It was a long time ago – 50-odd years, to be exactish – when I asked my granda about his recollections of derby games, and thankfully his memory was as sharp as ever. That was when the fun really began. Billy Dobson, off you go….

It was a game that either side was given a decent chance of winning by fans of both sides. To be honest, we’d been as likely to win as lose any game that season. We’d been playing canny but not being anything like consistent, and by December we’d lost six of the fifteen we’d played. No draws, mind, and we only had one, 2-2 at Manchester United, in the whole season. We were as likely to win fowwer nowt at Arsenal as we were to lose two nowt at home. That’s just the way we were – win or bust. So I wouldn’t say that this game was a lost cause before it started, or at any time during it, I suppose, but you’d never have guessed what the score would be.

Anyway, it was on me nineteenth birthday a few weeks earlier that we decided we’d go to the game at Newcastle. From Easington Lane, where we lived on Front Street. There were a few of us used to go together. Me, George Lambton who lived a couple of doors away and worked with me and me dad at Elemore Vale pit, and Syd Stephenson from next door who was at the pit as well. Syd was canny to go to the match with, ‘cos his eldest brother Bob had the butcher’s a few doors down, and his dad worked there so that meant he’d sort us some pies for bait – not for nowt, he’d not get away with that, but just keep us a few back, like. Syd was canny to live next door to anaal, ‘cos his sister Lizzie was a nice lass who’d been in my class at school, and ... wey, we’ll leave that in case yer granma’s listening! Their Fred wanted to come as well, but he’d not been working that long and couldn’t spare the money once his mam had his housekeeping. Like John Forrest with the money, he never had any. John hadn’t been married long and their lass was a bit of a one for looking after the money, so he was just for Roker games.

Anyway, me, Syd, and George planned it out – we were on nights, so we wouldn’t have to run around like blue-arsed flies like the lads who were working until twelve on the Saturday, getting bathed and that. We’d finished at eight, ‘cos that’s when the Lambton and Hetton collieries all worked to, been cleaned and home by nine, and got a few hours in bed before it was time to go. Mind, you call it sleep – yer aunty Laura was only eight and a right one for wanting to be in the room even after she’d got up, ‘cos me mam and dad slept in the other one. It was better than it had been, mind, ‘cos when our Jenny was still at home there was no chance of any peace. That didn’t last, neither, but I never trusted that Chris that she married, and there was even less room when she fetched yer uncle Fred home, ‘cos he was a noisy bairn…

The three of us - George and Syd and me – had heard off some of the Houghton lads at work that there was a charabanc going from the Broadway, but it wasn’t like it is now when your car breaks down and your dad can mend it. If the charabanc broke down, nobody had any idea what to do with it. Me dad always joked that even John Frost’s horse-drawn charabanc would break down on its run from the White Lion to Fence Houses station, so we shouldn’t trust one with an engine in it. It barely went faster than we could walk anyway. So got our best boots and topcoats on, and our best hats – work cap, Sunday cap - and were ready to go when dad said he was coming as well. We’d talked about cycling down to Fence Houses and leaving the bikes in the yard at the Fence Houses Hotel by the station, but there was no bike at our house, and Bob Stivvy wouldn’t lend us the butcher’s bike. Even if he had, we’d had to have put me dad in the basket, ‘cos he was only a little feller, and he wouldn’t have put up with that. Anyhow, I wouldn’t have fancied cycling back up from Rainton Bridge in the damp and the dark, in December. It wasn’t snowing or anything, just grey and damp and a wee bit icy, and you can’t ride a bike when your keeping your hands warm in your pockets.

That meant that there were four of us all wrapped up warm – me mam made sure we all had our mufflers nice and neat to keep the cold out – and we picked up the pies from Bob’s shop, something to keep our hands warm on the walk to the station at Fence Houses, and off we went to the match. It was about an hour’s walk, and we kept ourselves warm by deciding who’d score, with a small wager on which of us picked the scorer. The winner would get a gill of beer off each of the others after the game at the Fox and Hounds at Bog Row when we got near home. Me dad reckoned George Holley was a certainty, mainly because George was a Seaham lad, he’d known George’s dad, but also because George could do more magic tricks with a football than David Nixon could with a white rabbit and a top hat. Me dad reckoned that George’s early days working in the shipyard had made him hard as well, so those Newcastle backs could try all the rough stuff they liked. He might not be that big, but he was tough, was George – and he’d scored forty six times for us before that season started. A certainty, according to Thomas Fitzwilliam Dobson. Put your beers on it.

