Shouldering Willington burden

"I still enjoyed it," he said next day, just as he seemed to enjoy almost every moment of a remarkable football career.

Shoulder is the former pitman who helped Northern League side Blyth Spartans to an FA Cup fifth round replay before swapping pit boots for shooting boots and becoming a people's champion at Newcastle.

If not a miner miracle, exactly, it was a tale from football's furthest fantasies.

The 25th anniversary of Blyth's unequalled achievement, contentiously curtailed with Arsenal awaiting in the quarter-final, will be celebrated three weeks after his 50th. His first grandchild, Rhys, was born at Christmas.

He'd been baby sitting before we met for pie and pint. "Life would be pretty canny if it wasn't for worrying about Willington," he said.

He belonged the Coundon area, as they say in those parts of Co Durham, and contentedly belongs it still.

Whilst other players sought late nights and bright lights, the diminutive Shoulder was never happier than when the car pulled into the drive at Leasingthorne, the former pit village where he remains.

Whilst others stumble shamelessly round the after-dinner speaking circuit or fan limelight's last embers, Alan Shoulder is unpaid player/manager with the Albany Northern League's bottom club.

"They're genuine people and if they're prepared to put up with it then so am I," he says. "I've never been under any illusions about it."

It is impossible to imagine a more passionate football man, nor one less filigreed by fame. The guy even insists upon buying his round, and is too little to argue with.

He's 5ft 5in tall, more fat on a pit prop, tousled hair now vanished but still the creviced features of a collier. He'd happily have gone back down, too, had the coal house door not slammed shut in his face.

His early competitive football was with Leeholme Juniors, where he recalls George Courtney - a future FIFA official - making his debut as a referee, against Mainsforth.

"I think he thought world war three had broken out, there were fights kicking off all over the place.

"It was nothing in that league, you fought off the field so you fought on it. I think George got the hang after that."

At 16 he played for the sinfully suffixed Byers Green St Peter's - "I remember a committee man chasing the referee from Byers Green to Willington" - before six Northern League seasons with Bishop Auckland.

Blyth signed him for £150 in time for the FA Cup third round match against Enfield, having beaten Chesterfield in the second. He scored the only goal.

In the fourth round they were drawn at Stoke City, from the old second division, and won 3-2.

"It was a brilliant night, pouring down, only the third time me mam had seen us play. She was interested in us as kids, not footballers."

Mike Pejic, the Stoke and England left back, described it as the worst night of his life. For Alan Shoulder it was the best, though there was better yet to come.

"The biggest disappointment at Stoke was in the bath, when we heard that Wrexham had beaten Newcastle 4-1 in a replay. The draw had been made, we'd have been playing Newcastle."

They went to Wales on a frost-bitten February day, took the lead and held it until the 90th minute - when Wrexham were awarded a corner.

Though Spartans goalkeeper Dave Clarke caught it cleanly, referee Alf Grey had already blown, because the corner flag had fallen out of the frozen ground.

On the second attempt the same thing happened, though Blyth still believe that the ball had been cleared before the whistle blew. "We were a bit peeved about that," says Alan, "but nothing like as bloody peeved as with what happened next."

What happened next was that Dixie McNeil equalised with a header. The replay, before a crowd officially put at 42,000 but thought to have been much greater, was at St James's Park, Newcastle.

"My father-in-law came and he'd never been so frightened in his life," says Alan. "He reckoned there were four times as many people in that old wooden stand as should have been, the aisles totally blocked with people.

"Everyone else there was engrossed by the match and all he was worried about was whether the place would catch fire."

Wrexham took the lead with a penalty - "it was for absolutely nothing, that idiot Grey" - and led 2-0 before Blyth pulled one back. "The last ten minutes were the noisiest I've ever known in my life."

All the time he'd been buried down the pit, first at East Hetton, near Kelloe, then as a deputy at Horden, for five years working permanent nights to give more opportunities for football.

"Quite often on days I'd be out at eight in the morning, finish at half past five, drive to Blyth, train and be home at half eleven. It wasn't a hardship, I enjoyed training."

Following an FA Cup replay at York in December 1978, however - after which he arrived two hours late for night shift - Newcastle United boss Bill McGarry became the last in a legendary line of North-East managers to shout down the shaft and come up with a striker. Alan was 25.

"Look at Tony Book, he was 29 when he first played in the Football League," said McGarry perceptively.

Though he insists that money wasn't important, the wages were a damn sight better than the pit. He got a Ford Capri and Marie, his wife, a tumble drier.

"You couldn't say it was a dream come true because I'd never got around to dreaming the dream in the first place," said Alan, several months later.

He went straight into the United first team, against Stoke of all the sides, having persuaded McGarry and assistant manager Peter Morris that the transition from coal face to second division promotion battle was, as it were, seamless.

"I told them that I couldn't get kicked any harder than I was in the Northern League. I think that's what swayed it," he says.

If he'd struck coal, Newcastle had struck black and white gold. He hit 11 League goals in the remainder of the season, was named Tyneside's sportsman of the year in May, and - with Peter Withe prolifically in tandem - scored 21 the following season.

He was stopped in supermarkets, chased for his autograph, preferred anonymity. "I wouldn't say I was scared to go out, but I couldn't understand it. I didn't regard myself as a star at all.

"I'd 32 in 64 games, a canny ratio. I should have quit while I was ahead," he jokes over his hot beef sandwich.

