It was during the seething industrial unrest of the 1959 strike by the Saggar Makers Bottom Knockers (and affiliated trades) that the Dun Cow played the Bottom Knockers in a charity football match at Floodplain Fields.
The Dun Cow eleven were short of eight men. PC Jack Townsend, the insecure policeman, recruited seven of the local constabulary, and hypothetical vegetarian and neo-Wordsworthian poet Herbert Mangle persuaded former rounders champion and current off-licence proprietor, Mrs Proudfoot, to make up the numbers, after first helping her to suitably prepare.
"Ah didn't know you had to wear chest protectors in football.” She said.
"Trust me...” said Herbert Mangle, "...I've played this game many times before.”
The last of the founding trio was formidable centre half Hu Wang Tardelli. The product of an Italian father and a Chinese mother, he would launch into a tackle like a gladiator, and then walk away, looking perfectly inscrutable.
As the rain continued to deluge and the bursting river began to invade the pitch, Inspector Birkett (master of disguises) splashed off for the Dun Cow side, masquerading as Sir Tom Finney.
In the crowd, Granny Smith went off to the refreshment tent to get some pies, and a bottle of stout for Uncle Hal's bad memory. Falling under the ever-projecting charm of Dun Cow stalwart and amateur dramatics leading player, Peregrine Walthamstow, she returned with cucumber sandwiches instead of pies, as he had said they suited her complexion better.
"Why did you want this bottle of stout?” she asked Uncle Hal.
"I forget” he said.
The Dun Cow were a goal down by half-time, but had the advantage in the second half of playing with the tide, and soon Inspector Birkett, transformed now as Nat Lofthouse, managed to deftly skim the ball three times over the water to pull a goal back. However the Dun Cow were soon depleted as Herbert Mangle took Mrs Proudfoot away to 'help her into some dry clothes' and the thin blue back line collapsed, conceding four more times. So it was that the Dun Cow finished with nine men, one goal and three trout.
The victorious Bottom Knockers charitably bought all drinks at the Dun Cow afterwards, Inspector Birkett metamorphosed into a passable Frank Sinatra and Hu Wang Tardelli provided a warming meal of sweet and sour spaghetti.
Herbert Mangle later immortalised the day in his poem in The Wallsend Weekly Buffoon.
Oh happy was that time, on sodden field of play
We played with bottom knockers to win the day
And swam with the fishes, and ate with the bobbies
And sweet kind ladies did help us with our hobbies.
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