Road to Wembley continues

The hope, like the song, was of faraway places with strange sounding names, or at least of Gresley Rovers, Hall Road Rangers and Congleton, the town of the dancing bear.

Saturday’s plan, snowed off two days in advance, was to watch Stotfold – they of the surviving Roker Park – against Shildon, FA Vase fourth round. It would have been Shildon’s 17th successive away tie; should they yet qualify, they travel again. The odds such a sequence are now 264,000-1.

Plan B was Pickering Town v Marske United, postponed on Friday, Plan C was Norton and Stockton Ancients v Bootle, waterlogged early on Saturday. They fell like green bottles on a wall, Whitley Bay the only one of the skilltraining Northern League’s survivors in action in the last 32.

The 11.04 left Darlington for Newcastle, almost inevitably joined by a hen party. They called it a choochoo train. Something chicken and egg about that.

Whitley Bay railway station, now used by the Tyne and Wear Metro, is among the town’s few unfading glories, though it had a narrow escape in 1916 when German bombs fell and early reports spoke of hundreds of casualties.

The Seaside Chronicle, bless it, had the story more accurately. Only one death, and that was a canary in a cage.

A poster on the concourse recalls summer weekends when 55,000 trippers might visit the seaside – 100,000 on bank holidays – and also the curious tale of how the town came by its name.

It was 1901, the town simply Whitley until the sudden death in Edinburgh of William Oliver, secretary of the North Tyneside-based Rockcliff Rugby Club. His coffin was put on a train, hundreds gathered for his funeral at St Peter’s church.

It was only then a message arrived from the goldbraided station master at Whitby, reporting that he had a misdirected corpse on his hands. The coffin put onto a return train, the funeral was held by lamplight at 8.45am, locals determined to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again.

A competition was held, Seaside Chronicle again, to come up with a new name.

Two years later it became Whitley Bay.

Beneath lachrymose skies, I head off towards the promenade. In the trade, these things are known as colour pieces. Whitley Bay is uniformly grey.

THERE are guest houses called Shangri-la – shangri-la means earthly paradise – Sea Brae and Avalon. The Shimmer Room, among a veritable top-up of tanning parlours, offers a month for £22. It doesn’t say if this is continuous.

Banana Joe’s advertises “fully nude” strippers. They doesn’t look ready for takeoff, either.

The beach is wholly deserted, not so much as ragged rascal round rugged rocks, the paper shop sells Easter eggs and woolly hats on special offer. The Spanish City fairground is long gone, its iconic dome lugubriously scaffolded.

Though it’s clearly a big day – in the town centre there’s a personal appearance by Peppa Pig – the football club, Vase winners in 2009, may presently be the town’s best advert.

Had the tourism department a slogan, it could be “Better days at Whitley Bay”, and a newspaper competition to interpret what it meant.

In the foyer of Fitzgerald’s, a pub near the station, there’s a mural quoting Samuel Johnson’s familiar aphorism about the English pub being the best thing sliced bread (though Johnson, of course, may not quite have put it in those terms.) In the eating area, an elderly chap chucks on for about 20 minutes about how disappointed he is with the chicken. It has bones in, he tells the waitress. Bird finally filleted, he engages his wife in a five-minute conversation over whether or not he should visit the gent’s.

She finally counsels against.

It may not quite be what Samuel Johnson had in mind.

Whitley Bay play at Hillheads, next to the ice rink, outside which a length queue has formed. It recalls the old joke about the Geordie who asks his mate to name a card game.

Ice hockey, says his mate.

“Ice hockey’s not a card game,” says his mate.

“Why aye it is,” answers the other, “it’s the cardest game aa knaa.”

WHITLEY Bay, known as the Seahorses, are playing Poole Town, nicknamed the Dolphins and champions of the Wessex League.

Though it is by no means a case of big fish and little Poole, the holders are again favourites for this season’s competition.

Renowned hosts, they’ve done what all good North- East folk do when expecting company. They’ve baked.

For many frustrated spectators, however, it’s the first match since December 12. Though it’s nearly Lent, they’re going round asking one another if they’ve had a good Christmas.

Chris Reid hasn’t. A youthful member of the first team squad, he’s out of contention after spraining his ankle while sledging. “Bairns,”

says club secretary Derek Breakwell, despairingly.

Poole’s in Dorset, what’s known as the English Riviera, a haven for yachtsmen, multiple millionaires and the British headquarters of the Bank of New York. It’s also a lot warmer than Whitley Bay.

We were there two years ago, a 1-1 draw with Consett – “Consett unable to spring an offside trap so effective it might have been set by Rentokil’s employee of the year.”

This time the visiting commercial manager asks Sid Cope, Whitley Bay’s venerable president, if he can talk to him about making arrangements for Wembley.

“See me after the match,”

says Sid, sagely.

Ian Chandler, Bay’s manager, has said in the local paper – the News Guardian these days, Seaside Chronicle RIP – that the pitch might be “a little bit wet”. It’s in remarkably good shape, nonetheless, no swimming with the Dolphins, though the metaphor’s maintained when Poole’s Stuart Brown is booked for diving.

Many not only believe that he’s been caught by young home goalkeeper Tom Kindley, who sounds like a character from Thomas the Tank Engine, but insist that they heard the contact.

It’s remarkably reminiscent of the hubristic hoo-hah the previous day involving Mr Graham Smith and the English cricket team. There being no third umpire, the fourth official 60 yards away, referee Smith shows benevolence to Mr Kindley.

Whitley take the lead after 24 minutes, Lee Kerr’s penalty – hapless hands ball – calmly despatched. A lone spectator behind the goal breaks into “Walking in a Whitley Wonderland” but is reminded, thaw point, that the snow’s vanished at last.

It’s an excellent, end-toend game, defender Damon Robson putting the holders two up as the hour approaches. Poole’s 73rd minute penalty narrows it, nerves more taut yet when Callum Anderson’s sent off for an injudicious over-theball challenge.

Accustomed to having ten men in crucial Vase games, the home side keeps cool as the temperature drops, Paul Chow rounding the keeper deftly to slot home the clincher.

Sid Cope’s wholly dignified. No one’s asked him about Wembley arrangements, though.

Our boys are away in the next round to Chertsey or Plymouth Parkway. All the sNL clubs, should they qualify, are away. It’s a hard road, an iron road, to Wembley.

Cut short

A LONG story and an equally long column, Saturday’s piece on Professor Gavin Kitching’s football talk in Newcastle appeared at only a third of the intended length.

Something to do with a power cut.

It was one of those occasions where you wanted to contact every reader to explain and to apologise: failing that, the column in full can be found at northernecho.co.uk//sport/columnists/backtrack/

... and finally

THE South African batsman who was out first ball in a 1992 test match (Backtrack, January 16) was Jimmy Cook.

Until Andrew Strauss went that way last week, the last Englishman to depart first ball was the pre-war Derbyshire all-rounder Stan Worthington who in 1949 had a late-career season with Northumberland.

Noting Peterborough’s fight back from 4-0 down at half-time to draw 4-4 with Cardiff over the festive period, Paul Hewitson in Darlington invites readers to recall the last English league game in which a team came back to draw after trailing 4-0 at half-time.

No half-measures, the column returns on Saturday.