Bill Bridge: Unforgettable entertainment sees Leeds secure little piece of history

The intention was to watch Manchester United and Leeds United play out an FA Cup third round match which would revive memories of those epics all our yesterdays ago when Billy Bremner and John Giles, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law and all the others of that great generation would enthral us with their skill and passion on mud heaps of pitches which could not be imagined by today's players.

In the end it was edge-of-seat, eye-popping, unforgettable entertainment as Leeds hung on to Jermaine Beckford's early goal to make a little piece of Cup history and ensure that more than a few workplaces with LS postcodes will be short of staff this morning.

It took a phone call from another with no affiliation to either club to confirm that Leeds had indeed been unfortunate not to have been further ahead, Beckford sliding a late shot just wide and Robert Snodgrass hitting the woodwork with a sublime free-kick.

Of course the red United had their chances but none was as clear-cut as those for Leeds – or two others much earlier in the game which might have brought deserved goals for a team which simply refused to alter their style of play out of deference to their opponents.

Every Leeds tackle, pass and lashed clearance was cheered in a manner quite foreign to a room used to Premier League and Champions League encounters being played out in silence, sometimes to a chorus of snores.

New partnerships will pass into Leeds legend: Richard Naylor and Patrick Kisnorbo; Neil Kilkenny and Michael Doyle; Jason Crowe and Andy Hughes will now rest among the likes of Norman Hunter and Jack Charlton; Bremner and Giles; Paul Reaney and Terry Cooper.

For Simon Grayson, the man Leeds plucked from Blackpool with the intent of putting the club back at the levels enjoyed under Don Revie, Howard Wilkinson and, rather less auspiciously, David O'Leary, the satisfaction must have been complete, at least until he starts thinking about the next match – against Wycombe Wanderers in the slightly less glamorous environs of League One.

When the euphoria has eased and Old Trafford, January 3, 2010 has become another battle honour on the standards of those who follow Leeds United it will be beating the Wycombes of this world which will matter most; those are the games which will give Leeds their passport to the Championship and eventually the Premier League.

But for football followers to dream is to live and yesterday's marvel in Manchester will provide the material of dreams for years to come.

Yet the result did not quite startle everyone. There was one young man in our village, as keen as football supporter as any in the land, who had the foresight to gamble a few bob at generous odds on forecasting the outcome of yesterday's game: he named Beckford to score the first goal and Leeds to win. Heady stuff.

AS diplomatic manoeuvres go it was about as tactful as the day Nikita Khrushev removed a shoe and used it to hammer the lectern at the United Nations in the dark days of the Cold War but that was probably the intent.

Just a quiet word from "sources in Whitehall" was all that was required to put the fate of October's Commonwealth Games in Delhi under dark cloud. Sir Humphrey – or one of his chums – let it be known that fears over safety, underscored by the findings of Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, on a recent visit to the sub-continent, could yet persuade the English Commonwealth Games organising body not to send a team to India.

The atrocities in Mumbai in 2008 followed by last year's attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team and the withdrawal of England from the World Badminton Championships in Hyderabad in August had already given organisers of the Commonwealth Games good reason to wonder whether their event would take place.

Sir Paul and the anonymous mandarin have deepened those doubts.

Originally the Empire Games, this four-yearly festival of all that is good about being associated with the Motherland was first held at Hamilton, Ontario, in 1930 and has been cancelled only twice, in 1942 and 1946.

There have been concerns for some time about the main stadium to be used for the Games – problems with unions and lack of finance have caused the building work to be behind schedule – but the words from Whitehall will have put new urgency into the organising committee's deliberations.

Fears that terrorists will target the British – and teams from other countries with soldiers in Afghanistan – were swiftly played down by officials from the English Commonwealth Games organising body who insist that no decision will be taken on participation until September next year.

A Commonwealth Games without England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – not to mention Australia and Canada – would leave the organisers distraught, their lucrative TV contracts worthless, and could signal the end of an institution we have grown up with.

The 2014 Games are scheduled for Glasgow but any British-led withdrawal from Delhi this year would open the possibility of reciprocal action from the Asian and African nations four years later.

We could be witnessing the beginnings of the end of the Commonwealth Games.

and another thing...

RARELY are honours for sportsmen and women so universally acclaimed as the knighthood which was bestowed upon Ian McGeechan – there could not be a better role model for any game.

The outpourings of praise and congratulation put a coating of saccharin round the philosophy which has driven McGeechan, once a PE student at Carnegie College, to the heights of the international game.

At fly-half or centre McGeechan had all the skills but one thing above all he never failed to do was tackle ferociously. It was his enthusiasm for the physical side of rugby which propelled him to Lions glory in 1974 when, in tandem with Dick Milliken, he formed a centre partnership which the South Africans could not break on an unbeaten tour.

McGeechan also never sent a team into action without instilling into them the need to face up to their opponents in every area of physical confrontation.

McGeechan will undoubtedly be a gallant knight, but when it comes to rugby he will remain a man with a core of steel.

Wales expects as Ryder Cup fever builds ahead of Celtic Manor debut

WITH the turn of the year, those who treasure golf and its traditions will be slipping ever so gently into Ryder Cup mode with the next encounter in the series due to be played at Celtic Manor, near Newport, in September.

It will be the first time Wales will have hosted the event, a fact which puts into perspective Yorkshire's good fortune in having welcomed the Ryder Cup on three occasions, with the added bonus that the home side won two of them, at Moortown in 1929 and Lindrick in 1957.

The losing venue – if ever such a magnificent test of golf could be so described – was Ganton in 1949 but all three courses produced their share of moments which have become part of the game's folklore.

