So far from a Rovers return...

Nothing has changed except the noise level. In the fortressed clubhouse, turned out bravely like the Railway Children on days when Mother sold a story, a splendidly crocheted tablecloth lies on guard over the post-match buffet.

Beneath it are tuna sandwiches and fruit scones, chocolate marshmallows and some delicious little cakes in paper cases - "we always bake for visitors" someone says.

A tin of pears in syrup would make the image complete, a fifties family expecting folk for Sunday tea.

Paths have diverged in the three decades since that unforgettable Cup tie; the Rovers have never returned. Willington are next to bottom of the Albany Northern League second division; Blackburn have won the Premiership.

Rovers have had Jack Walker, the most bountiful of benefactors. Willington would be grateful for Annie Walker, or Billy Walker or even Charlie Walker, the Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme.

On Tuesday night they're at home to Alnwick Town. The crowd's 30, the weather wintry, the atmosphere so thin it's anorexic. Bob Nichols, now the football club's heroic secretary, helped run the supporters' club in 1973, recalls almost 400 paying weekly subs, buses to every away league match.

"They put the Blackburn crowd at 4,600 but it was generally reckoned to be well above five," he says, breath condensing in the windowless cell that serves as his office.

Keith Newton, now club treasurer, was 12, went with his dad, still remembers the excitement and keeps the programme.

"I think we frightened them that day," says Keith. Put the wind up them, anyway.

The big match, said the programme notes, was the result of three years hard work and honest endeavour.

The work's still hard, the endeavour no less honest, the happy band muted after just two minutes when Alnwick score. They're three up by half-time.

The nice girls in the tea hut, where the corned beef pie may warmly be recommended, say that they can't see much of the action from their little window but can tell if Willington score by the cheers.

It is to be a pretty cheerless evening.

Just three people, visiting groundhoppers, are in the pre-war wooden stand.

"Sorry, season-ticket holders only" they joke, as a fourth makes his solitary path from behind the goal.

On the field the language is universally awful, though north Northumberland can be distinguished from south Durham because Alnwick roll their arse.

The terracing is overgrown, the once-blue paint peeling, the coal bunker - coal bunker! - empty. A late goal is barely even the proverbial consolation.

"What we need is a sugar daddy," Bob muses, "or someone to buy a few more raffle tickets."

The towel in the clubhouse isn't one they've thrown in, however, but hangs over the beer pump in salute to the Norwegian visitors who the previous weekend had drunk them dry. Another story.

Team manager Alan Shoulder, indomitable like the rest, had subsequently taken the guests to Coundon Conservative Club, where the merriment continued.

"I went home like a buckled wheel," says Alan, graphically.

Their Sunday best tea swiftly devoured, the players disperse just as hurriedly, leaving on a stool by the bar a teddy bear mascot called Willhemena, dressed in Willington's blue and white stripes.

"Not bringing you much luck, is it?" someone says, unkindly.

"Maybe not," says the barmaid who'd been tea lady an hour earlier, "but at least she tries."

It is impossible to think of Blackburn, Lancashire, without a certain generation - that is to say, this generation - thinking also of The Beatles and of four thousand holes.

Some of us also think of Barbara Castle, Thwaites's bitter and meat and potato pie. In future we shall further remember Blackburn for Wednesday's ice bucket storm, and for the unlikely Good Samaritan.

Ewood Park is two miles from the railway station, amid the scrubbed steps and satellite dishes of Nuttall Street, probably named after the man who invented Mintoes.

It is as handsome as Hall Lane is humble, as transformed as the other is unaltered, and though it cost Jack Walker £40m, so they reckon, it remains the only Premiership ground with a coal fire in the boardroom.

There never was a better day then Wednesday for keeping the home fires burning.

Between station and stadium are affable old men who cry "'Ow do?" to no one in particular and a street simply called Honeyhole. Were 3,999 named similarly?

An assiduous A-Z (also including Osbaldtwistle, Haslingden and Rawtenstall) offers little corroboration.

A weary letter in Wednesday's Lancashire Evening Telegraph suggests that, in any case, the words should be changed to 4,000 CCTV cameras in Blackburn, Lancashire.

In the Aquaduct, near the ground, there's a fat feller doing a spot of angle grinding car maintenance on the bar top - you don't often see that in a pub - and another customer, total two, bemoaning Rovers' present Premiership predicament.

"You should see Willington," we suggest. He returns morosely to his pork scratching.

In the Rovers' club shop are two assistants, one customer, and the motto Arte et Labore picked out on marble tiles.

"We're in this together," skipper Gary Flitcroft had said in the last programme.

"I've never known a run of results like it," said Graeme Souness, the manager.

