Six days shalt thou labour, but this was Sunday night at Coundon Conservative Club. "How," says a feller in the corner, affably enough, "I thowt you'd been sin died."

So I had. "Sine die" is a Latin term - though long-familiar in the North-East club movement - which may most conveniently be translated as barred out indefinitely.

It's the licensed trade equivalent of being locked up and the key thrown away (except that that, of course, is being barred in.)

Pariah engagement had occurred during the 1974 miners' strike, the result of an injudicious observation in one of these columns that - perish the thought - not everyone in Coundon Conservative Club might necessarily have been a fully paid-up, card carrying, ultramarine admirer of Mr Ted Heath and his band.

It was a bit like the notice which, at much the same time, had appeared in the window of Horden Conservative Club: "Due to the iniquitous crusade by the present government against the miners, the price of a pint is reduced to 15p until further notice."

Coundon's a former pit village near Bishop Auckland, perhaps best remembered for the number of pubs per head, for its dog track and for the quality of its coking coal.

In a proudly working class area, the Conservative Club - if not quite a fairy Tory - was certainly pretty improbable. That so many signed the oath of allegiance may or may not have had something to do with the reputed excellence of the snooker tables.

The black ball, at any rate, had been dropped earlier this year, and only just in time. Coundon Conservative Club are in the last 16 of the FA Sunday Cup - the only North-East survivor - at the first ever attempt and after being drawn away in every round.

It represents the most improbable string of Tory victories since Mr John Major won the 1992 general election while the nation's back was turned.

The team plays in true blue but also in deepest red, is run by a feller who answers universally to Pele, has beaten Hetton Lyons Cricket Club, the holders, and Liverpool Paddock, the favourites, not only doesn't pay its players but by way of sound monetary policy charges them £2 subs for the privilege of turning out.

"Pele" is Paul Aldsworth, so called because as an eight-year-old he scored a goal - "just messing around on the green" - which greatly impressed his kid brother. It stuck.

He's manager, secretary, kit man, strip washer and several other things but is he, we timorously venture, a Conservative? "Not on your life, no way," says Pele.

"The lads aren't here for politics, they're here for the quality of the beer. It's like moths to a flame. Everyone of them is my friend. We don't have strangers in this team."

The Cons Club is friendly, welcoming, comfortable and well filled. They still rate the snooker tables, too, but not even Coundon lad Bill Moore, who knows almost everything worth knowing, can explain how the club ended up where it is.

There are no portraits of political leaders, though the Queen and Prince Philip are (as it were) behind the bar. Maggie Thatcher was there but inexplicably disappeared; not even the beer is Cameron's.

"When I first started coming in here 30 years ago it was all suits and ties and people who complained if you sat in their seat," says Paul Adams. "It's a completely different set-up now."

Now 52, Adams was player/manager of another village side - Coundon TT, originally the Three Tuns - which amazed North-East football by winning the Durham Challenge Cup in 1984 and 1987 while a Wearside League side.

Before the 1984 final, the Echo had sent a female feature writer to the Three Tuns, the lady infamously observing that (in those days) it was the sort of establishment where you wiped your feet on the way out.

The subsequent apology was abject, nothing swept under the carpet at all.

In 1986 they'd reached the last 32 of the Vase, at home to Tamworth on Leeholme Rec, the fledgling Backtrack column also in attendance. Whatever TT might have stood for, we wrote, it sure as apples wasn't teetotal.

Most of the players were signed from Northern League clubs. They earned more, it was suggested, at Coundon.

Paul Adams, previously at Spennymoor United, recalls as "the best day of my football life" the bank holiday Monday in which they beat South Shields WMC in the heart Foundation Cup in the morning and Bishop Auckland - the mighty Bishop Auckland - in the Durham Challenge Cup in the afternoon.

"We used the squad," he says, "but there were still six or seven players started both games.

"People didn't really appreciate what was going on in those days, what was being achieved, and in a way this is the same. Who'd ever have thought it of Coundon Conservatives?"

Formerly the youth team - the young Conservatives, as it were - the Saturday side now plays in the Crook and District League. The Sunday team won the Darlington based Northern Echo league for three successive seasons, switched to the Wear Valley league - "We needed a new challenge," says Pele - rising from third to first divisions and then winning it. Last season they lost 2-0 to Hetton Lyons in the Durham Sunday Cup final.

"It was Hetton who encouraged us to enter the FA Sunday Cup," says Pele. "When I heard we'd drawn them, I honestly thought that was it. They were brilliant about it when we beat them."

Sunday best, the team includes former Darlington players Lee Ellison, Adam Reed and Phil Brumwell and several other Arngrove Northern League men, especially from West Auckland.

In the first round, they beat Elland of Halifax, in the second Hetton and in the third the Paddock, who included two former Everton youth team players. "We've made an awful lot of new friends," says Pele.

The last 16 includes such improbable teams as Canada, Reading Irish, Belt Road and the Loft Style Sinners.

The Cons Club face either The Warby or the Pablo Derby Arms at West Auckland - Leeholme Rec having been unsuitable for the big occasion - on January 14. The column plans a further report: sine die, up the Tories.

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