Parable of the lost sheep

For the second successive season the country's most improbable Conservative Club is off to Anfield for the FA Carlsberg Sunday Cup final, the Tories ahead in the polls but the Cons losing the propaganda battle.

Most suppose Hetton Lyons Cricket Club, their opponents and Co Durham rivals, to be firm favourites. Can they pull off the Cons trick once again?

They're still confident, not least former Darlington player Lee Ellison who's just scored the winning goal which may yet keep Bishop Auckland - the most famous amateur football club of all - in the Arngrove Northern League first division.

"It was a tap-in," insists Lee, modestly. "It's easy to make blindside runs when you're old and slow. No one expects you any more."

They've new scarves, too, and suddenly a Latin motto. "Vis vires cupido laus"; it says, though Coundon's version - "Use Viagra, love longer" - may lose something in the translation.

Team manager Paul "Pele"

Aldsworth, the Cons' catalyst, is at the front of the bus studying his clipboards. It's only the sleeping arrangements but Pele lends a certain alchemy even to the snore draw.

He is not so much manager as primus inter pares, as the classicists might also say. Still one of the lads.

"We're not a team we're a bunch of mates who play football together," says Pele. For that privilege, the Cons still pay £2 a week subs.

The Gladiator, Russell Crowe and them, is on the DVD. It's a bit like the World Wrestling Federation with tigers. The WWF, so far as is known, haven't thought of tigers yet; Coundon don't expect to be thrown to the Lyons, either.

In the generation game familiar on these occasions, the young uns are at the back of the bus, the grey beards at the front. The kids drink Red Bull, the old folk suck Glacier mints.

Gladiator is getting a bit bloody. "It's like the King Willie used to be on a Saturday night,"

someone says.

Applied psychology, the man who overthrew an empire?

"Just a film," says Pele.

They're staying at the Best Western hotel in Leyland, Lancashire. "It's not to be the wild western, either," insists Derek Cooper, the assistant manager. Among its many facilities, the hotel has a fullsized stuffed sheep. This seems a curious, and a serious, mistake.

Having been told that they're not going nowhere, the lads answer in the double negative by heading off to town for a Chinese.

They're back around midnight, stone cold sensible and perfectly well behaved.

"This is going to be the biggest game Anfield's seen, ever," says Kevin Bromley before retiring.

The sheep's gone missing, mind.

SUNDAY'S soaking; stotting down. Pele says he doesn't mind what it does, because when they win the sky's going to fall in.

I've been twinned with Ken Houlahan, a familiar former Northern League manager and father of Cons' midfielder Martin Houlahan, known as Hoola. Ken starts the day by singing How Great Thou Art while looking in the bathroom mirror.

Andrew Thompson, one of the strikers, is essaying the sort of cooked breakfast which in other circumstances might feed the five thousand, followed by a huge bowl of fruit and cereal.

"You can't change your routine," he explains.

Some of the message boards are forecasting three or four-nil to the Lyons, seven or eight if Mark Foster's not fit. None doubts that Adam Johnston and Gavin Cogdon, Hetton's prolific strikers, are the chief threat.

"They're still bigging themselves up too much," says Tommo.

Pele, clearly nervous, says he's only had about two hours sleep. Coops, rooming with him, insists he's had even less.

It's Pele who's identified as the Snore Lord.

The manager's famed team talk, a sort of Agincourt in tracksuits save that King Henry wouldn't have got a word in edge-over, is timed for 10 45 in the hotel.

He's preceded by Vince Johnson, a director of Shildon based Barrier Surveillance and a hugely generous sponsor.

Pele, a manager who comes with baggage - a rucksack fixed semi-permanently to his back, mobile phone Eraldited to his earhole - makes much of what the Lyons lads are supposed to be paid.

Pros and Cons, as it were.

"I'll pay you what you deserve, and that's my full respect," he says.

"Bastard," says a loud voice from the back. It probably never happens at Sir Alex's team talks.

Mark Bell, the goalkeeper, has a stress ball. Or maybe it's an apple.

Pele talks about getting in their faces, showing them who they are, not fearing them. "I know the strength of your personalities, as radged and crazy as you are."

Outside the function room, the hotel management is getting a bit concerned about the sheep. Fingers point unfairly at Mel Heckley, and for no better reason than that he is from Butterknowle, in west Durham. Butterknowle is perceived to be woollyback country.

Down the M6 to Anfield, the bus plays You'll Never Walk Alone and We are the Champions. "No bed of roses, no pleasure cruise." It's gone a bit quieter, but there's still plenty of boys-will-be-boys talk.

From somewhere there's a rustling noise.

THE national competition began in 1965, five years after the FA officially recognised Sunday football. It's been won by teams like Ubique United, Farnham Town Centipedes, Fantail, Lobster and twice by Nicosia.

Coundon Conservatives lifted it in 2007, Hetton Lyons - for eight successive seasons the Durham Senior league champions - the year previously.

