Leamington Spa, its waters said to work wonders for aches, pains and "sundry paralytic conditions", was also the home of Britain's first lawn tennis club, of world middleweight champion Randolph Turpin - Dick's brother - and of Samuel Lockhart, described thereabouts as a world- famous elephant trainer.

The world-famous elephants were scrubbed in the River Leam, near the suspension bridge; old Sam was quite well known, too. Said to have been the first man to be shot from a cannon, he also had a speciality elephant act inexplicably called The Three Graces and a Cruet.

Jumbo Lockhart also trained the royal elephants, who answered to Jock and Jenny.

Turpin took the world title from Sugar Ray Robinson in 1951 but held it for just 64 days. The following year he also won the British and Empire light heavyweight titles from Don Cockell but retired in 1958, worked subsequently in a scrapyard and was found at home in 1966 with his brains blown out.

An elephant, one of Sam's probably, features on Coventry City's club crest too; someone may know why. Like the elephant, Warwickshire never forgets.

Leamington is also one of those places - Tunbridge Wells another, Shildon probably not - allowed the prefix "Royal", and if none of this seems terribly relevant it is an attempt not to talk about Saturday's match in particular, or about the day's results in general.

Leamington FC play in something called the Midland Combination, base also of Romulus, Sphinx and Nuneaton Griff.

Until 1988 they were AP Leamington, the AP standing for Automotive Products, and played in the Conference. When a whiff of scandal was detected, the company sped off in the opposite direction and the club conked out.

The new club was formed just three and a half years ago. Despite retaining the nickname of The Brakes, they have made remarkable progress. They are the AFC Wimbledon of the West Midlands.

On Saturday (let it at last be admitted) they played Albany Northern League leaders Durham City in the last 64 of the FA Carlsberg Vase on a ground more rustic than regal, less palatial than peasant quarter. It'll be good when it's finished.

As if to underline that things are different down there, at 3.15 on a mid-December afternoon it was almost impossible to see for the sun.

The crowd, remarkably, was 712, the populist enthusiasm tangible.

The players appeared to the strains of Land of Hope and Glory; the mascot, it was announced, wanted a PlayStation II from Santa.

Durham deservedly lost 2-1. The crowd, cruelly, sang "Are you Sunderland in disguise?"

Word arrived before it was possible to get out of the eye-of-a- needle car park that five of the other seven ANL sides in the Vase third round had fared no better. By 5.15, a paralytic condition seemed a pretty decent bet.

Spa humbug, as old Ebenezer was almost given to observe on such thoroughly miserable occasions.

Shildon, meanwhile, were Vase visitors to Oadby Town in Leicestershire, where an almost familiar face appeared in the clubhouse before the match.

Martin Johnson, who lives nearby, had seen the posters and recalled that his Uncle John played briefly for Shildon in 1968 and that his great grandfather, an England amateur international, did so before World War I.

John Cleminson's sister Hilary, Martin's late mother, grew up in Darlington and at 46 became the oldest athlete to win an "open age" England vest. John's still in the town.

Martin proved hugely affable, introduced in time to Shildon secretary Mike Armitage. "You're a big lad, you should be playing centre forward," said Mike.

"He plays rugby," someone whispered.

"Ah," said Mike, "THAT Martin Johnson."

Speaking of putting feet in it, heavyweight Evenwood Town assistant manager and Wear Valley district councillor Andy Turner was so upset after Saturday's defeat at Whickham that he inadvertently left his size 11s in the dressing room. There was an official function that night. "Which local councillor," asks an e-mail, "turned up at a formal do wearing best suit and football boots?"

Graeme Hedley, a Boro midfielder in the 1970s, has been getting himself rather unfortunately tanked up.

The Albany Northern League magazine reports that Graeme, who helps his wife run Wolviston post office and was Easington Colliery FC's manager until last month, inadvertently put unleaded petrol in his new BMW diesel.

"It went half a mile and stopped," says the 46-year-old, who also had brief spells with Darlington, York and Sheffield Wednesday.

Repairs cost £4,500, being claimed under "accidental damage" on his insurance. "I certainly didn't do it on purpose," he pleads.

Memories in Friday's column of an earlier begging bowl crisis for the Quakers - 1939, overdraft topping £2,000 - reminded former fanzine editor Steve Harland both of ex-club chairman John Brockbank, who died last month, and of yet another crisis.

It was the early 1990s, the late chairman at one of the regular meetings between club and supporters. Tom Hughes, the general manager, was also present.

Darlington were bottom of the third. Hughes had been asked what contingency plans were made if they were replaced by Kidderminster Harriers. None, he said.

Hughes, Harland recalled, had been with York City when they had to apply for re-election and at Middlesbrough when they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Was he after a hat-trick, Steve asked?

"Normally Tom didn't show much emotion but he suddenly erupted, informed me that I had no right to check out his past and that he was quite willing to take me outside and sort me out."

Chairman Brockbank was finally able to restore order. "Tom Hughes," adds Steve, "looked daggers at me for the rest of the evening."

Full of hell, as usually is the case, the Beardless Wonder rings to correct the claim in Friday's sports section that Seamus O'Connell's eight in a 1953 match for Bishop Auckland set a Northern League record.

It's held by Jack Coulthard, ten in South Bank's 13-0 win over Ferryhill on May 2, 1936. Arthur "Dusty" Rhodes also scored eight, for Billingham Synthonia against South Bank, on Christmas Day 1946.

Thereafter, a call from Peter Livingstone announces that he's hoping to re-form his beloved South Bank - one of the world's oldest football clubs - in the Wearside League next season. More of that later.

And finally...

The only three cricketers to have won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award in its 50-year existence (Backtrack, December 12) are Jim Laker in 1956, David Steele in 1975 and, of course, the Squire of Ravensworth in 1981.

Readers may today care to cast their minds back to 1978, when Spurs played in a match to inaugurate the first all-seater stadium in Britain. Where was it? The answer next Tuesday; Friday's the annual review.

Published: 16/12/2003