Alnwick’s Shrove Tuesday match scores yet again

A SWIM through an ice cold river, ‘hales’ instead of goals and no such thing as offside - it’s football, but not as we know it.

The fields around Alnwick Castle once again played host to the Northumberland town’s traditional Shrove Tuesday football match.

The bizarre game, which has taken place on Pancake Day in the town since the late 1800s, began in its usual fashion, with the Duchess of Northumberland lobbing the ball from the castle’s barbican.

From there, the madness truly began. With virtually no formal rules and no defined pitch, the annual game sees members of the ancient rival teams - the parishes of St Paul’s and St Michael’s - use almost any means to get the ball through ‘hales’ (goals) at the end of each of the large fields.

Afterwards, the bravest competitors dived into the freezing waters of the Aln, fighting to be the first to clamber out onto the far bank holding the ball.

Player Steve Temple emerged victorious as the winner of the ‘battle of the river’.

The unique local game has been played hundreds of timesthe organising committee’s oldest recorded minutes of the event are from 1872.

The match lapsed during the Second World War but was revived in 1953 following an approach by the then Duke of Northumberland.

It has taken place every year since with the exception of the foot-and-mouth crisis.