Day trip to Poole leaves Bay on brink of Wembley return

Beneath it is something I can’t quite make out, but which doubtless is educational.

A lady in a high-vis jacket even has a NAS/UWT clipboard. She’s probably the headmistress. “Where are all the other unions, then?” I ask.

“That’s a very good question,” she says.

A little lad almost sticks the flag down his dad’s left ear hole. Dad looks at him sternly, as if to say “Any more of that and there’ll be fifty lines, my boy.” The little lad flees the wrath to come.

It is again the Railroad to Wembley, Whitley Bay of the STL Northern League in the FA Vase semi-final for the fourth successive season. At last a weekend free of the squeals-on-wheels hyperbole of the Premier League and I land for a standard class of teachers, instead.

The destination’s Poole, in Dorset, said in 2006 to be statistically the most unaffordable place in Britain.

AT 6.45am, the guard helpfully announces that he’ll be coming down the train to sell Underground tickets, thus avoiding queues at Kings Cross.

At 7.15am he announces that, due to the “vast” demand, there’s been a change of tactics and that he can be found, standing still, in Coach B.

Half an hour after that, a further announcement says that the machine’s gone tickets up. A technical fault’s blamed. The East Coast main line seems to suffer an awful lot of technical faults though usually – have you noticed? – it’s the tea urn.

You almost expect yet another announcement: “Is there a technology teacher on the train?”.

By 8.30 it’s fixed again.

This may or may not be what they mean by kettling.

At Waterloo there’s the usual industrious bunch selling the Socialist Worker – “Strike to stop the cuts” – while clenched-fist banners proclaim the RMT union, “fighting for you.”

Not fighting hard enough, the 10.05 is cancelled.

Something to do with a technical fault.

“What do we want?” chant the protestors. Well, a train to Dorset, the English Riviera, would be quite useful right now.

There’s another at 10.39, via Southampton and Bournemouth. Two hours into the stop-start journey it’s announced that the train will wait 15 minutes at Southampton and 25 minutes at Brockenhurst.

There are no doubt those who’ve been content to spend a lifetime at Brockenhurst, but for some of us even 25 minutes seems a bit excessive.

You’ve heard about cut to the quick? This is cut to the slow, though happily there’s a faster service from another platform at Southampton.

The gentlemanly guard tires of the mantra that the aisles should be kept clear of all luggage and proclaims instead that some of the New Forest ponies are descended from the Basque ponies of the Spanish Armada. New Forest ponies may be Plan C.

Finally into Poole at 1.15pm, I ask an elderly lady for directions to the ground.

“Did you know,” she replies, “that my water rates are now £80 a month?”

POOLE’S a town of 140,000 people, has the world’s second biggest natural harbour – after Sydney – employs 1,800 in yacht building alone and has been home to Tony Blackburn, Augustus John and John Lennon’s aunty.

There are two selective grammar schools, a borough council without a single Labour member, the UK headquarters of the Bank of New York and a housing development, Sandbanks, where top dollar is something like ten million. Sterling.

Two of the five English girls to have won Miss World were from Poole, too.

The Railroad had also ended up there in 2008, when Consett played. Basically it was a school field, we’d noted, the perimeter fence barely enough to stop a determined four-year-old from playing hooky.

It’s now been properly enclosed though there’s still an impression of a Spring Fair about the place. There are picnic blankets, a twoman band, a Wendy House of a club shop and, walking the duckboard, a bloke dressed as Captain Flint.

Poole Pirates are said to be the Manchester United of speedway. Perhaps he’s become disoriented in all the excitement.

In the VIP marquee they’re eating egg and cress sandwiches and sausage rolls, save for the chap who appears to be nibbling his young lady’s ear. This may be what’s known as wooing within tent.

By the gate there’s a notice advising that anyone arriving by bicycle should please not park it by the pitch perimeter fence. A clubhouse poster promotes the Mauritius Gymkhana, in the programme there’s a “To let” advert for a condo in Florida.

Poole, known as the Dolphins, gained just a single point in 1994-95.

Transformed, they’ve now won the Wessex League – that of Hamworthy, Hayling and Bemerton Heath Harlequins – for the past two years and will probably make it a hat-trick.

They’ve won their last 13, Whitley their last 14. Holders these past two seasons, the Tyneside club hasn’t lost a Vase match since the semifinal first leg on March 22 2008, an extraordinary 23 ties.

Confident? “Well,” says Whitley Bay chairman Paul McIlduff, “you can’t say we don’t know the way.”

UNUSUALLY, Poole have opted for segregation, a move best termed divisive.

Even the visiting players have to show their tickets.

Whitley Bay supporters are escorted from one end to the other, for fear that they talk out of turn.

They’re not even allowed in the tiny clubhouse, thus boosting the flagging Poole economy by supping in the pubs, instead. The barmaids are pleasant, but probably not Miss World.

Still, the natives are wholly friendly, not snotty yachties at all. There’s even a wave from Dylan the Dolphin, the mascot. Cyril the Seahorse appears not to put his head above water.

The pitch is the approximate size of the Sargasso Sea.

Whitley Bay start brightly, fade quickly, crash against twin rocks in central defence. Watson, the number five, may be the biggest footballer since Goliath suffered that nasty eye injury when turning out for Gath City.

Poole score after 23 minutes; no one’s much surprised. Still the visitors are unable to mount much, the usually voracious Chow left to feed off scraps.

Robson, his strike partner, is equally quiet.

“His wife had a baby last week, I think he’s suffering sleepless nights,” someone says.

Allan Barkas, whose wife Ann’s company sponsors the Northern League, is nervously chain smoking.

Ann’s keeping a tab tab.

“Far too many,” she says.

At half-time there’s consternation; Whitley are sinking with the Dolphins.

“We’re a better second-half side,” insists Bay secretary Derek Breakwell, though for almost 45 minutes it hardly seems like that.

Kerr, known as Sparky, tries desperately to kindle something. Hayes, the bright young goalkeeper, makes several good saves to keep Whitley in the game.

After 75 minutes, Bay bring on the veteran Brian Rowe. “A fat bloke I wouldn’t play in our Sunday morning side,” says a chap on BBC Solent.

After 90 minutes, the travellers content to be going back just one down, a recently arrived fat lad cleverly breaks up an attack, feeds the ball wide to Chow whose low cross is turned in from two feet by Damon Robson.

No matter that the new bairn might reasonably have been expected to score, he reacts ecstatically.

After 92 minutes, Sparky fires a 22-yard free kick high into the top right-hand corner.

If Dolphins may be said to have tails between their legs, then it is these.

“I told you we were a better second-half side,” says Derek Breakwell.

Poole drain quickly away.

Whitley Bay’s players go across to share the moment with Mark Taylor – a 2009 Vase winner who now has multiple sclerosis and is in a wheelchair – and then salute their fans.

No matter what they say about prohibitive Poole, they can still afford a quiet smile. Plenty to do in the second leg, but Whitley Bay and the STL Northern League may once again be on the march.