With Hartlepool United on the brink once again, Sports Editor Nick Loughlin looks back to a curious fundraising effort in the 1970s

IN the early 1970s, the relationship between football and music was in its infancy. The England World Cup squad topped the charts with their single Back Home ahead of their 1970 campaign in Mexico and next it was the turn of Hartlepool United to try and make a musical mark.

Pools were in the middle of an all-too-familiar financial crisis, so two employees of the United Artists (UA) record company decided to help their home-town club. They were Andrew Lauder, the head of artists and repertoire at UA, and Richard Ogden, who was in charge of public relations.

They pulled together a fundraising weekend of a concert, a celebrity football match, and a movie premiere, plus Ogden, born in Seaton Carew and whose grandfather Alderman HL Hogg was Mayor of West Hartlepool on seven occasions, arranged the recording of a club record.

The A-side was Who Put Sugar In My Tea but the B-side, Never Say Die, was more popular and is still a club anthem.

The lyrics possibly didn’t help the record make it big in the charts. “We’re not very flash and we haven’t the cash here in Hartlepool” was not poetic – but it was true.

The music was produced and co-written by Ed Welch, UA’s in-house producer, with Ogden adding the lyrics.

Then came the “Save Hartlepool” weekend. The concert took place in Middlesbrough Town Hall and three trendy bands of the day played. First up were Help Yourself, followed by progressive rock outfit Man and then The Groundhogs, who had supported the Rolling Stones the previous year.

“Pools were deep in the mire and we wanted to do something to help,” said Lauder. “All the bands were friends, which helped get them up to the concert. The Groundhogs were very big at the time and it was a big pull to get them to the North-East. We didn’t have a venue in the town big enough and they ended up playing at Middlesbrough Town Hall.”

The gig was a great success despite somewhat unexplained long intervals between the bands. At the same time a folk music experience was held in the Longscar Hall in Seaton Carew.

The following day, the celebrity football match took place at the home of West Hartlepool RFC. The Pools team included 1950s heroes Kenny Johnson, Bobby Lumley and Tommy McGuigan as well as several players from the 1971 team.

The celebrity side included songwriter and performer from the musical Hair, J Edward Vincent, songwriter Roy Hollingworth, Sean Tyla (of Ducks Deluxe) and several other musicians and music industry employees who turned up at the request of Ogden.

With perhaps something stronger than sugar in their tea at half time, the game was a poorly supported spectacle. Two factors were blamed – the weather and the Chelsea versus Stoke game live on the television at the time when live football was a novelty.

Then came the movie premiere.

“United Artists were putting out the soundtrack to Frank Zappa’s new film 200 Motels – so we decided to put the film on in the town and bill it as the “northern premiere” – it was certainly something different!’’ sais Lauder.

The movie was well received but afterwards there was a reception with tables of food laid out. As the celebrities were a touch the worse for wear, in true rock and roll style the night developed into a cake throwing fight.

For all their good intentions, the weekend was far from a success, and all Lauder and Ogden raised was suspicion. Indeed, Ogden, only 22, had to suffer a grilling live on BBC’s Look North by Mike Neville, who accused United Artists of setting the whole thing up as a publicity stunt for the movie.

The record did sell well locally, with more than 20,000 copies being shifted, helped by the players turning up at record shops such as Bruce Moore’s to sign copies. However, UA kept the proceeds to cover the losses that the rest of the weekend had racked up.

Undeterred, Lauder and Ogden went on to have massively successful careers in the music industry with Lauder involved with the likes of the Buzzcocks, Dr Feelgood and The Stone Roses, while Ogden became MD of Polydor Records and later managed Paul and Linda McCartney.

And, with Pools today mired in yet another financial crisis, the opening lines of Never Say Die really summ up the spirit of the club throughout it‘s past, present and future:

“Eleven bold lads from the far-off north,

You’ll notice we’re still bottom of the fourth.

Though we seldom win, boy, we never give in,

Hartlepool fights for all it’s worth.’’

Club timeline

1881: West Hartlepool Amateur Football Club formed. Early fixtures were against Haughton-le-Skerne and Bishop Middleham

1905: West Hartlepool won the FA Amateur Cup beating favourites Clapton 3-2 at Shepherd’s Bush in London

1908: The success of the amateur club, and the collapse of the town’s rugby club, encourages the formation of The Hartlepools United Football and Athletic Club. The professional club took over the rugby club’s Victoria Ground, a former limestone quarry and rubbish dump which it had landscaped in time for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887

1910: The amateur West Hartlepool side fades away, leaving only the professional Pools

1921: Pools join the newly-formed Football League Division Three (North)

1957: Perhaps the most famous match in Pools’ history: in front of a record 17,264 crowd at the Victoria Ground, in the Third Round of the FA Cup, Pools fell 3-0 behind Manchester United’s Busby Babes, pull back to equalise, only to lose 4-3. Seven of Man Utd’s team that day would die a year later in the Munich air disaster

1965: Brian Clough’s 20-month spell as manager was blighted by financial difficulties – his contract stated that he should undertake lessons so that he could drive the club coach to save money. In May 1967, he moved on to Derby County

1968: The club dropped the final s and became Hartlepool United

1971: The debt-mired club is saved by a £10,000 grant from the council – and the release of the single Who Put Sugar In My Tea/Never Say Die

1984: Having finished at the bottom of the league, Pool apply for re-election for a record 14th time

1985: Bob Newton becomes Pool’s record signing, costing £17,500 from Chesterfield

1993: Pool go a record 13 consecutive games – 1,227 minutes – without scoring a goal

2005: Pools finished 6th in Division Two for the second successive season, but couldn’t win promotion through the play-offs. This was the club’s highspot: in 2006, they were relegated

2018: With no one willing to buy the club, fans prevent it from being wound up by raising £86,000 to pay off its immediate debts. But what is the future?