With the possible exception of the Norfolk village of Great Snoring, Ware may be the only place in the country which is best known for a bed.

The Great Bed of Ware measured 10ft by 11ft, lay at one time or another in half the inns in that Hertfordshire town and now rests in peace in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Though local histories have little to do with it, as if anxious to pull the blankets over their head, Byron mentioned the bed in Don Juan and Shakespeare in Twelfth Night.

(Shakespeare, it may also be recalled, bequeathed to his wife his "second best bed". The fate of the best one was never acknowledged.)

The town guide book does note, however, that visitors staying at an inn where the Great Bed was temporarily recumbent were treated to an "elaborate and bawdy ritual", thus giving new meaning to the phrase about bed and bawd.

A turn-again milestone proclaims it to be 21 miles from London, an estate agent's window offers a two-bedroom, mid-terrace cottage for £226,500, Glaxo - as in Teesdale - is the main employer and the Crooked Billet is said in the Good Beer Guide to be particularly welcoming to Carlisle United fans.

Like Westward Ho!, the only place in Britain with an exclamation mark after the name, it is tempting always to stick a question mark after Ware. Whys and Ware forays, we headed there on Saturday to watch Enfield v Bedlington Terriers in the fifth round of the FA Vase.

Enfield, temporarily homeless but seeking to become the first club to win the FA Amateur Cup, FA Trophy and FA Vase, share Ware's impressive facilities.

The programme urged supporters to show they were proud to be an E. One or two players looked subsequently as if they were on it.

Enfield has a population of 281,000, is England's 23rd biggest borough - Sunderland's 25th - but has nothing to do with Royal Enfield motor cycles, which revved up in Redditch and are now chiefly made in Madras.

The Enfield branch of Barclays did, however, have the world's first ATM machine. That'll probably end up in the Victoria and Albert, an' all.

Bedlington, forever the Terriers, is a former Northumberland pit town known for a brutal police murder in the early 20th century - the miscreant was a feller called Amos - and for the support of Steve Harmison, his phone upwardly mobile from South Africa.

Most of the team had come by coach the day previously, a couple travelled by air to nearby Stansted that morning and discovered that the taxi was more expensive than the plane.

There, too, was John Lister from Sheffield, who'd watched the Woof Woof Terriers at Scunthorpe in the 1998-99 FA Cup and has watched them, home and away, ever since.

"I just like the underdog," he said, unprompted, and the underdogs had their day later that season, reaching the Vase final at Wembley without ever having been drawn at home.

This time the Albany Northern League side scored though Anthony Chapman after 66 seconds, went further ahead with Stephen Preen's rebound after 22 minutes.

Thereafter it got a bit heated, a player from each side dismissed after what might most tellingly be termed a spat, Enfield's player/manager following after a second booking.

Preen scored again after 78 minutes, stirring woof with the smooth dreams of another final, this season at White Hart Lane on May 15. "I've just got a little feeling our name's on it this time," said new chairman Graham Burnard, in the way upon which new chairmen will insist.

Until yesterday's quarter-final couplings, there'd also only been one home draw this season. Now they entertain Newbury on March 5. Until then they can sleep on it.

A remarkably potent letter lies on FA desks this morning concerning offensive language, and particularly the incidents in Manchester United's recent match at Arsenal.

It's been sent by Chris Ord, secretary of the Teesside Junior Football Alliance which has 43 divisions, more than 430 clubs and 8,000 "hugely impressionable" registered players between the ages of seven and 18.

What sort of example, Chris wonders, is set for millions more bairns like those? Whatever happened, he asks, to the clearly written law of the game on offensive, insulting and abusive language?

He talks of "gutter language", of "snarling, foul-mouthed louts" and of "yob culture", expresses "utter contempt" for the law's disregard.

"How can the hundreds of unpaid club secretaries, managers and coaches involved in junior football instil into youngsters that it is intolerable, inexcusable and wholly unjustified to use (such) language when they see or hear almost every word which is spoken or lip read in the professional game?

"How can our clubs accept that junior players are going to be dismissed from the field of play when it appears clear that the professional game is not guided by the same rules?

"The FA presumably recognises the massive influence which professional footballers have on the youth of today and should also recognise the need for a change in tolerance levels."

As things are, he adds, the laws may as well be rewritten to make offensive language acceptable.

Chris also draws attention to the FA's own "Code of conduct for players" - focused, it says, on "players in top-class football" - which lays down obligations about setting examples "especially to younger players", not using "inappropriate" language and about showing "due respect."

Chris tells the column that his league couldn't just stand the bad language and offensive gestures any longer.

"It shouldn't be left to someone like me, the secretary of a junior league, to be trying to get the FA to do something. It should be coming from the top."

He wrote to 22 different FA officials and council members, the letters sent in the middle of last week. So far, either in writing or by unoffensive word of mouth, he hasn't heard from any of them.

...and finally

Friday's column sought the identity of the 15 present Middlesbrough players who were full internationals before Stewart Downing joined the club last week. Mike Rudd in Bishop Auckland was first with the set:

They are Mark Schwarzer and Mark Viduka (both Australia), Gareth Southgate, Colin Cooper, Ray Parlour and Ugo Ehiogu (England), Michael Reiziger, George Boateng, Bolo Zenden and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink (Holland), Gaizka Mendieta (Spain), Doriva (Brazil), Szilard Nemeth (Slovakia), Joseph Job (Cameroon) and Massimo Maccarone, twice capped by Italy.

Fred Alderton in Peterlee, another who completed the set, today invites readers to suggest the name by which Mrs Gary Lough is more commonly known.

Common as cart roads, the column returns on Friday.

Published: 15/02/2005