Escape from the Wembley hype

Bathgate Thistle played Hill of Beath, a village famed as the birthplace of Jinky Jimmy Baxter. The answer to the question "Why on earth go there?" was that it wasn't Chelsea v Man United. That and the pies.

These end-of-season wayzgooses, these great escapes, have inaccurately been likened to the celebrated Likely Lads episode in which the Geordie duo go to great lengths to avoid learning the big match score.

The difference is that Bob and Terry wanted to watch the game on television later. The Escape Committee wouldn't lose sleep if the first intimation of the 2007 Cup winner were in next season's Rothman's, bought for ten shillings several years later at an Oxfam shop. We are a hypeless case.

Mr Peter Sixsmith, the committee convenor, had discovered that Bathgate's greatest claim to fame is that it's mentioned in the chorus of Letter From America, a 1980s hit for the Proclaimers.

"Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Methil no more. Lochaber no more...." For some reason, Cambuslang doesn't get a mention.

Sixer, who wore his Victor Meldrew cap but his most avuncular expression, was also able to reveal that the Proclaimers were brothers from Auchtermuchty, that they were Hibs fans and that Auchtermuchty had been home to Jimmy Shand, if not his band, a statue erected in his musical memory.

Bathgate was the birthplace of Ryder Cup captains Eric Brown and Bernard Gallacher, of James Young - known as Paraffin James, the man who in the mid-nineteenth century discovered how to extract oil from shale - and of Macnab's Celebrated Glenmavis Dew, known as falling down water.

In 1987 the world's oldest reptile fossil was found in a Bathgate quarry, the creature labelled Westlothianae Lizzaie but happy to answer to Lizzie, for short.

Latterly, however, Paraffin James has given way to Silicon Glen, and with pretty unhappy results. Times are a bit hard in West Lothian.

A couple of beers in Edinburgh, then onward by train to Bathgate, where others of similarly escapist philosophy were foregathering in the James Young, a Wetherspoon's pub. Shale fellow, well met.

Ever the rover, however, Mr Brian Hogg from Shildon was headed to Blackburn, a couple of miles up the road while Mr John Dawson from Hartlepool was travelling on to Whitburn, a few miles in the opposite direction.

John, the world champion ground hopper, has had a bit recurrence of his heart problem but was finishing his meal with treacle roly-poly and custard with extra ice cream.

"The fruit salad was off," he protested.

Macnab's Celebrated Glenmavis Dew being also unavailable, we had another couple of pints instead.

The first Scotch pies, quite wonderful, were from a butcher called Hugh Black who sold Scottish strawberries, too. The second were at Creamery Park, Thistle's functional, somewhat waterlogged but entirely adequate home.

The assistant referees were man and wife, Mr and Mrs Peace, kept apart by the referee. Like all Scottish match officials, they were sponsored by Specsavers.

At Bathgate, admission was £4, at Wembley £60 minimum. At Bathgate a pie was a quid, at Wembley £4.50 ("with herb and tomato crust") At Wembley the programme was £10, at Bathgate there wasnae one but Wee Jimmy, they said, would be happy to tell us the teams.

It was while essaying his third pie that Mr Martin Haworth was attacked by a pie-loving greyhound, happily muzzled.

Thus warned of the dangers of over-indulgence, Sixer forewent a third of the afternoon and devoured a burger instead.

There, too, was Mr Ken Shaw from Sunderland, who usually on these little expeditions carries the sort of backpack with which Tensing ascended Everest and might still have had room for the kitchen table. This time he travelled lighter - "It's my touring bag," he said - and had the previous weekend been to the FA Vase final at the new Wembley.

"Row 30 and I still got wet," he grumbled.

A splendid game ended 3-3, Hill of Beath fighting back despite the dismissal of Mr Conrad Courts for two virtually simultaneous bookable offences - the second card representing his unequivocal (and unprintable) reaction to the first.

There was also a bit of a stooshie, as the Scots have it, at the final whistle. War and Peaces, the assistant refs did their best at diplomatic intervention.

Time for a few more in Edinburgh, during which interlude we heard - as reluctant as a midnight knock - what had been going on at Wembley. They said the final had been awful.

With some self-satisfaction we found some more pies and headed homewards. Bathgate no more.

BACKTRACK BRIEFS,,,

Forty-six years and goodness knows how many minutes after he became secretary of Tow Law Town FC, Bernard Fairbairn wrote the last chapter on Thursday night. He has stood down.

