many memorable creations.

One website acknowledges Robert Keyes who, it’s supposed, doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. He was one of the Gunpowder Plotters.

“Richard Keyes is incredibly important to Staveley, Guy Fawkes is just the one who went down in history,” says Paul Wilson, the parish church verger.

Death proved all men equal, even when hanged, drawn and hacked into quarters. Staveley has an annual bonfire; uncertainty over whose effigy surmounts it.

The town’s pleasant, quiet, the Saturday market but a single stall. In the Elm Tree there’s a curly-haired little lad of two whose vocabulary seems solely to comprise the word Owls – Owls as in Sheffield Wednesday – while in Staveley Miners’ Welfare Club there’s a poster for Cliff Matthews Worldwide Entertainments.

Having scoured the globe, they’ve brought Natalia Nightingale to northeast Derbyshire. Fit bird, no doubt.

In William Hill’s the bairn asks the odds on Dunston. “Who are they playing?” asks the pleasant lass behind the counter and phones headquarters for a price.

They offer 6-5 Dunston, a goal up from the first leg, 7-4 Staveley. He has a tenner on our boys: they’ve been brought up right, those two.

EVERYWHERE the ground’s blue-and-white striped, like a pier full of deck chairs. There’s even a Tower Bar – not quite Blackpool Tower Bar, not Reginald Dixon at the organ, but friendly and quirky and lovely, nonetheless.

The club’s spent a fortune on improvements for the big day, even created a beer garden. A note in the programme enjoins against cycling round the ground. There seems little chance of that.

The programme also hopes that there’ll be no need of a penalty shootout, for fear that the poor lad who misses the crucial kick will be left with a carbuncle on his shoulder. It is an interesting anatomical exercise.

Dunston were formed in 1975 by John Thompson and some work mates from Her Majesty’s Stationery Office in Gateshead. John and several others are still there, still never miss a match. He’s a nice lad, doesn’t say too much. “You’d never have thought it, though,” he suggests.

They’re a goal down after five minutes, the tie level, but themselves find the net after 20 minutes through record scorer Andy Bulford.

If Bully’s celebration may be supposed over-exuberant – it earns him a yellow card – his tackle a few minutes later may best be considered rash.

Second yellow, first shower gel. Oh hell.

Though Staveley score again, the ten men dominate. Matters are numerically equalised when an uncompromising elbow sees a home player prematurely despatched.

It’s building, boiling, travelling fans so boisterous that not even Dunston chairman Malcolm James can be heard above the racket. (Northern League followers will understand that that must have been cacophonous indeed.) Then with four minutes remaining Stephen Goddard, a sub, thumps a shot from ten yards against the underside of the bar and home. It flies but I still see it in super slo-mo, still follow the trajectory, still see the ball rest, in peace, where blessedly it belongs.

The Dunston fans erupt. However it may sound to the untrained ear, to the aficionado it is Natalie Nightingale, and Inkersall Road is Berkeley Square.

Word’s arriving that West Auckland, also down to ten men, are hanging onto a 2-1 lead. It’s at that point, 4.44pm, that I know that we’re all going to Wembley. The FA Carlsberg Vase is a wonderful competition, football at its friendliest. Do please come and join us.

ON Sunday lunchtime to West Auckland workmen’s club – a proper Sunday lunchtime, black pudding on the bar – in order to shake even-handedly. Several of the football club’s great stalwarts are in – Stuart Alderson, Allen Bayles. Cliffy Alderson – and fair to say (as indeed they do in those parts) that there are some bonny sights.

A BBC crew’s there, too, West’s World Cup out of special measures for the occasion. Since there are limits to what may be shown before the watershed, even in 2012, they talk to the league chairman, instead.

“We had a canny night,” says Cliffy, by way of Olympian understatement.

Peter Dixon, the most thaumaturgic of team managers – West were bottom when he took over three years ago – is also down from Newcastle.

Though “PD” is writ large on his tracksuit, there may be none in West Auckland who wonders who on earth he is, or supposes that PD stands for Polly Devlin.

On his mobile there’s an image taken at 6.30am of Michael Rae, the previous afternoon’s two-goal hero, apparently being supported by one of those road signs that proclaims West Auckland to be the home of the first World Cup.

Like Bulford of Dunston, Mickey Rae also appears to have over-celebrated, though you can’t be booked for it at half past six on a Sunday morning.

Besides, it’s all about what West folk call carpe diem, about seizing the day. For the next five-and-a-bit weeks we shall seize it, and squeeze it, every drop.