These days the Ryder Cup is one of the major events on the calendar, a weekend of tension and tantrums, superb golf, massive media coverage and fascinating psychological battles between the respective camps.

That is a mark of how the Ryder Cup has grown since the day in 1926 when Samuel Ryder, a successful seed merchant from St Albans who had become besotted by the game, suggested in the clubhouse at Wentworth, where teams of professionals representing Britain and the United States were playing an unofficial team match, "we must do this again".

He was overheard by George Duncan, an Open champion and a man keen to maximise opportunities for himself and his fellow professionals, who persuaded Ryder to present a trophy and played a key role in the staging of the first Ryder Cup, in Massachusetts a year later.

The United States were comfortable victors in the first encounter, Britain winning just two and halving one of the 12 matches but the fixture was established.

The arrival of the Ryder Cup in Leeds two years later owed much to one Kolin Robertson, a prominent member at Moortown who reported to the club's committee in 1928 that he had arranged for the following year's match to be played at the club.

The match was played over two days in late April with steady rain falling on the Friday afternoon and Saturday staying dry but with a cold breeze. "The course," said the correspondent of Golf Illustrated, "was in perfect condition and the greens beautiful."

Britain trailed after the opening day's foursomes, winning just one of the four matches, but rallied superbly the following day to complete a 7-5 victory with the highlight being victory by 10 and 8 for Duncan, the team captain, over his opposite number, the great Walter Hagen, who was later to be elected an honorary member of Moortown.

The Ryder Cup is still a feature of the club's fixture list – a competition is played by the ladies every year with the winner claiming a trophy presented by Samuel Ryder in appreciation of the help provided by the ladies of the club in 1929.

The opening exchanges of the match at Ganton, 20 years after Moortown, set the scene for a tense encounter. When the United States team arrived at Southampton aboard the liner Queen Elizabeth, customs officers discovered a huge package of prime beef in the luggage of Bob Hudson, one of the American officials and a grocery tycoon. He had no import licence and with rationing still in place in Britain there were lengthy talks in high places before the meat was eventually allowed to be transported to the team's hotel in Scarborough.

Then, the day before the action commenced, Ben Hogan, the American captain, complained the irons of several of the home team had illegal groves on their faces and, after scrutiny from officials of the Royal and Ancient, his complaint was upheld. Ganton's professional Jock Ballantine was given the task of filing the clubs overnight to make them legal for the opening day's play.

The match was played on Friday and Saturday September 16-17 with day tickets costing 10 shillings (50p) and weekly passes, to include practice from Monday to Thursday, at 30 shillings (1.50).

At the end of Friday's 36-hole foursomes the home side surprised even themselves by opening a 3-1 lead thanks to victories for Ken Bousfield and Fred Daly, Sam King and Charlie Ward and Dick Burton and Arthur Lees but hopes of another victory on Yorkshire soil were quashed the following day when the Americans were in devastating form, only Jimmy Adams and Dai Rees of the home side winning their 36-hole singles matches and the trophy returned across the Atlantic.

By the time the next of Yorkshire's Ryder Cup triple crown arrived at Lindrick, Britain was desperate for success and the feeling among the golfing public was enhanced by growing interest among those for whom golf had for so long been regarded as an upper-class pastime; television being among the chief drivers of the rise in popularity.

Cameras were dotted round the course for the 1957 match, played on Friday and Saturday October 4-5 but they relayed a sorry story after the first day's foursomes, the United States having opened a 3-1 lead with only the pairing of Dai Rees and Ken Bousfield managing a win for the home team.

How things changed for the singles, perhaps due in part to instructions from Rees to head greenkeeper George Herrington to shave the greens on the Saturday morning.

The ploy proved significant as Britain won six and halved one of the eight singles, Rees recording a 7 and 6 win over former US Open champion Ed Furgol and Eric Brown overcoming Tommy "Thunder" Bolt 4 and 3 in a match between two of the most combustible characters in the game.

The huge gallery was close to hysterics as Rees was presented with the trophy, his place in the annals of golf secured, but that was to be the last defeat for the United States until the Belfry in 1985 when, with the best golfers from the continent strengthening their line-up, Europe triumphed and the Ryder Cup was catapulted to riches and status far beyond the dreams of Sam Ryder, George Duncan and his pioneers.

The Ryder Cup in Yorkshire

Moortown 1929

Great Britain: Percy Alliss; A Boomer; S Burns; A Compston; G Duncan (captain); H Cotton; A Mitchell; F Robson; C Whitcombe; E Whitcombe.

United States: L Diegel; E Dudley; A Espinosa; J Farrell; J Golden; W Hagen (captain); G Sarazen; H Smith; J Turnesa; A Watrolis.

Great Britain 7

United States 5

Ganton 1949

Great Britain: J Adams; K Bousfield; D Burton; F Daly; M Faulkner; S King; A Lees; D Rees; C Ward; C Whitcombe (non-playing captain).

United States: S Alexander; J Demaret; C Haefner; B Hamilton; M Harbert; E Harrison; L Mangrum; J Palmer; S Snead; B Hogan (non-playing captain).

Great Britain 5

United States 7

Lindrick 1957

Great Britain: Peter Alliss; K Bousfield; H Bradshaw; E Brown; M Faulkner; B Hunt; R Mills; C O'Connor; D Rees (captain); H Weetman.

United States: T Bolt; J Burke (captain); D Ford; D Finsterwald; E Furgol; F Hawkins; L Hebert; T Kroll; D Mayer; A Wall.

Great Britain 7.5

United States 4.5