POMPEY and circumstance, the column two weeks back on North-East connections with Portsmouth's 1939 FA Cup winning side - the last time they reached Wembley - prompted a call from Eric Smith in the former colliery village of Whitburn, near Sunderland.

Both his father and his uncle Jack had been in Portsmouth's 1934 Wembley side when Jack Weddle, also from Whitburn - "the hamlet of Whitburn,"

insisted the Northern Echo on the morning of the match - was Pompey's centre forward.

In the semi final against Leicester City a third brother, Sep, had been in the City lineup.

The Smiths - perhaps uniquely? - could have fielded a five-a-side team of Football League men.

Tom, known as Tosher, played among others for Manchester United and Joe for Leicester. Jack won three England caps and Sep one. The Smiths went at football hammer and tongs.

"They were just fabulous people, nothing like today's top sportsmen," says Eric. "I remember once asking my uncle Jack where his caps were and finding them under the bed - all fluff and feathers and all sorts.

"If my mam hadn't been proud and talked about it, we'd never have heard the stories at all. They just gave everything away. If Uncle Jack had an England shirt, he'd probably have worn it down the pit."

Eric was also an able allround sportsman, most of his cricket for Whitburn - though he had a couple of seasons as Ushaw Moor's pro in the 1970s - and was in the Shildon side when, in 1961, they lost at Oldham in the FA Cup first round.

"I remember it well," he says.

"I hit the bar with a header just before half-time." Shildon lost 5- 2.

So off up to Whitburn, hamlet no longer, where there's a little family gathering to reminisce, to browse once again through all the mementoes, to wonder at how they loved every minute but still had next-tonowt to show for it.

"I never realised I had so much until I started raking around again," says Eric, joined by Margery, his wife.

There also are Marie Oliver and Shirley Lowther, Jack's daughters, who've long since rescued his caps from beneath the bed. Among much else there's also a tea set, given to each Portsmouth player - and just about all they were given - to mark the 1934 final.

"I expect we could sell these things for a fortune, but there's no way we'd ever part," says Shirley.

There were seven Smith brothers altogether. One died in infancy, a second - Jimmy - never got much beyond the playing fields of Whitburn. All six played cricket for Whitburn, too.

It may not even be said of them that they had inherited their ability - or their style - from their father. He was pictured in a Whitburn side, alone in still wearing his flat cap.

"I expect if you look close enough, you van see the cigarette as well," says Eric.

Jack, the eldest, had gone from South Shields to Portsmouth with Mariners' manager Jack Tinn, had also been in Portsmouth's 1929 FA Cup final team and was 35 - looking more Whitburn collier than Portsmouth professional - by the time of the 1934 final, against Manchester City.

Later he took a pub, the Barrack Cellar, in Portsmouth.

"He was a real character,"

recalls Eric. "You could still see him in his 80s knocking around Whitburn, still walking on his toes."

Tosher, the second oldest, had been with Leicester before Man United, once scoring twice for United at Sunderland. "I don't suppose it went down too well,"

muses Marie. Dogged by ill health, as the history books have it, he died at 33.

Joe - " a fine player but perhaps didn't possess the quality of his brothers," a programme noted - joined Leicester at 18. Billy - Eric's dad - began at Spurs, came home to South Shields and then followed the Tinn trail to Portsmouth, where he made over 400 league and cup appearances.

He, it's said, would also have won England honours but for the form of Arsenal left back Eddie Hapgood.

Eddie recalls both his father and uncle Jack playing against Blackpool, the young Stanley Matthews giving his dad a bit of a run-around. "Uncle Jack came across and told me dad just to kick him.

"Me dad said he couldn't even catch the bugger to kick him."

Sep, the youngest, spent almost 20 years at Leicester, made 586 appearances - a City record bettered only by Graham Cross - but after not been chosen for the 1949 FA Cup final never played, and was rarely seen, again.

"It was a rather brutal severance," notes Of Fossils and Foxes, Leicester's history.

Manchester City's team for the 1934 final included Matt Busby at right half and, in goal, 19-year-old Frank Swift - called Fred in the Echo. Swift, we reported, had "swooned away"

after the match in sight of his crying mother.

City won 2-1, Jack Smith said nonetheless to have been an "adroit general." Weddle, who went on to become the second highest scorer in Portsmouth history, was reckoned the worst player on the field.

Eric Smith still has the programme - ads for Ekco radio and for Watney's beer, which apparently was What People Wanted. The centre pages carried a rhyming couplet: "Britain's boys are all born fighters; Bovril feeds the little blighters."

Eric, to whom thanks, passes round the coffee. "I wonder," he muses, "what that family would have been worth today."

WE'VE also heard from Christine Money, daughter of Billy Rochford who played for Portsmouth in the victorious 1939 final. It's another account of how times change.

Kath Chilton, niece of Pompey goalkeeper Harry Walker - Wensleydale lad - has been in touch, too. "I always remember him as a handsome, very softly spoken and kind uncle who, sadly, died at a relatively young age."

Billy Rochford was from the Esh Winning mining area, where men were men but he was still barely our of short trousers.

"They had communal baths,"

recalls Christine," now in Newcastle. "My dad was so shy, he kept his underpants on."

