About as far as it gets from a World Cup tournament in the desert

JIMMY GLASS is at Brunton Park to open a bar renamed in his honour.

He’s bearded in a smart coat and jeans and chats with fans outside the turnstiles, the smell of frying onions drifting into the cold air with the muffled music from a tannoy by a floodlight pylon.

The former goalkeeper joined Carlisle on loan for a handful of games at the end of the 98/99 season and scored an iconic last-gasp goal from a corner in the final fixture to keep the Cumbrians in the Football League.

The boots he wore that day are now in the National Football Museum in Manchester.

The Lakeland fells and mountains are about as far as it gets from a World Cup tournament in the desert. This is real pie and bovril stuff in the far north of England, while Glass provides a touch of Roy of the Rovers.

On the pitch, local lad Owen Moxon is a strong presence in the midfield. He lives among the rows of long red brick terraces in the post-industrial heart of the city, just five minutes from where groups of postal strikers stood shivering outside the main gates a couple of days previously.

Many of them are here in the same rain jackets and wool hats that they donned on the picket; when they sing “he’s one of our own” from the Warwick Road End about Moxon, they mean it.

There are workers from McVities — who recently balloted for industrial action — the hospital, the Pirelli tyre factory, the railway.

Moxon spent time over the nearby border at Queen of the South and Annan Athletic before signing for Carlisle in the summer, and might possibly have ended up at any of those workplaces without his talent for the game.

Manager Paul Simpson — a World Cup winner himself as the coach of England u20s in 2017 — also hails from the border city. They understand what Saturday afternoon means to those in the crowd when they head down towards the ground full of anticipation, if not optimism, especially when there’s a major Fifa tournament on.

Kick-off was switched to 1pm to avoid a possible clash with the first World Cup Round of 16 matches — though that's little consolation to those that have made the 672-mile round trip up from South London.

Seventy of them sit in small pockets in the corner of a stand that holds 1,500 surrounded by empty blue plastic.

Moxon’s teasing, curling centre is headed in by Ryan Edmondson to give Carlisle a lead that gets cancelled out right on half time, when Will Randall shoots home from close range.

It’s scrappy and niggly, with fouls aplenty and a bit of a shirt-tugging square up between a number of players up as frustrations rise in stoppage time.

Sutton boss Matt Gray gives the thumbs up to the director’s boss at the final whistle. With six defeats on the road this season, a point is a job done for the Yellows.

For all the graft, there are few moments of inspiration when it’s those moments of magic that live long in the memory.

Jimmy Glass knows that as much as anybody.