George thought that Billy Hogg was going to be the man to get the goal, as he’d got three at the Arsenal a fortnight before – and he was fast, had scored lots since he’d arrived nine years previously, and he was from Newcastle so would bound to be wanting to show off to his dad.

Syd reckoned that Arthur Bridgett would win him the beers, ‘cos he could, and often did, play anywhere across the front, and was an England International that the home defence couldn’t cope with. As he was also a lay preacher, God was therefore on his side and thus at least one goal was assured. Dad, being a good chapel lad, wasn’t too pleased with what he saw as almost blasphemous talk by Syd, but allowed him the benefit of the doubt as it was a local derby.

Jackie Mordue was the one for me. We’d paid a king’s ransom of £750 to get him from the Arsenal at the end of the previous season, and he’d already scored four times from the wing. I know that wasn’t a lot, but I just had a fancy that he’d be the man for the big occasion, ‘cos he was a Durham lad.

By the time we’d argued that out, we’d eaten the pies, our hands were cold, we were at the station, and there was our Sam. The little beggar was only fifteen, but he’d been saying for weeks that he’d be going to this game and he’d trotted down Dairy Lane from Houghton to meet us. He told us his folks knew where he was, I thought otherwise and wondered what sort of bother he’d be in with aunty Ann when he got home. I knew his dad, uncle Samuel (always Samuel, Sam was for the bairn) would be champion with it, like the good Cornishman that he was, but not his mam. I’d probably get the blame for leading the lad astray, like I usually did just because I was a few years older and should know better, apparently. As Sam was obviously nowhere near old enough for beer, we took him in the snug and huddled around him with a gill of beer apiece, all big coats and flat hats. Syd was all for having a few beers and taking a chance on the trains all being on time, but the rest of us persuaded him that we’d be better off getting to Newcastle first and then seeing how long we’d got before three o’clock, as it was half twelve by then. He did manage to get himself another gill, stopping off at the bar when he’d said he was off out the nettty, but we got him out of the pub around about quarter to one, with the landlord shouting “see you this evening, lads” and onto the train. There were a fair few Houghton lads on the train that we recognised, and a few ribbed our Sam about what his mam would do when he got back. The rest were from round Dubmire and Fence Houses, quite a few marras of me dad, and one or two who asked if Syd had any spare pork chops under his cap.

I don’t know how far it is from Fence Houses to the central station, but it seemed to take forever, with more folks getting on at Pensher, Washington, Usworth – dee knaas where they’d walked from - and Pelaw. It was getting on for two o’clock by the time we got to the central, and Syd, as usual, was clamming for a beer, so we tried that posh place at the station, ‘cos me dad said it was only ten minutes to the ground from there. All fancy tiles and fancy prices, that place, but it kept Syd in good spirits and the rest of us were more than happy to keep him company – and huddle around our Sam again, even letting him have his own gill of ale. He was a big lad for fifteen, and one wouldn’t hurt. We even let him try and pick a scorer, but we’d had all the players he wanted, so he said instead that Roose, in our goal, wouldn’t let any in. Just for a bit fun, like, ‘cos if the rest of us got him a gill apiece he’d be in a pretty state, and he’d be enough trouble without that anyway. The bar at the station was packed with folks off to the match, so we just went with the crowd when it went to the ground. There was nee colours then, not many anyway, just the odd rosette, so you didn’t know who was who. We joined the first queue that we came to, and got inside about five minutes before the match started. The big stand on our left was the only bit with a roof, but it wasn’t raining – I doubt it would have been rain, more likely snow if it had bothered – so we were dry enough, and packed in like sardines. I tell you, there was steam coming off some parts of the crowd as well as baccy smoke.

That goalie we had, what a felller. Leigh Richmond Roose, Welsh lad, would scare his marras half to death, what with belting away from his goal to boot the ball away, and playing keepy-uppy. We’d only signed him after Christmas, and I don’t think he ever turned professional, that one. Mind, he could punch the ball further than Charlie Hurley can kick it. Ended up on the Somme, like me, but I got home and he didn’t. Got medal of some sort anaal. They’d not been playing ten minutes when Hoggy went down the middle at a hundred miles an hour, and their keeper thought he’d try to do what Roose would do, and ran out at him. He wasn’t fast enough, and Billy got his shot away just as the goalie got to him. They went down in a heap, we held our breath, and the ball seemed to take an age to go over the line, but it did. Y’beggar afloat! We were slapping each other on the shoulders, probably because we couldn’t reach each other’s backs, and that’s when we saw who supported who. Apart from George, who was just happy that he’d be getting a gill off each of us apart from Sam – he was going back to Houghton anyway, so he’d not be able to buy George’s beer at the Fox, even if the landlord would let him.

