Original Synners light up

Old Synners, maybe, but lovely lads for all that.

Synthonia, of course, was a corruption of synthetic ammonia, the stuff that ICI - "God bless her," they said, affectionately - turned out by the cauldron full.

"You could smell it everywhere, I think that's what kept us going," said Ken Kitching, 69. "The trainer probably had it in his sponge."

"If you got injured, you just had to take a deep breath and you'd be running round like a two-year-old," said Jackie Smith, now 83 and known since a bairn as Biffer.

They were joined by Harold Chesser, 78, and Ted Lowe, 71, who'd also helped light up the inaugural game, November 10 1952, against a team from RAF stations at Middleton St George, Thornaby and Seaton Snook, near Hartlepool.

"It was a bit dark in the corners and the middle, but we realised what a big occasion it was," said Ted.

"You expected a few teething troubles," said Harold. "We were only an amateur club after all."

On an evening of constant rain and ICI effusion, Biffer Smith had sparkled in the gloom. "Smith outshone even the brilliance of the flood lamps at the Belasis Lane ground," reported a local newspaper, adding - a little less refulgently - that the mud lay deep on the field and a slime-covered ball was sometimes barely distinguishable from it.

They could still see that Biffer Smith was a good footballer, though. "If he'd been playing today he'd have been streets ahead of Beckham," said Harold Chesser.

Half a century ago they'd beaten the RAF 8-4, the Billingham Express moved to suggest that the goals "didn't really count" as the goalkeepers were at such a disadvantage.

On Sunday, Remembrance Day, an admirably organised return - against the national RAF side - was attended by military top brass, local MP Frank Cook, the extraordinarily dedicated Synthonia ground crew and an otherwise paltry crowd.

Making his debut in the RAF team was Paul Garbutt, 23, a former Synthonia junior whose parents still live in the town. He is now at RAF Lyneham.

The RAF went down 1-0 and had a chap taken to North Tees General for stitches to a head wound - and not even a flying tackle.

Per ardua ad astra, as probably they said in 1952.

Gazza's back in the North-East, undergoing a strict fitness regime and may shortly make his Albany Northern League debut - for Morpeth - before seeking opportunities abroad.

In the meantime, he was in a Northumberland restaurant last week when asked to judge a children's fancy dress competition.

"Paul just couldn't do it because it would have meant disappointing all those who didn't win," says a friend who was with him.

"Instead he put £200 behind the bar, changed it into £5 notes and gave every one of them a fiver. It's the sort of lovely lad he is."

Broken ribs notwithstanding, Sir Bobby Robson duly enthralled Tow Law Football Club for two and a quarter hours. A knight to remember, as it were.

He was articulate, engaging and vastly knowledgeable, manifestly permitted the Robsonesque quirks of pronunciation by which Gullitt sounds like part of the human anatomy and Thierry Henry (whom unashamedly he covets) resembles most closely that chap with the funny hat and daft beard in The Magic Roundabout.

Much of it must remain between friends, not least because of the threat of Cort action. Though a journalist's wildest dream, the Magpies manager is entitled to an evening off guard.

"No will of the wisps?" he asked, meaning journalists.

"Just Mike Amos," they said and Bobby, flatteringly, said that that would be fine.

The evening's highlight, in any case, revolved not around Newcastle United but was a coruscating, 22-carat cameo on his time at Ipswich Town under the patrician brothers Cobbold.

John and Patrick Cobbold were old Etonian brewers and he all but worshipped them. Mr John, he said, loved football, white wine and donkeys ("there's a story about the donkeys, too") and was in the habit of venturing forth in foreign parts with his name and hotel on his shirt cuffs lest he become, as it were, disorientated.

The best tale, however, came from the gents of the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street station, en route for West Ham United.

Mr John was heading for the door. "Where I was brought up," ventured the Langley Park lad, "we were taught to wash our hands afterwards."

"Where I was brought up," said Mr John, "we were taught not to pee on them in the first place."

Mooching around Paris last Monday evening, we bump (as you do) into Ken Shaw, a ground hopper from Sunderland who reads L'Equipe as fluently as he does the Pink. The previous day he'd managed two games, though one proved goalless. Did it count, then? "In France," said Ken, "I'm damn sure they do."

Plan A having been waterlogged, we headed uncertainly on Saturday towards Merseyside - Prescott Cables v West Auckland in the FA Vase.

Named after the former BICC wire works, Prescott still play in amber and black because that was the colour paper in which BICC cable was first wrapped.

They were also the first non-league team to fly to an FA Cup tie, a 4-0 defeat on November 14 1959 at Darlington. "They hadn't invented the M62 at the time," explained a helpful committee man.

West's 2-1 defeat may have been a little less hard to swallow because of committee man and Wear Valley district councillor Andy Turner, whose horse's mouth information on the 3.30 at Doncaster suggested they invest in Red Wine. It won at 18-1.

"What's called drowning your sorrows," said club secretary Allen Bayles, the tireless Midnight Cowboy.

In his autobiography, more of which very shortly, retired Premiership referee Alan Wilkie admits to liking a few glasses of red wine on the night before a match because it's "good for the constitution."

Whether the Cowboy and colleagues felt constitutionally reinvigorated on Sunday morning, we have been wholly unable to discover.

And finally....

the three Sunderland players who went on to manage Leeds United (Backtrack, November 1) were Raich Carter, Brian Clough and Don Revie.

Fred Alderton in Peterlee, who knew that one, today seeks the identity of the only two English football internationals whose surname began with the letter Q.

Quintessential, again, on Friday.

Published: 12/11/2002