Ex-keeper is happiest Sassenach in Scotland

"I'm so pleased for them, it's going to be a tremendous occasion at Hampden on April 12," says Michael Barker, one of many Co Durham players who've headed north to Queen of the South.

Allan Ball, Hetton-le-Hole lad and former South Hetton miner, is the most affectionately remembered of all. "We only beat Dundee on Sunday and already there are no coaches to be had between Stranraer and Carlisle," he says.

"We play Aberdeen or Celtic, the first time we've ever been on live television. It'll be the highlight of my football career and I can't wait. The only disappointment is that I'm 65 now and I don't think they're going to let me play."

Based in Dumfries and known as the Doonhamers, Queen of the South is the only football club to get a mention in the Bible - Luke 11:13 - and in Palmerston Park have the only ground named after a British prime minister.

While generally welcomed in the lowlands, however, the North-East contingent haven't always found Scotland's earthier environs so accommodating.

"I just hope they don't mind being called English bastards when they go up north. They call us that and we're from bloody Dumfries," Palmerston Park PA man Alex Wilson had memorably observed after another English influx eight years ago.

Someone had also written to the local paper about that one.

"If we wanted a team of Geordies," he protested, "we might as well have signed Jayne Middlemiss."

Allan Ball was nonetheless the first of many for whom Dumfries became a sort of Doonhame from hame.

As a youngster he'd been an inside left, took over the green jersey when the Durham County schools goalkeeper - promising kid called Jimmy Montgomery - was injured during a game. The sticks stuck.

As a 15-year-old he four times deputised for the legendary Harry Sharratt in Bishop Auckland's goal, doubled his weekly income by signing for Stanley United.

Queen of the South, near as damn it, shouted down the shaft. He signed at two o'clock one morning over corned beef sandwiches in the colliery canteen.

Stanley received £100 and were quite happy about it.

Arsenal had just given them a set of white shirts and £50 - paid in two instalments - for the prolific Geoff Strong.

Ball's inauspicious debut was in a 6-3 defeat to Falkirk.

Retained for the following midweek match at Celtic, he caught the afternoon train from Durham to Glasgow and got a taxi, seven and sixpence, from the station.

"I remember asking the driver if he'd come back again at ten.

He was a Rangers fan and told me, quite seriously, that he'd only come back if we beat them."

Queens won 1-0, the taxi was there at 9.25pm, young Ball was rolling.

One of only two Englishmen ever to represent the Scottish League - the other was Joe Baker of Hibs and Arsenal - he made 819 Queen of the South appearances, including 507 consecutively, and was only once cautioned.

That was by the fondly remembered Tom "Tiny"

Wharton, on December 25. "I'd said something about Jesus Christ," he recalls. "I was booked for blaspheming on Christmas Day."

He became a successful motor dealer in Dumfries, remains an honorary club director, watches them home and away.

"I still get back to Hetton quite a bit but I wouldn't like to leave Dumfries," he says. "Right now I'm probably the happiest Sassenach in Scotland."

WITH Bishop Auckland team mate George Siddle, Michael Barker crossed the border in 1968. The North-East contingent also included former Sunderland outside right Jimmy Davison, Hartlepool inside forward Barry Parkes and, occasionally, our old friend George Brown.

Siddle, noted Queen of the South scout John Carruthers, was a centre-half "who no-one passed". Barker, says club historian Colin Rutherford, is regarded by many supporters as among the most gifted players they've ever seen.

Though recollections of the standard of Scottish second division football differ, none questions the warmth of the welcome.

"They were a nice little team and lovely people," recalls George Siddle, long in Sedgefield.

"The Scottish second divison at that time had some players who were better than Northern League but some a hell of a lot worse as well.

"The programme would give a brief pen picture and then just put on the end Englishman'. That about summed it up; they gave us a bit of stick but we could give it back. They were half-English in Dumfries, anyway."

He stayed for just one season - "the travelling could be horrific; we could have had a very good side if we could have all trained together" - joined Gateshead and was centre-half in the Scarborough side which beat Wigan in the FA Trophy final.

Michael Barker, an England amateur international, commuted between Bishop Auckland and Scotland for six years. "I loved it, it was football so it was easy," he recalls.

"There were some queer places, your Forfars and your Motherwells, but the worst thing was the travelling. I could drive up to Beattock, meet the bus, travel another two or three hours and be on the field 45 minutes later. You can't imagine them doing that today."

George Brown, was injured in his first Scottish match - "I was at West Auckland when Johnny Spuhler was manager, he went crackers" - and was last man off the field in the last ever game at Third Lanark.

"It's my only claim to fame,"

he insists. "They were a very friendly club, treated you well, but I got more money as an amateur at West Auckland than I did as a professional at Queen of the South."

