Remember the Darlington FC scrapbook about which we wrote 11 days ago? One man's scraps being another's feast, we have heard from Steve Smith, that insatiable devourer of trifles.

We'd recalled the Quakers' 3-2 fourth round FA Cup defeat at West Brom in 1937, but failed to mention that Darlo were undone by a hat-trick from a former Hartlepool player.

W G Richardson, a Baggies legend, was born at Framwellgate Moor in 1909 - the birth registered as just William, like the raggy-arsed rover of Richmal Crompton's wondrous imaginings.

The G, apparently for Ginger, was inserted because Albion's centre half was another Billy Richardson.

W G may have been unique, however, in signing for Hartlepools United FC from United Bus Company FC, scoring 19 goals in 29 Third Division North appearances in 1928-29 and thus enabling Pools to finish second bottom, above Ashington, who failed to gain re-election.

Transferred to ease Pools' perennial poverty, he hit 50 in his first Central League season and hit the big time in 1930-31 - both goals in West Brom's FA Cup final triumph over neighbours Birmingham and the winner against Charlton in the game which clinched first division promotion.

He scored four in five minutes at West Ham in November 1931, a six minute hat-trick against Derby in 1933, claimed a club record 40 league and cup goals in 1935-36 and won his only England cap, against Holland, that season.

"On his day there was no-one better at snapping up half chances," says Steve.

Darlington's visit attracted 15,917 to the Hawthorns, six thousand more than had watched the League game with Chelsea the previous Saturday but nothing like the 23,745 who'd seen the third round tie - a 7-1 thrashing of Spennymoor United from the North Eastern League.

The one-cap wonder totalled 228 games in 354 appearances, became West Brom's assistant trainer coach in 1946 and during a charity match in 1959 died, as perhaps he would have wished, with his boots on.

That December 12 column also mentioned the 1939 FA Cup final between Wolves, second in the first division, and Portsmouth, who were 17th.

George Todd from Darlington was there. "The talk before the match wasn't of which team would win but how many Wolves would score," he recalls.

They counted without Portsmouth 'keeper Harry Walker, two years previously a motor mechanic in Leyburn and the Quakers' part-time custodian.

"Harry wore a rather splendid white jersey, made two brilliant saves early on and Wolves never recovered," says George. Proud Pompey won 4-1.

Malcolm Dawes, almost 400 Football League appearances for Hartlepool, Aldershot and Workington - and two years at New York Cosmos, until Pele replaced him - found himself cheering a wholly different sport on Saturday night.

Mark, his 22-year-old son, was in the final of the ABA national novices championships at Knottingley, in West Yorkshire.

"I didn't think any of my three sons was going to be into competitive sport until Mark came home one day and said he'd found one he liked," recalls Malcolm, also a qualified cricket coach.

"When he said it was boxing, my wife and I just looked at one another in disbelief, but he's been really dedicated.

"He's stopped drinking and going out with the lads and taken to running and keeping fit instead. We're very proud of him."

Having won the North-East, Northern Counties and Midlands titles, Mark - who fights out of the Fishburn-based South Durham club - lost to Royal Navy boxer Adam Lancey, from Swansea.

Sixty in March, Malcolm Dawes will again be pulling on his footy boots on Boxing Day for the annual match between the old lads of the Dun Cow in Sedgefield, his home village.

The Dun Cow, of course, is where Messrs Blair and Bush took lunch the other day. Security may be a little less strict, and consumption rather higher, on this occasion.

Steven Chaytor's highly recommended book* on post-war South Durham players who appeared in the Football League recalls that after the 1996 Boxing Day encounter Malcolm, famously fit and stripped to the waist, engaged in a press-up competition with a "rather attractive" young lady from Australia.

He lost. "I think it is fair to say," adds Steve, "that strength to weight ratio diminishes rapidly after a gallon of ale, just as quickly as the bravado to common sense ratio rises."

Steve also reports seeing Gary Pallister and Dion Dublin and their partners dining in the Dun Cow. "They looked as fit as butchers' dogs, indulged in no horseplay whatsoever and left the premises totally sober. I don't know what the modern game is coming to."

* One Dead Ref and a Box of Kippers and Steve's recently- published book on Crook Town's 1976 tour of India - Can We Get Bobby Charlton? - are both still available from local bookshops at £9.99 and would make tremendous stocking fillers.

A happier Christmas than for some time for our friends at Murton, once dubbed Britain's unluckiest football club after calamity upon calamity ended with a damn great crater in the pitch.

On their best unbeaten run for ages, the club has been given a set of track suits, training tops and bags by traders at the nearby Dalton Park retail centre.

Tom Torrence, Murton's indefatigable chairman, reckons the gesture timely. "Dalton Park got a lot of bad publicity in the local press after inviting Sir Bobby Robson and not Mick McCarthy to switch on the Christmas lights.

"Sir Bobby's a national and international figure but some people will always cause trouble. At lest they're appreciated closer to home."

On Saturday to Consett v Alnwick, and beforehand to the Grey Horse, where the pub's under 40s had been playing the Over 40s, happily without casualty.

That the seniors won 4-3 may not have been unconnected to the fact that they had 14 men on the field.

Up the road at Belle Vue, Consett manager Ray Lish saw his side's unbeaten league run extended to 20 matches - the perfect tonic after a heart attack, his second, at the start of the season.

He'd even turned up at the Willington match five days later. "I didn't want them to think they could do without me," said Ray.

Club chairman Derek Nichol leads the heart attack league, with three. "In 50 years time I hope the score's the same," said Derek.

Recalling Jean Paul Sartre's observation that hell is other people, last Wednesday's Gadfly column suggested that the French philosopher had been a goalkeeper, thus incurring the wrath of thinking men everywhere.

As Kevin O'Beirne in Sunderland placidly points out, the goalkeeper was his compatriot Albert Camus - though Uncle Albert, memory suggests, played for Algeria.

John Briggs in Darlington recalls Sartre's inarguable observation that in football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposing team - but among French football philosophers, there is still none to beat M Cantona.

And finally...

So ends the final column of 2003 - and with warmest thanks, as always, to the very many readers who by their good crack and contributions make these little entertainments possible. A very happy Christmas to you all; we return on January 6.