His father had been secretary before him, his grandfather - the Co-op tailor - before that. It wasn't just the end of an era, but of a football dynasty - and all that time, he'd lived 25 oft-snowy miles away in Darlington and was manager of Eldon Brickworks.

He'd also brought a 1958 team picture - the likes of W C Hall, of Ronnie Routledge and of Harry Thompson, who went on to Blackpool - on which the young Fairbairn, fresh faced and clean shaven, was identified as "assistant trainer."

It was surprise to Bernard, too. "I must have been around even longer than I'd thought," he said.

The playing highlights, probably, were the 1967-68 FA Cup thrashing of Mansfield Town, the 1994-95 Northern League championship and in 1998, reaching the FA Vase final at Wembley.

Tiverton, to whom the Lawyers lost in the Vase final, had sent a nice letter. Mansfield hadn't replied. "You'd think they'd been stuffed or something," said Charlie Donaghy, the organiser.

George Brown, from the Mansfield team, recalled how the young Bernard and former chairman Harry Hodgson had signed him in a betting shop in Bishop Auckland. "I only agreed," he said, "because they didn't interrupt the 2.30 at Newbury."

Stewart Leeming, manager of the championship side and himself 17 years on Lawyers' hill top, spoke of the most genuine man he'd met in football, and one of the most generous, too.

Stewart Dawson, goalkeeper in the Wembley side, remembered his first training session on windy ridge. "It was January, about minus ten, and this voice behind me says 'How you're doing, mate?' I turned around and there's a lad in a vest."

Stewart, now famously one of twins, also told a story about Keith Moorhead running round rollock naked. There are quite a lot of stories of Mr Moorhead in a state of undress; it's becoming quite worrying.

Harry Hodgson, club chairman for 40 years, recalled that he'd joined the same night as Bernard.

When building work needed doing, he said. the bricks came from Eldon. When the pitch was snow-covered, Eldon would dig deep again.

It was a night of presentations, warm words on a May evening. Cut glass from the FA and from Durham FA, clock and barometer from the club, vice-presidency from the league. "Bernard was just uniquely committed," said Harry Hodgson. "We'll not see his like again."

FA Amateur Cup finalists in 1927-28, our old friends at Cockfield have had a smack of former glories by lifting the Durham Minor Cup. The following week, they told the Crook and District League that they were folding. League chairman John Priestley was up at Tow Law. "It's like so many smaller clubs nowadays," he said, "you just can't get anyone to do the work."

The following evening to Trimdon Juniors' annual do, the best sportsmen's dinner ever, and coincidentally sitting just one seat from Darlington assistant manager Martin Gray.

Martin played in Sky TV's first ever pay-to-view match, Oxford v Sunderland, featured hereabouts last week. It ended 0-0. "As bad as it sounded," he recalled. "I wouldn't like to think I'd paid to watch it."

Steve Kindon, the guest speaker, was talking afterwards about Sam Allardyce - "a really scientific manager, going to do well at Newcastle." It's as a result that we've bet him a tenner that Sunderland finish above the Magpies next season.

"Put it in the paper so that everyone knows," said Steve. Come next May, he'll know, too.

Cricket news, and the Demon Donkey Dropper's at it again. Playing for Eryholme against Middleton Tyas in the Darlington and District league on Saturday, Charlie Walker wrapped up the innings with 4-8. The Demon's reckoned to be 67.

Morecambe's promotion to the Football League at the weekend was a particularly proud moment for former Richmond Cricket Club captain Andy Mollitt, now teaching in Sri Lanka.

Andy's a Morecambe lad, hoped to return for the play-off final at Wembley but was grounded by the absence of cheap flights.

Moments after the final whistle, however, he was talking to his dad - "a strangely emotional chat" - about the time they were among just seven Morecambe supporters who travelled to Ferryhill Athletic for an FA Trophy tie in 1989.

Athletic won 2-0 - "often cited as Morecambe's lowest point," says Andy. Morecambe are now in the Football League; Ferryhill, long homeless, are in the Durham Alliance.

AND FINNALLY...

Friday's column wondered what was so special about Albert Trott's bowling feat - 100 years ago today - for Middlesex v Somerset at Lord's.

It was the match in which Trott took four wickets in four balls and then followed with an unprecedented hat-trick in the same innings - a bit of a pity, as Alf Hutchinson points out, because it was his benefit match and he deprived himself of an extra day's gate money.

The blessed Hails of Hartlepool, who knew most of that, casts his mind back to "Laker's test" in 1956. The Surrey spinner bagged 19 wickets - which Aussie batsman, asks Ron, didn't he claim?

We spin around again on Friday.