Synners can hardly Bear last-minute Vase exit

Congleton is known universally as Beartown - probably the best part of the story - and its football team as the Bears.

Happily, they have resisted all temptation to call the ground the Bear Pit. It is simply Booth Street, near one of several hundred Durham Ox pubs and the chip shop where once the teams changed.

In Elizabethan times, so lugubrious legend has it, all the towns in those parts had a resident bear for dancing and other purposes, better or Ursa. A bait box wasn't something in which a miner carried his cheese and pickle.

The poor bear, at any rate, died shortly before Wakes Week. Though now said to be Britain's 31st richest town, in those days the council was so impoverished that they sold the town bible to buy another bear.

It may, indeed, be Congleton's principal claim to fame. Asked others, the taxi driver replied that the chap who'd lived next door to his mam once had a bit part in Bread but that he couldn't think of anything else. They even wrote a song:

The Wakes coming on and the bear he took ill

We tried him with potions, with brandy and pill,

He died in his sleep on the eve of the Wakes -

The cause, it was said, was strong ale and sweet cakes...."

So Beartown was born - had it been a gorilla, they'd have called it King Congleton - though Beertown might almost have been as appropriate. In 1758, it is recorded, Congleton had 42 ale house licence holders for a population of just 1,000.

Now there's also a Beartown Brewery, producing delicious ale like Ambeardextrous, Ginger Bear and, of course, Bear Ass. Bear Necessity can only be a matter of time.

A notice on the wall of the Beartown Tap, wonderful pub, records that reality is an hallucination brought about by lack of alcohol.

In the Bears' boardroom they've put up Robert Frost's line about the world being full of willing people, some willing to work and others willing to watch them.

In Congleton, they like their aphorisms framed.

The boardroom trophy cabinet also contained a tin of pears and another of peaches, which may in their turn become legendary. Two Christmases ago, it's said, a director at an away match won the half- time draw for the first time in memory, bore the resultant hamper triumphantly homeward and only then discovered that the sell-by was circa 1985.

Things didn't go well for the column either, not from the moment we arrived in Manchester, discovered that because of engineering work there were no trains to Congleton and had to pay £25 for a taxi from Wilmslow.

They got worse 27 minutes after some Biffo had led his team onto the field and the Bears led, deservedly.

Since bad news travels fast these days, word soon arrived that Billingham Town, the team over the road and the Albany Northern League's only other Vase survivors, were also behind.

Some Synthonia fans, it should shamefully be admitted, seemed to regard it as a consolation.

Though David Wells equalised, though Tommy Marron and David O'Gorman - known universally as Dog - strove manfully at the back, our boys were relieved, and slightly fortunate, to be 1-1 after 90 minutes.

Better in extra time, they held out until two minutes from the end: ball off the line, assistant's flag, hand of Dog, penalty claws, terminally 2-1..

Dancing Bears; miserable, miserable Synners.

A day never to be forgotten in West Auckland, it was ten years yesterday since the internationally famous World Cup was stolen from the village workmen's club.

The reward proved unfruitful, the major police investigation court short, the hopes for the trophy's swift recovery unfounded. Is it really the end of the World Cup?

"I very much believe that they will never see it again," says former detective chief inspector Paul Green, the man who led the international hunt.

"At first we thought that it might have been stolen to order, certainly not for its silver value, but we were quickly convinced it must have been local talent, if you like.

"They saw all the publicity and all the police activity and realised they were out of their depth.

"It was so fragile, so much polished, that you could have crushed it under your foot. It's probably been destroyed, or dumped."

Allegedly invited to compete because they had the same initials as Woolwich Arsenal, West's merry miners won the cup - formally the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy - in both 1909 and 1911, Juventus twice among the vanquished.

Mind, they'd also lost it in 1909, left on a bench at the Gare du Nord in Paris - "the lads were drunk as scuttles", it was recalled - until returned two days later by a dutiful porter.

After many other indignities - pawned to help pay off club funds, again absent without leave in the 1960s - it was kept on show in the workmen's club in a supposedly shatter proof case.

Burglars in the early hours of January 19, 1994 shattered both the case and the theory.

"It was the blackest day we've ever known," recalls Allen Bayles, then as now secretary of West Auckland FC. "You hear all sorts of theories, even now barely a day goes by without one, but the police reckoned they knew who'd done it but couldn't prove anything."

Paul Green agrees. "We had one or two local names in the frame but there wasn't enough evidence to take them to court.

"We had contacts at auction houses throughout the world. It was never offered on the open market or covertly to buyers on the market.

"I'm convinced it was local. It meant a great deal to a lot of people, but I'm afraid they won't see it again now."

The £2,000 reward, named after Pickles - the dog which found the Jules Rimet trophy in a Staffordshire hedgeback - is still in force, though a handsome replica is now on display in the workmen's club.

"We're still asked to take it all over," says Allen Bayles. "It mightn't be the original, but it's the world cup and we're still very proud of it."

A Durham police spokesman said the case wasn't closed. "We will respond, as we always have done, to any information we are given."

l Tyne Tees Television's "Legends" programme, perchance, features the West Auckland World Cup story this Thursday - with clips from the Denis Waterman film "A Captain's Tale". Screened live from the Manor House Hotel in West, the programme begins at 11.30pm. To the Manor borne, again, next Tuesday.

And finally...

The League Cup sponsors in 1989-90, when Scarborough last beat Chelsea, were Littlewoods Stores. (Backtrack, January 16.)

On a similar note, readers may care to recall the last time that, respectively, an Englishman managed the winners of the League Cup, FA Cup and top division championship.

England expects the answer on Friday.

Published: 20/01/2004