To be honest, we’d all have been happy to pay for George’s beer as long as we won the game with just that goal, but it looked like that was never going to happen, ‘cos we absolutely massacred them. How we didn’t get another, and another, in the first half is something I’ll never understand in all my born days, but that’s why football is such a good game – you can’t properly say what’s going to happen. We just kept going forwards as if there was a law against staying back, and with Mordue, Holley, Bridgett, and Hogg tearing into them, the Newcastle defence only just kept the ball out of the net. Four proper forwards, not like two that you get today. It was nearly half time when young Sam’s pick was lost when the referee gave a penalty for Charlie Thompson using his hand - mind, he was a scary bugger, Charlie – I’m surprised the ref didn’t change his mind once Charlie had given him the stare. You think Hurley is a tough nut? Thompson had a ‘tache that scared most attackers out of the ground, but the referee gave that penalty and Roose couldn’t save it, so it was a draw at half time.

This is when I mean that things don’t always go to plan, and that anything is possible. Nothing in football’s set in stone, nothing’s certain. We’d battered them for most of the first half, but we weren’t winning. They’d hardly been near Roose, but they’d scored, and that meant that we might be getting a draw, or they might even get another one they didn’t deserve and we’d lose. We might probably get another and win. What didn’t seem likely was that we’d score more away from home that we have since. There were no substitutes then, not for another fifty-odd years, so all Bob Kyle could do, I suppose, was to tell the Lads to keep doing the same - keep attacking. And we did. Not long into the second half, Holley got a goal to make me dad smile, and claim that the bet included anybody who’d picked any goal-scorer getting a drink off everybody else. We all agreed to that. I just wanted us to win, and would have been happy if the score hadn’t changed.

Newcastle weren’t really making much of a game of it, ‘cos we wouldn’t let them, but it was still ten minutes before we scored again. This time it was another from Hoggy, that had George grinning and asking if we’d be getting him two drinks each. We were that happy that we agreed - as long as he stood his round as well. Five minutes later, Holley got another, and before me dad could tell everybody in that part of the ground that he’d won some beer, two lots, Holley had got another to make it 5-1 and to be honest, if we’d had the money to back it up, we’d have promised beers for everybody near us – even the miserable-looking buggers who were obviously home supporters.

A couple of minutes after that goal, that’d given Holley his hat-trick, Bridgett scored – we were way past being happy by then, it was just a matter of how many we’d get. It had Syd shouting that he’d won beer as well, and that everybody could have a free pie at their Bob’s in Easington Lane on Monday. We really should have stopped his beer sooner, but he could get a drink when nobody was looking and when the Lads had just gone 6-1 ahead at Newcastle, we didn’t really care. Even me dad was telling our Sam that he’d have a word with his sister-in-law so that Sam didn’t get wrong, but, even with the amount of goals we were scoring, and the amount of beer that those goals promised, I couldn’t see dad standing up to one of the Trevena lasses with much success. Not when me mam ruled the roost like she did, but with us 6-1 up at St James, me dad must’ve felt like he was ten feet tall - I know I did. Bridgett scored again before me dad had finished telling Sam that he’d sort his mam out, and Syd wanted us to promise that we’d be true to our bet. Tell the truth, I thought we’d just bet that whoever scored the goal that won the game would get a gill of beer off the rest of us, but that was before the Fence Houses Hotel and the posh place at the central, and we were winning by a waggon-load at Newcastle, and we didn’t care. When Mordue scored, I hoyed me cap – me Sunday cap, mind - that high that I thought it’d come down with snow on it. Me mam would have given me gyp if I’d come home without me Sunday cap, so It was just as well that Syd caught it and shouted “just like Roose!” I didn’t care that it meant I’d won some beer – I think that all bets were joined together by then – I was just seeing things that I didn’t believe were possible. 1-1 at half time, now 8-1 up? Owt might happen. Eight one. Eight? Even we didn’t score eight, and four minutes after we did score eight, we scored nine. Billy Hogg got it, and if George could have flown out of the ground he would have. Three goals for his man, he was shouting, and we had to remind him that me dad’s man had got three as well, that my man had got one, that Syd’s man had got two, and that our Sam’s man had only been beaten by a penalty and really only open play goals should count- so we’d all won.