Arthur Cox gave him a free transfer in the summer of 1982 after an injury-hit season in which he made just four appearances. He'd still loved the crack, though and - then as now - footballers liked a drink.

"Mainly I'd come back down to West Cornforth with Dave Barton or Coundon with my mates, but when we'd been thrown out of the players' lounge after midweek games we'd go to the Tuxedo Junction.

"Other lads might have been looking for something else, but all I was looking for was a drink. I needed a drink to sleep after a midweek match. I still couldn't sleep after the game at Penrith on Tuesday. It never changes"

Since leaving Newcastle he's been to St James's Park three times. "I go when I'm invited but I don't pester people for tickets, it's not my style. The Northern League does me nicely."

Bob Stokoe signed him for Carlisle in a second division which included Chelsea, Middlesbrough, Leeds, Charlton - and Newcastle. Again he proved an instant hit, scoring 21 in his first season.

In 1985 he moved to Hartlepool, scoring 24 in 66 League appearances. Throughout most of his Football League career he'd also managed Coundon Workmen's Club, back home, on Sunday mornings.

Subsequently he became manager of Crook Town, resigned earlier this season at Bishop Auckland - "I thought someone else would have more chance of bringing in new players" - was persuaded to join Willington by a combination of the club committee and his wife.

"I wouldn't say they were desperate, but they needed someone to turn it around. The wife thought I should stay involved," he says.

Three years from their centenary, Willington - members since 1911 - face relegation from the Northern League unless Alan can substantiate the Blyth spirit of old.

On Tuesday they had the bare 11 men, only three of whom had played in the previous game. He hasn't yet scored, but once came close. "I had an 'Oooh'," he says.

"What gets me is that players just seem to turn up when they want to, stroll in, no comittment at all. Apparently we haven't even trained for two years.

"There's tremendous potential in the club, around ten junior sides, but it will take two or three years for them to work through.

"It would be disastrous for Willington if we went out of the Northern League and disastrous for me, because my name would be attached to it."

He also coaches Leeholme Juniors and takes football at the Coundon junior school where his wife teaches, runs an egg delivery business ("steady away") and drinks in Coundon Conservative Club, more an allegiance to good beer than party politics.

His 50th falls on the day before the tenth birthday of his youngest daughter, who plays football, is a Newcastle fan and wanted nothing more for Christmas than a Shay Given jersey.

Alan fears a surprise party - "I've never really liked a fuss" - and would probably trade it for three points for Willington.

We're last to leave the pub. "A pint and a bit crack about football," he says in the car park, "you couldn't want much better than that."

Backtrack Briefs...

Alan Shearer's 10.4 second goal on Saturday wasn't, of course, the fastest in history. The Daily Mail listed three six-second strikes - one by Albert Mundy for Aldershot against Hartlepools United in 1958.

What, though, of Jim Fryatt's "four-second" effort for Bradford PA against Tranmere on April 25, 1965?

Mike Kent was there and his e-mail insists upon it; The Northern Echo confirmed the following Monday that four seconds was the officially recorded time.

We also reported Sunderland's promotion from the second division, that Charlie Hurley was runner-up to Bobby Moore as footballer of the year, that just 12,000 had watched Newcastle United's last home match, against Norwich, and that Horden had beaten West Auckland in the Durham Challenge Cup final, thanks mainly to former Newcastle goalie Bert Garrow.

Has Jim Fryatt's claim to fame been forgotten, or simply retimed? Sic transit gloria, Mundy, or what?

Lesley Douglas, 39-year-old head of programmes at Radio 2, has two lifetime heroes - Bruce Springsteen and Gary Rowell.

"Gary was just sublime and he was there at the time when I was really, really obsessed. When he knackered his knee I cried all the way home," she recalls in Wear Down South, the Sunderland southern supporters' magazine.

Though born and raised in Newcastle, Lesley has been a Sunderland nut since their defeat on her first visit to Roker Park.

"Without being unduly gloomy," adds WDS - mordent, nonetheless - "she accepts that seeing us beaten on her first experience set the scene for the next 30 years."

The Albany Northern League magazine, now in fabulous full colour, reports that Seaham Red Star committee man Bryan Mayhew paid £35 from his own pocket for a Liverpool shirt before former Anfield favourite Alan Kennedy spoke at Seaham's sportsmen's dinner.

Suitably autographed, it was knocked down at auction for £65 - to Bryan Mayhew.

At the same do, incidentally, someone paid £95 for a signed Newcastle shirt and then upped the bidding from £65 to £100 for a Sunderland shirt.

"The first was down to the drink," he explained, "the second because I didn't want Newcastle to beat Sunderland at anything."

It's not as if he doesn't wrap up warm, but our old friend John Dawson - King of the Ground Hoppers - has had a spell in coronary care, now confirmed as angina. "I asked them about football and they said it was all right so long as I didn't get excited." The Hartlepool postman only gets excited when watching Newcastle United - and has tickets for the Arsenal match in a fortnight. "I'm taking extra pills," he insists.

Methuselah, making a name in football memorabilia, have their fourth auction at the Marton Hotel, Middlesbrough, on April 24.

Particularly they welcome pre-1960 items, but are happy to discuss anything. They're on 01642 317141.

John Briggs, meanwhile, sends details of an auction in Derbyshire next Monday at which the threepenny programme from the 1939 Amateur Cup final - Bishop Auckland v Willington at Roker Park - is among the lots.

It's folded and has a "slightly split spine" - and is expected to realise around £500.

Published: 24/01/2003