I’ve followed Man U since 1954.”Other Berwickers have got away too Trevor Steven was a ball-boy at Shielfield in the 1970s. “We couldn’t sign him on schoolboy forms,” Dennis McCleary recalled, “because Berwick High School is affiliated to the English Schools’ FA and the club is affiliated to the Scottish Schools’ FA.” Such are the complexities of life on the border-line.Steven, as it happens, was a member of the last England team who ventured north of the border – to the ground his home-town team visit the week after Alan Shearer and Co. As chairman of the Berwick branch of the Manchester United Supporters Club, he spends his Saturdays far from the maddeningly low crowds (510 average) on his backdoor step “We run a bus from Berwick to every game,” he said “I’m no glory-seeker It’s in my blood. “Maybe we should think about moving Shielfield Park over the border into Scotland.”If that were to happen Ray Dixon’s bedroom window, in Shielfield Terrace, would no longer look out over the goal into which Sammy Reid struck the giant-slaying winner against Glasgow Rangers 32 years ago Not that he would be guaranteed to notice.

He lives in Edinburgh, where the squad meet to train twice a week. “For a team who are looking to go up this season our home record is letting us down badly,” he lamented. Berwick Rangers boast the best away record in the Scottish Third Division – but one of the worst at home, on the English soil of Shielfield. It may be mere coincidence, but all except one of their players happen to be Scots living north of the border Their manager, Paul Smith, is Scottish too.

They agreed that the war was over so that the Russians could sleep peacefully in their beds not worrying about suddenly being attacked by all the Berwickers.”In one respect, however, Berwick remains feared as an attacking force on foreign fields. When she signed the Paris Peace Treaty, however, Berwick was not mentioned. “It became a publicity gimmick, really,” Sir Lawrence Airey, chairman of Berwick History Society, said. “But it was resolved in the 1960s when some Russian diplomat or minister came over and solemnly shook the mayor’s hands.

So dismissive, in fact, was Victoria of the gleaming jewel of a border town it was an oversight on her part that led to Berwick being famously at war with Russia.The town having been mentioned specifically in royal proclamations since its annexation from Scotland, when she signed the declaration of war against Russia at the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 she did so with her full title: Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and the British Dominions beyond the sea. “My dad was Scottish but I’m English,” Dennis McCleary, secretary of Berwick Rangers, said “He was from Kirkudbright and I’m a Berwicker. But you’re neither one thing nor the other if you’re from Berwick.”Not that Liz Breckons, Berwick’s mayoress, considers her townsfolk to be afflicted by a national identity crisis “Not at all,” she said “I think Berwick’s got an identity of its own – a mixture. The two halves come together very well, I think.” They do indeed. As Ian Oliver reflected, as he gazed out from Shielfield Park towards Berwick’s stunning townscape and Scotland beyond: “We’ve got the best of both worlds here.”Queen Victoria was not exactly amused by the place when she opened Robert Stephenson’s monumental Royal Border Bridge in 1850.