Neutral ground

THE Railroad to Wembley has once again reached its intended destination, and for the first time with a double header. Dunston UTS and West Auckland, both STL Northern League members, met on Sunday in the FA Carlsberg Vase final.

Uniquely, also, the lady of this house – never one of life’s natural nor more fervent football fans – had also been persuaded to attend, and to join the FA lunch beforehand.

There’s an inauspicious start, however. She can’t work the ticket machine at Darlington station car park, until a Samaritan helpfully points out that 13.05 isn’t the time, but the date.

This is also the lass who, just the day previously, had ordered a pair of jeans online – “20 per cent off” – and inadvertently taken a fifth off her waist size.

It may be considered big match nerves.

Most of the Northern League committee is also on the 8.26, first class for the occasion. There’s even a solitary polliss, so unconcerned about the prospect of bother – things are different in the Northern League – that he’s brought his Sunday sandwiches in a bag.

A youth on the next table wears a T-shirt with a Simple Minds motif.

This is clearly coincidental.

I’m the league chairman, have been for 16 years, spend most of the journey going up and down the train like a trolley wally trying to flog the special issue of the league magazine – still just 30p.

One’s sold to an unsuspecting Japanese tourist, another to a chap reading The Psychologist magazine.

It’s hard to analyse which is the greater coup.

An amiable bunch of Dunston fans has champagne and strawberries; a quartet from Darlington has a 20- pint cask of real ale, almost as many Taylor’s pies and a stone and a half of ham and pease pudding butties.

“It’s a long way to London,” it’s explained.

It’s the lady’s first visit to Wembley, or indeed to any football match, since the 1978 FA Cup final, Arsenal v Ipswich. All she remembers is that the toilets were manky and the Suffolk folk friendly. The score, happily, has been forever wiped from her consciousness.

AMONG the familiar problems of the Railroad to Wembley is that we are no longer branch line Britain. Wembley’s different: we’re there, or rather in the Blue Check pub across the road, barely three hours after leaving Darlington.

West will play in white, but have yellow and black – the “World Cup” colours of a century and more ago – for their scarves, jester hats and even for their tresses.

Dunston are in blue but supported by a number of disoriented Magpies, wearing black and white. Newcastle are at Everton; it’s a long time since they saw Wembley.

A chap’s selling half-and-half scarves, two for a fiver. They’re perfect.

For the league chairman, as impartial as if balanced on the scales of justice, this is neutral ground.

The lunch is excellent, West represented among others by club president John Elliott and by Lord and Lady Foster, he the former MP for Bishop Auckland. The night previously, John and others from West Auckland had had dinner in the Ritz, a specially printed menu marking the occasion.

Himself putting on the Ritz, club secretary Allen Bayles looks like he’s gone ten rounds at a tanning parlour, though it may just be the excitement of the occasion.

It’s also noticeable that the premeal rolls and butter are taken round the tables by members of the FA Vase committee, including Durham FA secretary John Topping.

“Times are hard,” someone explains.

John looks a natural, but would have been even better in a little frilly pinny.

There, too, is Durham FA member John Priestley, at Wembley the last time West Auckland played there in 1961, who reveals that he’s the greatnephew of West World Cup player Charlie Hogg, known universally as Dirty and not necessarily because he worked down the pit.

“I got sine die-d, too, playing for Escomb,” says John, prudently adding that they cancelled it eventually.

We dine Pn belly pork with a spiced cider gravy and on chocolate marquise.

It’s very good. The lady is allergic to cheap plonk but has no problems with the FA’s. Not to be sneezed at, at all.

Vase committee chairman John Ward greets the 200-or-so guests. “I don’t have to tell you how excited Mike Amos is,” he says. Too true.

THE sun shines; it always does at Wembley. Though the team identities have carefully been explained to the lady, she insists upon calling them The Blue Ones or The White Ones.

After six minutes, someone whispers that Arsenal – playing simultaneously – are a goal up. After 20 minutes, half the stadium clamours to report that they’re a goal down.

On half an hour, The Ones in the Blue score also, through the mercurial Andy Bulford, his 15th in this season’s Vase competition and at least one – a record – in every game.

Dunston’s committee, known for being somewhat stentorian, seems to find yet more decibels. In a brief lull, a solitary West Auckland voice can be heard: “The Blacksmiths Arms is empty, the Blacksmiths Arms is empty...”

Mattie Moffatt, West’s skipper and talisman, has a surgical mask covering a broken cheekbone. He’s marked by 41-year-oLd Chris Swales who seems – the cheek – to be getting the better of things. Matt’s three little lads, one marking his birthday, look anxiously on.

Though the crowd’s just 5,126 – a real worry in the crusade to keep the Vase final at the national stadium – the lady’s impressed by the volume of support. “Its like one of those churches where they play recorded hymns,” she says.

ARTHUR Clark, my esteemed predecessor, never saw a Northern League team at Wembley in 21 years in the chair.

This is my eighth Vase final in 16, the 101st football match at the new stadium.

Among the ideas to promote the big one are the magazine, a specially- brewed beer – fairly obviously called League of Our Own – and a half-time photograph, on the Wembley turf, involving representatives from all 44 clubs wearing their team colours.

Logistically it’s been challenging.

Though the FA has been hugely helpful, I still feel like an expectant father in on a multiple birth.

At 3.30pm I’m led off through the stadium’s innards, down a lift, through the royal ante-room and past the dressing rooms, to the players’ tunnel where everyone’s meant to be gathered. The Vase has been brought out, too, eyed almost proprietorially by Whitley Bay secretary Derek Breakwell, who’s done most of the Big Picture organisation and whose team had a hat-trick of wins.

“Take good care of that, it’s been in my bedroom for three years,” he pleads.

It’s a wonderful, colourful, cosmopolitan gathering – young and old, male and female, married into an indelible memento.

The FA have even provided a stepladder for the photographer.

Their lady does a swift head count.

“One, two, three, forty-four,” she insists.

It may not be the final word.

THE Blue Ones twice hit the woodwork, then Bulford scores again, the Dunston fans properly delirious. One’s dressed as Darth Vader; it’s not immediately obvious why.

They hold on comfortably, applauded by both sets of fans on the climb to the royal box. Though the music machine plays Run For Home, it’s possible that they may contemplate one or two in the capital before a Monday morning return to Tyneside.

John Thompson, who formed the club in 1975, is moist-eyed and by no means alone. The royal box leaps and sways. Ben Cattenach, Dunston’s admirable skipper, hoists high the cup.

It’s a famous, fabulous victory for them, but still a fantastic achievement for West Auckland and for the marvellous people who’ve run the club for so long.

As for the Northern League, we simply couldn’t lose.