LATER this month, a historic but rather deflated football goes under the hammer, expected to fetch between £2.5m and £3m.
It is the famous “Hand of God” ball which Diego Maradona outrageously punched into the net over the head of England goalkeeper Peter Shilton to score one of the most controversial goals in world football.
A few minutes later, with outrageous skill, the cheeky Argentinian bamboozled five England players with his trickery to put the ball past Shilton for a second time and score one of the most brilliant goals in world football.
Maradona single-handedly knocked England out of 1986 World Cup.
The ball is being sold by the Tunisian referee Ali Bin Nasser, who thought Maradona had headed it into the net.
Maradona handles the £3m ball over the head of England goalkeeper Peter Shilton in 1986
The bidding for this weird piece of sporting memorabilia will probably overshadow another lot which has an estimate of between £5,000 and £6,000.
It is one of only five known winner’s medals presented to the members of the West Auckland team who won what is known as “the first World Cup” in 1909.
It is believed to be in the best condition of the five, perhaps because the Aucklanders celebrated so enthusiastically that they even managed to leave the trophy they had won in Paris.
How this Northern League team of pitmen came to be invited to play in the tournament in Turin in Italy is not known.
The tournament, organised by an Italian sports newspaper, had first been held in 1908, when club sides from France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy played. But for 1909, when the tournament was sponsored by Sir Thomas Lipton to publicise his tea company, organisers felt they needed an English team.
One theory is that they invited Woolwich Arsenal and ended up with West Auckland because of their initials; another theory is that they invited Bishop Auckland, the champions of the Northern League, and ended up with West Auckland because they are easily mixed up.
However, whereas Bishop were the dominant team in the League before the First World War and regularly went on overseas tours, West were third bottom of the league, and their pitmen players had to sell their furniture to pay for their travel.
But even this may not be true. The hardman of the West team was Charley “Dirty” Hogg, a colliery blacksmith, and his son, Alan, once said: "They say we flogged the furniture to get over, but we couldn't have. We never had any furniture to sell. Me mother always said the bugger went away leaving her with a bun in the oven and the 13 of us to look after."
West took 13 players plus club secretary, Miles “Syd” Barron, to Turin. Their last match before their 800 mile journey was a 3-1 defeat at South Bank of Middlesbrough, but nine of those players started in their opening game on April 11, 1909, against Sportfreunde Stuttgart, a rather lowly team from Germany.
The West Auckland team before their first match in 1909
The German players were described as tall and athletic-looking, while the pitmen from Durham were small and a little grubby, but they played elegant football against their muscular opponents.
They took an early lead through Ben Whittingham, a hewer from Shildon, but then their playmaker, John Crawford, a 28-year-old architect from Bishop Auckland, was forced off the pitch by a brutal tackle. No substitutes in those days, so West played on with 10 men, and they only sealed their win in the second half when their goalkeeper, Jim Dickinson, a hewer from Cockfield, raced up-field to hammer a penalty past his German counterpart.
As FC Winterthur – probably the best Swiss side – had beaten the Italian XI in the other first round match, West faced Winterthur in the final the following day.
Again the small pitmen dazzled their more fancied opponents with their quick skills. Their opening goal came when they won a free kick on the edge of the Swiss area. One West player pretended to take it, causing the Swiss keeper to dive, and Rob Jones, a hewer from Newfield, hammered it into the other corner of the net.
A second goal from John “Jock” Jones, a colliery blacksmith, left Auckland 2-0 winners, and they were presented with the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy – hailed by Sir Thomas, who liked a headline, as “the first world cup” – and their medals, inscribed “II TORNEO INTERNAZIONALE D FOOTBALL INDETTO DALLA STAMPA SPORTIVA TORINO APRILE 1909”.
They were now big box office, and in the following days, they crammed in several more matches against Italian sides, with Mr Barron being given their share of the gate receipts in lira in a leather bag. Their final match was in Milan, but Cook’s Tours had failed to book them a hotel and so they slept out on the cathedral steps. They were told the holy sanctuary was the safest place as no thief would dare to rob either their trophy or lira.
From Milan, they caught the train to Paris, where Mr Barron wisely invested the lira in beer. The players then got "as drunk as scuttles", and as the train drew out of the Gare du Nord, someone remembered that they had failed to collect the trophy from customs.
They arrived home without it, but were still paraded around West Auckland's village green in a cart pulled by a horse. The cup arrived a couple of days later, forwarded by a Parisian porter.
The Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy
And at least five medals made it home. One was discovered in a car boot sale about 20 years ago and a second, belonging to Tom Gill, who was one of three brothers in the team, is in the National Football Museum in Preston. A third, belonging to goalie Dickinson, went at auction in 2007 for £12,000, while a fourth, belonging to Alf “Tot” Gubbins was sold in 2017 for £4,000. Tot was a railway shunter from Shildon, and after the First World War emigrated to New Zealand from where his medal was bought by a south Durham businessman.
The fifth is to be sold on November 16 by specialist sports auctioneer Graham Budd. It has been owned for 18 months by a local enthusiast and Memories reader, but the name of the player it belonged to is not known.
“I bought it under the radar with the intention of selling it on and now, with the World Cup about to kick off, seems the right time to move it on,” says the vendor. “I was prompted when I saw that Graham Budd was having a specialist World Cup auction and because this medal is from the first World Cup, he has put it at Lot No 1.”
- For more on the sale, go to grahambuddauctions.co.uk. If you’ve got a couple of million to spend on a deflated football, the Hand of God ball is Lot 295.
WEST AUCKLAND successfully defended the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy in Italy in 1911 and were allowed to keep the cup. They had such doubts, though, that they loaned it to the landlady of their local pub, the Wheatsheaf, in return for £40. It ended up in the working men’s club from where it was stolen in 1994. It was never recovered, and now a replica is on display in the club. In 2013 a statue celebrating West winning the first World Cup was placed on the village green.
- Do you know of the whereabouts of any of the medals?
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