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Carlisle City boss Jim Nichols: My lads will be focused on the match rather than the occasion<\/p><\/div>\n
Prost International sponsors Carlisle City manager James Nichols<\/a><\/p>\n Northern League Division 1 side Carlisle City head to West Auckland this Saturday to do something they have not done in 42 years; play in the FA Cup.<\/p>\n The Cumbrian side won Division 2 on a dramatic final day last May, with the players huddled round cell phones waiting for confirmation of Heaton Stannington’s result. The Stan drew and City were promoted as Division 2 Champions despite trailing by 17 points at one stage.<\/p>\n The good news is that Stan were also promoted and also qualified for the FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round where they were rewarded with a home draw against Pickering Town. The winners will be at home to Northallerton or North Ferriby.<\/p>\n City however must travel and more-so travel to one of the Northern League’s most interesting clubs, West Auckland Town. They won one of the world’s first international footballing competitions, the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy, not once but twice in 1909 and 1911.<\/p>\n Lipton was a football visionary who foresaw the attraction of international football competition. He invited the FAs of England, Italy, Germany and Switzerland to send a side to an inaugural competition.<\/p>\n The latter three agreed but the English FA refused to send a club. The Italians set a Turin XI drawn from clubs such as Torino and Juventus, Germany sent Stuttgarter Sportfreunde and the Swiss FA nominated Winterthur.<\/p>\n Here the story gets cloudier.<\/p>\n Deprived of an official participant from the FA, Lipton invited West Auckland FC, an amateur side made up of coal miners. The reason is still unknown although local folklore in West Auckland itself was that the FA intended to send Woolwich Arsenal,<\/a> forerunners of Arsenal FC but before they moved to their current North London home,<\/a> but West Auckland were invited instead as they shared the same initials.<\/p>\n The Durham club won the tournament and defended it two years later, beating Juventus 6-1 in doing so. As successive winners, they retained the trophy.<\/p>\n The West Auckland side with the 1909 Sir Thomas Lipton trophy Tyne Tees Television produced a film starring the late Dennis Waterman about the side.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/prostinternational.comwp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Westauckland_fc_1909_team.jpg\")
By Unknown – Here, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=102308607<\/p><\/div>\n