THE first team apparently having forgotten how to do it, almost 1,000 turned out last Thursday night to see if Newcastle United Reserves could manage so much as a goal.

Once they'd have been the Stiffs, the aged and the minimum-waged, and these would have been Stiffs sentences.

Now they're supple supplicants and hundred miles per hour hopefuls - the Reserves' reserves mostly - playing Arngrove Northern League side Whitley Bay in the semi-final of the Northumberland Senior Cup.

The Magpies include 17-yearold debutant goalkeeper Ole Soderberg - big, blonde, Schmeichelish - and other league of nations lads like James Troisi, Fabio Zamblera, Tamas Kadar, Wesley Ngo Behang and Kazenga LuaLua, whose brother Lomara briefly cartwheeled across their collective consciousness.

"You can tell he's a LuaLua,"

someone says. "Skinniest legs in football."

The match is at the Blue Flames ground in Benton, owned by the Gas Board (or whatever these days it calls itself) and rented by Northumberland FA.

By kick-off there's a tenminute queue, indicative of the lengths to which Magpies fans will go, and a warning from a steward to have the right money because they'd run out of change.

Though Scottish and Newcastle have gone, the air is full of what Newcastle United still couldn't do in a brewery.

Admission's just £3 and £1.50, Newcastle - the home side - thought generously to be donating the proceeds to their opponents.

I've just £1.60, tell the gateman I'm a pensioner and that (magnanimously) he may keep the change.

Disappointing on at least two counts, he doesn't demur.

If the Toon Army is wearing its colours, they're very well hidden. Soft or scoffed? Probably just too cold.

After 20 minutes the boy Troisi scores; clever stuff. It's greeted almost incredulously, the embarrassed murmur like the reception for a selfconscious carnival queen paraded through the village on the back of a coal lorry.

The Messiah's miraculously absent - perhaps watching The Bill, perhaps footing it - but reaction in the United dugout is rather more animated.

One of the coaches is so excited he almost tumbles over something that resembles a very large bait box. Newcastle have so many very large bait boxes they must have bought fish and chips 20 times to give the bit bairns for their suppers.

It's still 1-0 at half-time, the tea-room topic whether the first team can survive and the consensus that they won't.

"There's always one team gans into freefall," says a senior Northumberland FA man, "and not even parachute payments are going to stop that."

His mate, Ashington lad, agrees. "Aye," he says, "it's a very dergy do."

It's dodgier yet in the last minute when Whitley's Lee Kerr blasts a glorious 20- yard free kick into the top corner and essays a passable LuaLua impression across the turf.

Kerr had an extended trial at Newcastle last season.

They didn't think he was good enough.

The tie's settled in the eighth minute of extratime when Behang scores from 12 yards. Two goals in the same game being almost unheard of, the bench - clearly unsure what to do - reacts in unconventional manner.

They sub the scorer.

"Probably saving him for Liverpool," someone says, optimistically.

The reserves meet Blyth Spartans of the Conference North in the final. The game's likely to be at St James's. "We're not getting carried away," says a chap on the homeward Metro, "if there's home advantage, we may need it."

BACK up to Tyneside the following evening for Whickham FC's sportsmen's dinner. The guest speaker's former Newcastle Falcon John Bentley, one of the few men to have represented Great Britain at both codes of rugby. The talk's the usual joshing, not least about his home town of Cleckheaton - "We don't have any twin towns, but we have a suicide pact with Dewsbury" - until he gets to the end. "I have to say," he concludes, "that the way you footballers treat your match officials is disgraceful."

Mr Bentley has clearly been reading my script.

LAST Tuesday's report on Whitley Bay's FA Vase quarterfinal win at Hungerford prompted an email from Canon Richard Kingsbury, now retired to Bedale but with a foot in both camps.

In the 1960s he was a curate at Whitley Bay and was one of 69,000 - "all standing, blow health and safety" - who watched the Magpies win the Fairs Cup at St James's. Fifteen years later, he was Vicar of Hungerford.

"The result won't cause sleepless nights," he concedes.

Canon Kingsbury wishes to point out, however, that Tuttiday in Hungerford is celebrated on the second Tuesday after Easter (which, this year, is April 1) and not, as we'd supposed, the Tuesday immediately following Easter.

"This error in your otherwise admirable report will have raised blood pressure in Hungerford and misled the nation," he says.

Canon Kingsbury, in truth, almost became an inky tradesman himself, offered a reporter's job at The Northern Echo on graduating before deciding to take orders elsewhere. "Quel piccolo mondo," he says, and in Shildon they talk of little else.

DAVEY Munday, he of the famous Fife, sends another cutting from the Dunfermline Press - and on his favourite subject, tea hut provender.

Interviewed on Radio Scotland, former referee Stuart Cosgrove recalled the habit of Dunfermline fans of throwing pies at the match officials, and whether they needed building up or not. On one occasion he counted a dozen. In Dunfermline, though, things are different. "Up there they have Stephen's bridies,"

recalled Cosgrove. "No-one's ever going to waste one of those."

WITH an eye towards celebrating its golden jubilee, the Hathaway and Cope Stokesley and District League fears that its 50th season may be its last.

Four of the existing nine clubs have indicated that they'll be leaving for the Teesside League at the end of the season.

"We just can't run with five,"

says committee member George Benson.

The league - "very friendly, good quality football" - covers the areas around Stokesley, Stockton and Middlesbrough.

They'll gauge interest at a special meeting on March 18.

"It always seems to be teams leaving, never any coming back," says George. He's on 01287 650624.

NO such problems in the everburgeoning Over 40s League, of course, though the adage about spirit and flesh may sometimes be appropriate.

Take, for example, last week's match between Wearmouth CW and the Fat Ox, a bovine pub team from Whitley Bay.

Our old friend Kevin Chisholm - aged 70 and known thereabouts as The Aged Miner - is stripped and ready to play when he discovers that his boots aren't in his kit bag.

What he doesn't realise is that Mrs Chisholm, concerned for his health and well-being, has confiscated them.

Wearmouth earn a point, just their second of the season, with a last-minute goal. Still the Aged Miner's inconsolable.

"If I'd been out there." he says, "it could have made all the difference."

...AND FINALLY

THE only English cricketer twice to have had a three-figure domestic batting average (Backtrack March 7) was, of course, Geoffrey Boycott - though as Ian Jackson of the Cricket Society points out, dancing Mark Ramprakash has now joined him.

By way of supplementary question, Ian invites the identity of the scorer drafted in to a play in a cup tie at Lord's. He believes he even played in sand shoes.

The score on that one on Friday.

9:06am Tuesday 11th March 2008

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