"Bollocks," they said in the Aquaduct.

The life saver was the slight young thing with the child in a pushchair who, asked directions amid the deluge, not only offered them impeccably but insisted as she lived nearby upon giving away her umbrella.

The Good Samaritan wasn't a him but a her. The Samaritan, more to the point, was Chinese.

It had been Willington's first game against Football League opposition for 50 years, Blackburn's first against a non-league side for 42.

The Co Durham side were coached by Brian Newton, a builder who played alongside his brother David and whose father Jackie, once a Hartlepools United stalwart, was club secretary.

Blackburn included Benny Arentoft, who'd been in Newcastle United's Fairs Cup winning side, North-East lads Barry Endean and Terry Garbutt and Tony Parkes, still with the club.

"The thing I remember most was that the wind were bloody horrific," says Parkes, 53, the accent of his Sheffield upbringing merging somewhere over Woodside Pass with 33 years at the Rovers.

He made 350 League appearances, was manager in 1999-2000, has four times been caretaker manager and - lovely feller - has the look of someone who's been a few times round the Blackburn block.

Now assistant manager, he relaxes between training and a reserve team match at the club's sumptuous training ground and academy at Langho, a few miles to the north - another legacy of Walker's extraordinary largesse.

In the next office sits the amiable Alan Murray, youth development officer, and himself a former Willington manager.

"Jack Walker came to the club for all the right reasons," says Parkes. "He was never going to get his money back but he did wonders for the club and the town.

"We were one of the biggest clubs, playing on public parks and going nowhere. Without Jack's money we'd be in the same position as we were 30 years ago, maybe the same position as Willington. It takes some clubs a lifetime to do what Blackburn did in ten years."

He remembers the 1973 match well though unable (he says) to remember what he had for dinner the previous evening.

"It was one of those days when we were never really comfortable. To b e honest they could have won it late on, when they had a really good chance.

"The wind were a leveller, end to end down the pitch, but most of us had never even heard of Willington and had no idea what to expect. They might well have had a goal late on, we were quite glad to come away with a draw."

Now, of course, Rovers are themselves second bottom. Parkes is hopeful of better times around the Nuttall Street corner.

"I love everything about the place, always have. I don't think I'll be going anywhere else now, except perhaps the dole queue."

Among the more eye-catching back page headlines on the morning of November 25, 1973 was a plea by Blackburn manager Ken Furphy for the FA Cup to be restricted to Football League sides.

Minnows should be kicked out, he said, perhaps by way of sprat and mackerel. The minnows, happily, remain elusive.

Now 72, Ken was a Stockton lad, made 316 Football League appearances for Darlington and managed the Quakers and several others including Watford.

Now he lives in the west country, works as an expert summariser for local radio - "I'm developing a soft spot for Torquay United, it's quite worrying" - and is aghast at what he said in 1973.

"I can't believe I said it, I must have been frightened. It's a bit late, but I think you'd better apologise for me."

Like Tony Parkes, he best remembers the gale - "the goalkeeper would kick the ball out of his hands and it would go for a corner" - though the lady and the gamp comes a close second.

"We'd been warned that in the previous round an old woman with an umbrella had tripped up a cup of the visiting players and we were quite concerned about her because the crowd was right on top of us.

"I'd played for Evenwood, so I knew how windy it could be on Northern League grounds, but I'd never known anything like that."

Willington's late miss came, ironically, from Tommy Holden who'd been released by Blackburn the previous season. After a couple of postponements caused by the three day week, Rovers won the replay 6-1.

Ever shrewd, Ken Furphy at once puts his finger on the reason. "I think the wind had died down by then."

Last week of November 1973? Hartlepool go out of the Cup to non-league opposition for the third time in four years, Darlington lose to Scunthorpe and the town is further rocked when the price of a bacon butty at the bus station rises from 14p to 21p.

"A fifty per cent increase," explains the John North column, helpfully. Walton and Hersham win 4-0 against Brian Clough's Brighton, Sunderland manager Bob Stokoe drops unhappy Cup hero Dennis Tueart from the squad and Middlesbrough manager Jack Charlton sends striker Alan Foggon - described in The Northern Echo as "beefy" - on a two week weight loss regime.

Big Jack also ensures that old Fatty Foggon stays off the bacon butties. Cissie Charlton, his mum, is appointed training camp cook.

And finally...

The Premiership club which in 1995 hosted the first England home match outside Wembley for 29 years (Backtrack, November 25) was Leeds United.

But can you name the four Premiership clubs whose record defeats have all been at the hands of Blackburn Rovers?

The rover returns on Tuesday

Published: 28/11/2003