THE next great English invasion came in 2000, when Jimmy Connolly - former Newcastle United midfielder and manager of Northern League side Ashington - got the Palmerston Park job.

Half a dozen players went with him from Ashington, another three from Tow Law.

The column had watched them, early on, at Stenhousmuir. "You could tell the Scottish players,"

we observed, "they were the ones called Jimmy."

Connolly steered the club to first division promotion in 2005 but left the following year. "He brought about 70 players, of whom about four were any good," says Allan Ball.

Now the town most famous as the place of Rabbie Burns' passing prepares for history's greatest lowland fling.

"It's a one-off, I'm very confident we'll do well," says Allan. "You look at the likes of Barnsley and Cardiff and they were rank outsiders. Someone told me that if you'd correctly bet £10 on last weekend's English quarter-finals you'd have won £52,000.

"I'm not saying we'll win, but I'd go and have a tenner on Queen of the South."

BACKTRACK BRIEFS...

SUNDERLAND play Gateshead in the Durham Challenge Cup final, planned for the Stadium of Light on May 6. George Alberts reckons that the last time the clubs met in a Durham final - then the Senior Cup, contested between the county's four Football League clubs - was when Gateshead won 1-0 at Redheugh Park.

It was 1959. From memory, says George - whose memory's very good - Sunderland had Peter Wakeham in goal and, up front, a "great carthorse" of a centre forward called Kichenbrand.

This may be unfair. Don Kichenbrand wasn't known as Carthorse, he was known as Rhino - "the nickname," notes the Sunderland players' history All the Lads, "is selfexplanatory."

Kichenbrand was a "burly"

South African who joined Rangers, was advised to keep secret his Catholic religion, and who once scored five - against Queen of the South, coincidentally - in what was Scotland's first floodlit league match.

At Sunderland, Rhino charged his way to 28 goals in 54 games. He was last heard of back in South Africa.

NOW in Thailand, formerly a goalkeeper with Gateshead Reserves, George Alberts also notes on the club website the report of his old team's game at Skelmersdale last Saturday.

"A James Curtis error in the box saw the Gateshead defender give away a penalty which was slotted home by a Skelmersdale striker who, in celebration, bizarrely decided to punch Curtis and was promptly dismissed."

For some reason it reminded George - formerly manager of the Millburngate shopping centre in Durham - of a Durham Challenge Cup quarter-final in which he played for Boldon Colliery, at Spennymoor.

"During the game, some of the crowd at the slope end of the Brewery Field started throwing pebbles at me, so I told the referee. He told me to throw them back again."

It was not, adds George, the response that he was expecting.

A FEW weeks back, it may be recalled, we reported a remarkable act of faith by Northern Cross, the Roman Catholic newspaper for the diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. On the column's recommendation, they'd appointed Northern Echo editor Peter Barron as racing tipster.

It was thus in a state of some excitement that Pete, on holiday this week, rang on Tuesday to report that Tidal Bay, his first selection, had come home at 6-1 at Cheltenham.

"I know of at least one reader who had a fiver on it and is delighted," says Cross editor John Bailey.

In danger of losing his prized "Britain's worst tipster" tag, Pete also has a runner in today's Gold Cup.

The boss's hoss is Denman, If it wins, we're all going over to Rome.

BOB Dixon rings to report his latest football memorabilia fair - Belmont Social Club, Durham, this Sunday from 11am-1.30pm - with programmes, books, autographs, photographs and, the coming thing, match tickets.

"You can now pay two or three times more for a 1966 World Cup final ticket than you would for the programme," says Bob.

"Why, I do not know."

A 1973 FA Cup final ticket is on offer at £25.

"If someone makes me an offer," he says magnanimously, "they can have it for twenty."

and finally...

TUESDAY'S column sought the identity of the scorer who'd played - in plimsolls - in a Gillette Cup match at Lord's.

It was (and Terry Wells knew it) Yorkshire's Ted Lester, who in 1947 had been good enough to be third in the national batting averages behind Dennis Compton and Bill Edrich but, by 1964, had been retired from second team captaincy for four years.

Ian Jackson of the North-East branch of the Cricket Society recalls that Yorkshire had travelled to Middlesex with the bare 11 men and that John Hampshire had taken ill. "At breakfast Ted was told of his elevation, declared it nonsense, and went for a walk, instead."

Ten minutes before the start, he returned to Lord's with pen and scorebook and was told he was still the replacement.

Middlesex were dismissed for around 150.

Scarborough-born Lester, who'd quite enjoyed fielding, thought he'd watch his team mates swiftly knock them off.

Instead, says Ian, he was sent in at number nine, didn't see the first ball - from the lightning-fast John Price - and was bowled by the second.

After that he went back to his box.

John Briggs in Darlington today seeks the identity of the first full back - North-East connection - to score a goal from open play in an FA Cup final.

A full back fall back, the column returns on Tuesday.