A trip into the unknown - but just where is Yeading?

WHEN the draw for the third round of the FA Cup was made earlier this month, most Newcastle fans did not know where Yeading football club was. On Saturday I found that, even in Yeading itself, they were not alone.

"No, there's no football club in Yeading mate," I was told as I wandered along the solitary row of shops that serves as Yeading town centre. "Do you want the seven-a-side pitch down at the primary school?"

Not so much cup fever then as a slight sniffle and a frog in the throat.

The lunch-time drinkers in the White Hart were more willing to talk about football - but only the Championship game that was playing out on the big screen. To them, there was more interest in Reading (who were at home to Queens Park Rangers) than Yeading.

"I've lived in Yeading all my life and I've never been down to see them play," admitted 64-year-old Jack McGrath. "I suppose I should but I can sit here in the warm and see all the football I like.

"Besides, I'm Chelsea and I think it's a bit late in the day for me to be swapping now."

And therein lies the problem for Newcastle's third-round opponents. Yeading is home to plenty of football fans but, with Chelsea, Brentford and QPR all on the doorstep, that love of football rarely equates to a love of Yeading.

There are plenty of alternatives just a train ride away and, to further complicate the matter, I eventually find out why so few of Yeading's inhabitants know the location of the club's ground.

It's because it's not even in Yeading in the first place.

Instead, it's on a soulless industrial estate at the no-man's land where Yeading, Hayes and Southall all meet - sandwiched between a bakery, an engineering firm and a Pickfords warehouse.

But, while The Warren might not be one of football's great amphitheatres, it possesses a heart and soul that has been ripped out of the upper echelons of the game.

Here, with just three weeks to go until the club's big day, preparations really are in full swing.

Tickets for the David vs Goliath clash are on sale from a hastily-assembled ticket office - two trellis tables and a handwritten sign - while Yeading hats are proving popular at £6 a shot.

"We've never had any merchandise before," said chairman Phil Spurden. "We didn't know how many to order so we made a list of who we thought might want them and went off that."

While too many football club chairmen see their supporters as an irrelevance, Spurden doesn't just know his club's fans by name - he knows where they live, where they stand on the touchline and how many sugars they take in their tea.

We chat in the supporters' club bar - the warm mince pies are inevitably selling like hot cakes - and it doesn't take long to realise he's more than the man who signs the cheques.

In the course of our 20-minute conversation, he fixes the warm water in both dressing rooms, announces the two line-ups over the tannoy and supervises the chopping of the chicken for the post-match curry - somewhat different to Freddy Shepherd's pre-match routine.

"I know a lot of non-league clubs would claim to be a close community," said Spurden. "But I don't think many of them will be any closer than us.

"We've got about 40 diehards who are here at every game and we all do something to keep the club going. It's a labour of love, but we all have links to the club and we'd all hate to see it die.

"I played in goal a lot of years ago and have been involved ever since. We've never really aspired to be anything other than a small family club and I suppose we haven't been - until now."

Or until January 9 to be more precise, which is when Yeading's 40 diehards, and a few thousand hangers-on, will descend on Loftus Road to watch the part-timers face Newcastle.

"I still can't really believe it's going to happen," beamed Spurden. "We would have loved to have played at St James', or to have held the game here, but we'll make it a special day next month and you just never know."

You certainly don't on the evidence of Saturday's 90 minutes in which Yeading give a startlingly good account of themselves in a 3-0 win over Cheshunt.

I watch the game in the company of Spurden behind the goal. There's a temporary hiccup when the ball bursts after ten minutes - "that's another tenner down the spout" - but, after that, Yeading's players do enough to suggest Newcastle's millionaires will not have things all their own way next month.

Graeme Souness' note-taker will certainly have been impressed - the first scout at The Warren since the First Hayes pack gave up the ballboy duties according to one regular - and a crowd of 128 leave happy with the outcome.

"They're honest lads and they'll not let themselves down," said Warren regualr Mick Gritt, whose brother Ray helped form the club in the 1960s.

"If you've got a spare tenner get down to the bookies because we'll score against them, I promise you that.

"Whatever happens, it's going to be great. It's got the whole of football talking and now everyone in the country knows about us."

It would be nice to think that the whole of Yeading will soon know about them as well.