Unavoidably between matches, Newcastle United publications editor Paul Tully is getting himself mightily excited - and with good cause - about a forthcoming visit to the cinema.

Compiled by the British Film Institute, the 80 minute programme will incorporate the earliest known footage of the North-East's football big three in action, from the start of the 20th century.

It's augmented by "social" clips like the fleet in the Tyne in 1901, the Hollow Drift children's procession in Durham in 1902 and, same year, the congregation leaving St Hilda's church in Middlesbrough.

Multicoloured Magpie that he is, Paul - who's helping organise the screening at the Tyneside Cinema - admits that the best bit is Sunderland v Leicester Fosse in the 1907 FA Cup, three of Sunderland's four goals and some "amazing" shots of old Roker Park.

Also revived are Middlesbrough v Sunderland in 1904, Notts County v Boro in 1902 and Newcastle v Liverpool in 1901, with the only known images of the pre-1905 west stand at St James' - a bit like the old main stand at Feethams, says Paul.

The historic film has come from the Mitchell and Kenyon collection, now entrusted to Dr Vanessa Toulmin - Manchester United fan, apparently - at the National Fairground Archive at Sheffield University.

The original films, says Paul, were commissioned by fairground operators to use in penny-in-the-slot booths on the Hoppings and elsewhere. "They'd pan over the huge crowds as well as the action on the pitch, then invite people to try to see themselves for a penny."

The compilation will be shown at the Tyneside Cinema on a so far unspecified Sunday afternoon in August. The level of interest, says cinema manager Jonny Tull, is extraordinary.

For all the football fantasia, however, our man at St James' admits that the best bit of all is film of Newcastle fire brigade turning out from the station, then as now in Pilgrim Street.

"You expect to see some ancient motorised fire engines, but the doors fling open and out gallop these horses."

It's like one of Alan Shearer's finest. "The moment," says Paul, "is absolutely mega."

A tribute to the marvellous Harry Hodgson, the man who returned to Tow Law Town and found himself thrown in at the deep end, takes place in the clubhouse on Friday.

"We're hoping not just to welcome former players and committee men but friends from throughout the League," says Lawyers' assistant secretary Steve Moralee.

Harry was club chairman for 35 years, stood down for seven and was persuaded to return for one year only. That's when the coal workings crater opened up in the bottom penalty area and the chairman had really to get off his backside.

Harry recently won the Arngrove Northern League's outstanding achievement award and yet further made the headlines when he was invited into the Millennium Primary School to be interviewed by the bairns for the Tow Law Times.

It's from them, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, that we have shamelessly pinched the picture.

Nine months after the death of Lee Storey, one of their longest serving and most popular players, Heighington Cricket Club members will this summer celebrate his life in three different ways.

The first was on Sunday, when Heighington played Newton Aycliffe - for whom Lee had briefly turned out during the foot and mouth crisis - in the first of what will become an annual friendly. They won.

The second is on July 24 when a "mini-tournament" takes place between the original team of 1984, the all-conquering side of 1997 and two sides of past and present players.

"It should be a true pageant of the history of Heighington Cricket Club," says Paul Ainsley, one of the organisers.

The third is on Sunday August 21 when Andy Walker, a club member who also plays for Bilton in the powerful Bradford League, brings his team-mates for a Twenty20 style match against an augmented Heighington team - pyjamas, white balls and all the attendant merriment.

It's planned as a family fun day, with barbecue and Kwik Cricket, the hope to buy a bench and portable net in Lee's memory.

Lee - "a truly lovely lad," says Paul - died last September after falling from a ladder at his Darlington home. He was 39.

Former players seeking a game on July 24, or anyone who can give raffle prizes, are asked to contact Paul Ainsley on 07973 478173.

Hoping to complete a handsome new stand during the close season, the pioneering folk at Whitby Town FC have discovered that the adjoining clubhouse - "and particularly the beer cellar" says club chairman Graham Manser - has all the foundations of the average sand castle.

"It's just another setback," says Graham, after work was initially delayed by what remains known as the Spennymoor saga. It'll cost another £8,000 to underpin.

In a further attempt to meet costs, the club is staging a concert with Bucks Fizz and the New Drifters at the Spa Pavilion on Friday July 15.

Tickets are £15, either on the door or from the Nationwide Building Society, 3 Victoria Square, Whitby, North Yorkshire YO23 1EA. The club gala follows on July 31.

Friday's column on heroic Darlington Olympian George Butterfield was wrong, as both Dave French in Hartlepool and Malcolm Conway in Eaglescliffe point out, to suppose that the 2012 Olympics would be London's second.

George ran in 1906; we forgot about 1948.

Malcolm also reckons that the relatively slow times in the first half of the 20th century could be down to handicapping. "When I ran handicap races in the 1950s, the scratch man ran a full mile and someone with a big handicap could run a considerably shorter distance, hence the apparent very fast times if a good runner wasn't properly handicapped."

Jamie Corrigan, athletic executive officer at Ferryhill Town Council, reckons it's more to do with cinder track and training facilities. "I only ran on a cinder track once, at Grayfields in Hartlepool.

"It was a case of one step forward and an inch and a half back. You were forever running in porridge."

And finally...

several readers knew that it was the Australian John Landy who knocked almost two seconds off Roger Bannister's four minute mile record (Backtrack, June 24) just 46 days after Bannister had breached that tape.

Mick Foulston in Barnard Castle alone adds that Landy, now 75, became state governor of Victoria in 2001, a post he still holds.

Never regarded as an outstanding athlete, Landy was only selected for the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki on condition that he pay his own way - what's called getting a run for your money, presumably.

The selectors' pessimism seemed well founded, Landy clocking an inexorable 4 minutes 14 seconds in his 1500m heat. Landy of hope, if not glory, he learned from his peers, revised his training schedule and thereafter rapidly quickened his pace.

In December 1942, he sliced almost five seconds off the Australian mile record and equalled Bannister's Empire record, then four minutes and two seconds, a year later.

Though never an Olympic or Commonwealth gold medallist, he was awarded the MBE after breaking the world record, became a senior manager at ICI, has umpteen honorary degrees and is among Australia's leading naturalists.

Keith Bond in Brompton-on-Swale, another who clocked John Landy, follows with the customary question of his own: which footballer played in three consecutive European Cup finals in the 1990s?

The final word, again, on Friday.

Published: 28/06/2005