Their clash is preceded by an FA lunch - canny bit salmon, larrikin lamb - at which the committee chairman refers to the Cons as "Coondon." It's still an improvement on the previous final; last time he called them "Condom Conservative Club."

The conversation, as might be expected on so prestigious an occasion, is about the best pub in Shildon - the winner triumphing by virtue of allowing in lurchers - and about the chap on our table whose sister's marriage lasted only as far as the reception, when she ran off with the drummer in the group.

Later he admits the story wasn't quite true. "It wasn't the drummer, it was the bass player."

LIVERPOOL had played at Anfield five days previously, that monumental Champions League semi-final with Chelsea. On the same night, Coundon Cons were playing Staindrop Royal Oak on Evenwood welfare ground, a pitch said closely to resemble the tundra. That was 1-1, too.

The two sets of fans are on the Kop, around 1,500 altogether. The press box, several times the size of the average Northern League grandstand, has just three inky occupants.

The Conservatives, perversely, wear all-red. The Cricket Club, appropriately, are in white.

The Cons, whose secondminute goal last season had helped set up a 5-0 win, score again at almost the selfsame moment. Yet more remarkably, it's Andrew Thompson's earlydoors free kick which somehow eludes Kevin Finch in Hetton's goal.

Tommo runs off several sausages in supercharged celebration.

After four minutes, more drama. Adam Johnston, himself a Liverpool fan, is badly injured in a tackle and limps forlornly around the running track.

Poor Johnston had managed to get tickets for Liverpool's Champions League quarterfinal against Arsenal, became stuck for several hours on the M62 - doesn't everyone? - and missed that one, an' all.

He's replaced by Jamie Clarke who after 19 minutes heads an equaliser from a cross so high and hopeful that it could have been tracked by the European Space Agency. The ball falls, almost apologetically, into an unguarded net.

Two minutes later, Martin Houlahan's 20-yarder puts the Cons back in front. Hoola whoops. While Hetton's Steve Capper receives treatment for an injury, Bell - who's slipped in trying to prevent the goal - changes his boots.

Capper comes over to the touchline, as absurd officialdom dictates, but is clearly OK. "He's just checking he's put his letters on,"

someone says.

For all the incident, it's not a great game - Mersey's quality strained, tension tangible. It's still tipping down, floodlights full beam, if not a black Sabbath then a distinctly grey one.

It's still 2-1 at half-time.

Hetton have had the Lyons share of the second half when Stuart Irvine, a player said in the programme to take so many vitamins that he's sponsored by Holland and Barratt, scores a B+ equaliser.

Several times saved by the Bell boy, the Cons are conceding innumerable free kicks - the great Conservative giveaway, John Major would have been proud - but it's referee Gibbs who decides the game with seven minutes remaining.

Stuart Owen is barely a yard away when a Hetton player crosses the ball which comes off the sodden turf and hits his hand, a contact only avoidable had the earth suddenly and instantly subsumed him.

Penalty preposterously awarded, poor Owen reacts like he wishes the earth had.

Gratefully, gleefully and gratuitously, Gary Pearson fires home.

Whatever it is that Coundon calls Mr Gibbs, none of it's his Sunday name.

Soon afterwards he calls time. Pele's crying on the Kop; Vince Johnston silently stupefied in the directors' box.

There's still champagne in the dressing room but it's awfully, unbelievably, flat.

THE match has kicked off at 2pm, the bus leaves at 5 30.

The video's blue, if not necessarily true blue.

"I don't know what that is,"

someone says before it's switched off, "but it's sure not Emmerdale Farm."

None doubts that the better team won, nor that the Lyons were magnanimous in victory.

None is forgiving of the referee.

Derek Cooper announces over the microphone that there are no losers on the bus, that they're going to buy some beer and have a good time. Barely two miles out of Anfield, the bus stops again.

They say that time is a great healer but youth, lager and fish and chips 30 times may be yet more efficacious. "Come to that," says Barry Poskett, the reserve goalie, "what did happen to that sheep?"

Soon there's singing, a 30-man fun fight - doubtless what's called bonding - and, of all things, Helen Shapiro singing Walking Back to Happiness.

The bus gets there a bit quicker. It's been another bloody Sunday, but come Monday morning they'll be looking forward to next season.

...AND FINALLY

THE Co Durham born manager of Portsmouth between 1995-98 (Backtrack April 25) was, of course, Terry Fenwick from Seaham Harbour - now, as Terry Wells, points out, managing CL Financial of Sun Juan in Trinidad and Tobago.

Before proceeding, a very happy 90th birthday - this very day - to Bert Dwight in Durham, who hasn't missed a Durham City home match all season and must be of the Arngrove Northern League's oldest and most loyal fans.

Following Wrexham's relegation on Saturday, Peter Birch in Saltburn recalls that, just six years ago, five Football League clubs had an x in their name. Since "x" clearly marks the relegation spot, Peter invites readers to name the other three who've gone and the one which remains.

X-rated as always, the column returns on Friday.