She still has his contract, £10 singing on fee, and his Wembley. The winning players got an additional £8 from the club and a civic reception from the council. "He remembered it well," says Christine, "they got paste sandwiches."

After the war he captained Southampton and was offered the manager's job, but had to turn it down for family reasons, never forgot how hard things were back home.

"He'd not only send money home," says Christine. "When they gave him a suit he sent that home as well.

"It wouldn't happen today, but my dad was a great man because of it."

Lawyers' 1998 team reunited

THE spring of 1998; Tow Law Town are on a most improbable road to Wembley. A 4-4 draw at Taunton in the first leg of the FA Vase semi-final is the second most memorable football match I've ever seen.

Like "exclusive", the column observes back then, the word "epic" is so overworked that they could take up its case at the European Court of Human Rights. "Had Homer written up Taunton v Tow Law for the Pink, however, it would have been translated into 35 languages by Monday morning."

The following week they meet again in Co Durham, the Lawyers kicking down in the second half. To the list of infallible powers, generally supposed to be the Pope and Bovril, may be added Tow Law kicking down in the second half.

So it proves, Jarred Suddick's 78th minute winner seeming briefly to be subsumed beneath the goalkeeper before emerging, apologising, and rolling refulgently into the net.

And so to Wembley, the Lawyers' first final since the Crook Nursing Cup in nineteen-hundred-and-longgone and only the level playing field against them.

They were the days of Stewart Dawson - the Monopod - and of Sam Gordon, the spindly mascot, of Flynny's fandango - though it more greatly resembled the store horse essaying the Olympic 100m hurdles - and of Graham Kelly redefining chief executive class.

They will be relived, ten years on, when Tow Law hold a clubhouse reunion for those boys on Friday, May 16. Squad members are urged to contact Steve Moralee on 07810 238731 or email stephen.moralee@btinternet.com ANOTHER Wembley reunion, the 11 surviving members of Sunderland's 1973 squad will attend a dinner at the Stadium of Light on May 4 - Vic Halom making the journey from his home in Bulgaria. As the clock strikes 12, 35 years on, Bobby Kerr will again lift the FA Cup. That one's £65 a head, mind.

ABANDONED hopefully, Tuesday's column noted the Sunday newspaper scorecard that Great Ayton's opening match of the cricket season had been called off because of "seagulls on the pitch."

Chris West, NYSD League president and provider of press reports on most north-east leagues, wades in with an explanation.

Near-submerged by match-off calls, Chris had been taken by the airy explanation from 72- year-old Norman Thurlow - that he couldn't get onto the square for seagulls. "He was simply trying to portray the depth of the problem," says Chris.

Young Thurlow, incidentally, was immortalised in a Daily Telegraph report after Great Ayton won the NYSD in 2006, the Telegraph claiming that he was one of only two famous people to come from that North Yorkshire village.

This autumn he emulates the other one - Captain James Cook - by heading for the antipodes to represent England Over 60s against Australia Over 60s in Melbourne. More of that voyage of discovery nearer the time.

CHRIS West also draws attention to adjacent line scores in Monday's Echo, the first from the Indian Premier League in which Delhi Royals scored 131 and Shikra Dhawan hit an undefeated 52 in Delhi Daredevils' victorious reply.

The second was from the NYSD - Blackhall 133-9, Middlesbrough 134-1. The link is Shikra, whose late-season exploits for Etherley we recalled just a couple of columns back.

Blackhall had signed him for this summer, only to lose him to the IPL where, presumably, he felt a little more at home.

Chris feels, however, that the reports should have included the respective temperatures - "Delhi 40 degrees Centigrade, Blackhall, with wind-chill factor, minus three."

KEVIN Connolly begs leave to doubt the claim in Tuesday's column that Steve Cram, asked at the 1984 Olympics about the effects of the Los Angeles smog, observed that since he was from Sunderland, LA seemed a very nice place.

Crammy was from Hebburn - "one of those lost boys of South Tyneside whose allegiance was inexplicably to the Red and Whites," says Kevin.

The point was valid, though.

"Being a Hebburn lad, he no doubt experienced the pleasure of a training run past the world famous Monkton coke works, almost choking on the severity of steam and smell.

"In comparison, LA would be a doddle."

DUTIFULLY as always, Alan Smith sends to the club president the programme from the Hole in the Wall's Darlington Church and Friendly League Cup semifinal - and no matter that the league only has eight clubs - against Elm Road WMC, from Shildon.

This time the score's written on the envelope. "Leading 3-0 after 20 minutes, lost 6-3 after extra time."

Worse, two of the six teams who entered a "round robin"

tournament to fill out the season have now withdrawn, causing its abandonment half way through. Uniquely, Hole in the Wall were top.

...and finally

THE brothers who alone have scored a century and taken all ten wickets on a match or hit 1,000 runs and taken 100 wickets in a Tyneside Senior league season (Backtrack, April 22) are Wesley and Dennison Thomas from Grenada.

Since we've been chiming with Pompey, readers are today invited to name the club's Co Durham born manager between 1995-98.

With a report from the FA Sunday Cup final at Anfield, the column returns on Tuesday.

11:42am Friday 25th April 2008

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