Upwardly mobile Marske take fizz out of Bucks

Marlow's in Buckinghamshire, 30 miles west of London, Sir Steve Redgrave its most famous son. Had he taken to the Oak Tree Road ground with a coxless four, he'd probably have won another gold.

"Just like being at home," said United secretary Ian Rowe, though whether it most closely resembled Marske's pitch or Marske's ebbing beach remained a matter for conjecture.

Theirs' is a remarkable story, centred latterly around John Hodgson, a long-haired painter and decorator who made his first team debut at 14, clings to the club appearance record - 476 matches, 88 goals - and is now the Albany Northern League club's chairman.

Twenty-five years ago they couldn't even get out of the South Bank League, five times refused promotion to the Teesside. Now they were within sight of the national final.

"We've not done badly for a poxxy little club with a scrapyard ground," the chairman wrote in the programme which Marske produced for the away match. Hodgy may be the only painter and decorator in Marske, if not all Teesside, who can't even spell poxy.

Firstly, however, a word on Marlow - founded in 1870, among the 15 clubs who found £25 to subscribe to the first FA Cup in 1872 and the only one to enter it every season since.

"Not many people know that," said Paul Burdell, Marlow's secretary. Perhaps even fewer know that, whilst the claim is true, there was a year when they entered but didn't take part.

In 1881-82 they reached the semi-final, competed thereafter in good old leagues like the Athenian and the Spartan, astonished football by twice reaching the FA Cup third round in the 1990s - including a home draw against Spurs.

(Herewith a confession. Marlow's all-time leading scorer was not Julius Caesar, as recent columns have imagined, but John Caesar, probably one of Julius's grandbairns. He played against Spurs.)

Marlow switched the tie, kept the television money, lost 5-1 - "we were taken apart by that Sammy Vinways," said one of the committee lads, emotionally - but made an estimated £150,000.

Whatever they spent it on, it wasn't a new stand.

The old one, reckoned among the country's most photographed, was built in 1930 and still does solid service.

The town, which inexplicably - and apparently contentiously - holds the Buckinghamshire tidy village award, is more photogenic yet, a bit like Yarm only grander. The poets Shelley and T S Eliot lived there before Sir Steve did, Jerome K Jerome messed about on the river, the tourist information office sells Three Men in a Boat, special offer.

A two-bedroom bungalow is £320,000, a terrace Victorian house £350,000. The price of a pint, said the Marlow programme, would probably come as a shock to the visitors from the North-East.

An off-licence offered a third off all crates of champagne - Bucks fizz, presumably, and now only £167. Even the corner shop was a confiserie and chocolatiere.

There's a posh place called the Compleat Angler, a pub called the Marlow Donkey - named after the push-pull locomotive that used to bray up and down the seven-mile branch line from Maidenhead - and another called the Carpenters Arms, said in the Good Beer Guide to be a "workingman's local."

A pint of bitter was £2, the Carpenters' principal pre-occupation trying to burst the bubbles at the top of the glass with a cocktail stick.

In Marske-by-the-Sea, it has to be said, the average working man might have other things to do with his time.

The town map included the Rowing Club, street signs indicated the Rugby Club, an elderly lady with a basket on wheels said she was sure there was a football ground somewhere, but couldn't quite remember what they'd done with it.

Nor was the low profile bolstered by the Marlow Free Press, which had no mention of the match on front or back page, preferring the story of George Fairfoul, who at the age of 11 had invented one of the world's smallest radios, at the age of 90 had become engaged to be married to a lass of 72 and, perhaps unable to stand all the excitement, had pulled his car into a lay-by and quietly expired.

(The Marlow Free Press costs 40p, incidentally, but came with a big bag of jaffa cakes. The Marlow Free Pressie, perhaps.)

Marske, as we were saying, had travelled down the previous evening. Probably the old place wasn't famous for much at all, they reckoned, save for the Fishermen's Choir and for Captain Cook's dad, who's buried there.

Managed by Charlie Bell, a Cleveland police inspector, the team had had an early night whilst Hodgy and his henchmen invited themselves to Bracknell FC, nearby.

"We thank them in advance for looking after us," the "away" programme had said, and in the true spirit of non-league football scrambled eggs on toast had been 50p next morning.

Outside Marlow they'd also seen bungalows, £320,000 or not, with floodwater up to the eaves. And Marlow Bottom, added the Free Press, had rats.

It kicked off under floodlights, too, the Seasiders clad in blue and yellow, like an indecorous deckchair. A coach load of the self-styled Marske Morons - good lads, entirely sensible - only just made it in time.

It included Surreal Neil, apparently so called because in a previous round at Barwell he'd spent most of his time taking pictures of a tree.

Unavoidably absent, however, was Ray Jarvis, joinery company owner and club president since its foundation in 1956 from what remained of Marske Rovers and a missing four guineas. Now in his 80s, he still goes to work every day but found Marlow a little daunting.

Hodgy had arrived in Marske in 1966 when his parents moved from Sheffield, heard voices from the football ground when sent out to buy some cornflour on his first Boxing Day - "us Yorkshire lads like our white sauce" - and was hooked like a fisherman's quire.

It was the annual match, still played, between football club and cricket club. "We had a very late lunch that Boxing Day," he recalls.

He had been vice-chairman since 1981, chairman since 1992 when the club began an omnipotent run in the Wearside League. They joined the Northern League in 1997, were promoted at the end of the first season, had never previously been beyond the third round of the Vase.

Marlow pressed, Marske resisted. After 40 minutes James of Marske and Lamb of Marlow became engaged in what fashionably is known as handbags. Referee Monk, ascetic throughout, consulted linesman Skinner. Skinner excoriated, lion followed Lamb to lie down early in the bath.

Handbags, as more erudite readers will understand, would have been better off left in Bracknell.

Goalless half-time, goalless 90 minutes, former Middlesbrough YTS lad James Middleton headed Marske's winner from a corner just as the referee was about to blow his last.

Hodgy's elation will long be remembered, several times leaping on the back of fellow committee members in the manner of a man trying to mount the Marlow Donkey.

In the joyous dressing room the sponsors' product was sprayed liberally, in the board room Marlow were magnanimous in defeat and Hodgy was approached for an interview by the man from The Times.

"You mean the Teesside Times?" he said.

Marske United, the team who couldn't even get out of the South Bank League, were just two rounds away from the final, at Villa Park on May 6. The long-haired decorator, bless him, was off to paint the town blue and yellow.

the only two teams to drop straight through the old Football League (Backtrack, February 9) were Bristol City (1979-80-1982-83) and Wolves, a couple of seasons behind them.

Alan Archbold in Sunderland today invites readers to name five Sunderland players whose Christian names have ended with the letter "o".

O be joyful again on Friday.