
Firstly, a bit of overmatter from last night’s 70-year presentation to retiring ref Terry Farley, and a chance to use my second-favourite football picture.
Sunderland lad George Tyson, coming up 83 on Sunday and like Terry Farley a former top-link Football League man, is unlikely to share the enthusiasm.
George was at Thursday’s do, smartest man in the room, still playing golf four times a week. “Ah” he said, “that Everton match….”
It was 1985, the days when shorts were short and accidents would happen. He’d been caught amidships, as they might say, and from about two yards.
Tyson fury? Well clearly, he wasn’t very happy about it, though the feeling seems not to have been shared by the linesman. He doesn’t seem very sympathetic, does he?
*Favourite football pic? That has to be Zak Waters’s shot in Prairie stories of the chap peering over the netty wall at Stanley United, the match officials’ less-than-palatial accommodation behind him.
John Morton, a 50-year recipient at Thursday’s event, remembered the ref’s room well. “They told me they’d got a new bath. I looked in it and there was a slug the size of a dinosaur. The Stanley chap just picked it up and threw it out.”
Particularly, and by no means alone, John remembered the post-match grub at the Little House on the Prairie. “The mince and dumplings were the best ever”, he says – and that I’ve just typed “mice and dumplings” must be supposed irrelevant.
One or two (!) copies of the new book on Stanley Hill Top still remain. Details mikeamos81@aol.com
*Yesterday’s blog also recalled a Durham Challenge Cup match between Ryton and Crawcrook Albion and Easington Colliery, November 2006, in which appropriately named Ryton goalkeeper Jonny Hands had parried a penalty only to see the Tyne Valley mistral catch it and blow it back into the net.
Goal? “Yes” said the match ref, a view which “astonished” Ryton manager Warren Teesdale but with which Terry Farley – consulted for journalistic reasons – had agreed. The ball hadn’t been touched by an outfield player, the wind was “almost incidental.”
“No goal” said Referees’ Association president Peter Willis. The goalie had completed the savem forces of nature didn’t count.
George Courtney had the casting vote back then, agreed that the goal should stand. “Besides” he added, “it never does to disagree with Terry Farley.”
*Then there was the local league match on Spennymoor daisy field, also recalled in my little homily on Thursday evening, at which two referees had turned up.
The solution – that they control half the pitch each – had produced a rare expletive from Terry Farley (“bloody lunacy”) and brought the gentlemen concerned a two-week ban from Durham FA.
Though it must have been about 1990, someone at the refs’ gathering recalled it, too. “”It was Gordon McMillan and Jimmy Hanley. Jimmy booked five and sent one off in his half, Gordon never got his book out.”
*We’ve had a day in London, 6 30am train out of Darlington and still plenty of evidence of Sunderland supporters hoping to make the most of the weekend.
There’s also a woman with a black dog – some mistake, surely? – the woman in a denim skirt and dog wearing a sort of red-and-white striped shirt with the Sunderland crest. Perhaps they don’t allow cats on trains.
By the time that we catch the 18 18 homeward, the city’s overflowing with boisterous Sunderland fans, no bother but at least one Euston Road pub said to have turned them away for being too noisy. Oh gosh, it’s to be hoped it all ends well.