There was still nearly a quarter of an hour to go after Hoggy got that ninth, and somehow we didn’t get another. I think that we must have felt sorry for Newcastle, or that we just couldn’t be fashed to work any harder. They’d given up a while ago, so we probably did as well, and the people who’d paid good money were quite happy that they did. Thinking back, ten would have been nice, but us good chapel folks aren’t greedy, as me dad said. We set off for the central with nine goals in our pockets, and with smiles as wide as Houghton Cut, jostling each other and trying to decide who’d be the first to pay up. There were a few angry lads outside the ground who wanted to make something of our happiness, and Syd, bless him, would have been amongst them if we hadn’t told him it was an unfair fight – he was a colliery blacksmith and strong as an ox, while the workie-tickets after a bit bother, we convinced him, were scrawny youths not worthy of his attention. Tell the truth, the last thing I wanted was our Sam catching a shiner and me having to explain it away to his mam– with or without me dad’s help.

Once we got back to the central, we did think of setting away the first part of our bets, but the posh bar was bursting at the seams. When we opened the door, folks fell out, so we decided that we’d get the first train home and settle the bet back there. However long it took to get to Newcastle at dinner time, it seemed to take a lot less on the way back. Happy lads burst off the train every time we stopped, and by the time we got to Fence Houses, there was even a seat each. While there were the bets to start settling, there was also Sam to get home. If he could walk the couple of miles from Houghton, he could walk the couple of miles back, but me and me dad just wanted to make sure he got there in one piece, ‘cos there were a lot of folks in high spirits. The landlord of the Fence Houses Hotel had heard the bets being sorted before the game, and he wanted to make sure he was the one to settle at least some of them. So we huddled around Sam, I paid my turn ‘cos my man had only scored the one, and the landlord asked why I wasn’t getting Sam Floyd from Houghton a beer.

Sam Floyd form Houghton, aged fifteen years and five months, got his second beer of the day, and very happy he was about it. Mind, the rest of us were just as happy, what with winning 9-1. Nine? And up there? You might be happy about winning three nowt there a couple of years back, but nine one? I was willing to defend our Sam to Aunty Ann by the time we left the pub, and because we’d settled a couple of bets, and because the omnibus was outside, we decided to use that to get to Houghton, get Sam home, and settle some more of the bets in the White Lion. Which is what we did. Once off the omnibus, dad walked Sam round to the Green and home, and was back at the White Lion in time to claim his prize beer, Whatever he said to his sister-in-law was never revealed, not by him, her, uncle Samuel, or our Sam – mind, Sam probably couldn’t remember getting home anyway.

We decided that it was probably best to head for home, but on the other side of St Michael’s church was the Blue Lion, and we still had bets to settle. It also had a billiard table, and Syd decided that he’d try to do double or quits on his round by putting the white ball in his mouth. Lots of things have come out of Syd’s mouth, but the white ball wasn’t one of them. It went in easily enough, but once it got behind his teeth it wouldn’t come out. There was even the threat of the polis getting involved, but me dad was a marra of the landlord, and the landlord was a marra of the sergeant, so that when the polis did arrive he knew what to expect. To this day, I don’t know how he did it, but the white ball came out. Syd had to sit down, and very still, for quite a while, and be plied with the beer he’d won with his daft bet, but he recovered and we decided that home was the best place to be. With Syd trying his best to describe the game at nineteen to the dozen, and with that strange turn in his voice that the white ball had caused, we managed the three and a bit miles in an hour and a half. The Fox and Hounds wasn’t on the way back from Houghton, but the Travellers Rest was, and was as close to home as we could get.

Syd, meself, me dad, and George settled our bets, then settled some more. We told anybody who’d listen, and a few who didn’t want to, that we’d seen a football match that had proved that anything was possible – mebbe not always in life like in football, but if you don’t believe it can happen, it won’t. Mind, none of us believed that we’d win nine one that day, but it just shows that owt’s possible. I didn’t get wrong off aunty Ann, George didn’t get wrong off their lass, and me and me dad didn’t get wrong off me mam. Our Laura didn’t keep either of us awake, and Syd slept the sleep of the righteous in the doorway of Stivvy’s butchers. A few months later, Sunderland beat Newcastle 3-1 in the home game – two from Arthur Brown and one from George Holley after we’d been behind at half time, again showing that owt’s possible – and finished third while they were champions. The only thing in football that’s certain is that nowt’s certain. Three nil down with a whole game to play? We should have gone to the match.

I never did get to a match with granda.