| It can’t have been a coincidence (it was) that the announcement of a resurrected North v South football match came so swiftly after Newcastle beat a team wearing red 2-1 in a Wembley cup final. That happens also to be exactly what transpired when they faced Arsenal in the 1932 FA Cup showpiece, a game that became known as the North v South Final and aroused such interest that even George V turned up. Indeed, the first fans from Tyneside arrived more than two days before kick-off, reaching Wembley just after midnight whereupon, according to the Guardian, they “made themselves comfortable for the night under a hedge in the Harrow Road”. The English used to love a good regional battle. Over the years the Guardian and Observer have reported on North v South contests in lacrosse, hockey, water polo, rugby union (“international matches apart, there is no game that arouses so much interest in the football world”, we wrote in 1896), golf, draughts (held at least twice, in 1901 and 1911), bridge (held annually through the 1930s until war got in the way) and chess (in 1905, played by post rather than in person). Cricket was an early and enthusiastic adopter, playing the fixture as early as 1817 and keeping it running until 1961, with a couple of half-hearted attempted resurrections since then. And now it’s back! Er, in a manner of speaking! With some semi-retired footballers! On 1 June “some of the finest talent to have pulled on the shirts of the biggest clubs on both sides of the North-South divide” (names tbc, subs pls check definition of “finest”) will play at The Valley, home of Charlton, with the South’s side overseen by noted manager Harry Redknapp, and the North’s by Robbie Fowler. “This has been an idea in the making for a number of years,” Fowler said. “It’s a great concept that I hope everyone gets behind.” The official announcement declared the game was “guaranteed to be a highly entertaining and intriguing contest” and this may be true, though there might not be anything quite as entertaining or intriguing as the organisers’ definition of someone from the north, or indeed the south, of England. Fowler hinted that something had gone awry when he said of his team selection that he’d “already gone overseas and looked at a few players”. Er, overseas? Reuters further reported that players “will either have roots in the north or south of England or come from further afield but [be] adopted icons”. Hmm. Thinking face emoji. Entertainingly and intriguingly it seems the idea might have sprouted from the mind of Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly. “Ultimately I hope the Premier League takes a little bit of a lesson from American sports and really starts to figure out, why don’t we do a tournament with the bottom four sports teams, why isn’t there an All-Star game?” the American said in 2022. “So we’re thinking we could do a North v South All-Star game for the Premier League, for whatever the pyramid needed quite easily.” So here we are. And hey, it might not be so bad. On the plus side, at least nobody has so far taken up Boehly’s proposal for a “tournament with the bottom sports teams”, though if Bigger Cup keeps expanding it’ll get there in the end. | 