Whilst it may not truthfully be said that it was the first time we'd seen a ball bowled all season - rather, the first time we'd attended a cricket match - the column pitched up myopically on Wednesday at the second teams cup game between Willington and Crook.

There were two good reasons, the first that it's Willington's centenary season, celebrations given added zest because a few years ago the club came perilously close to drawing stumps for the last time.

The second was that Willington FC was holding a crisis meeting - another crisis meeting - that same evening, its little clubhouse still festooned with flags of the Jubilee.

Some Union Jacks were upside down, the international signal for distress. It could hardly have been more appropriate.

The football club's annual meeting the previous week had elected just a treasurer and a single committee member. If no one came forward on Wednesday evening, they'd had it.

The football club is 96 years old, Northern League members since 1911. In Willington, the nineties aren't so much nervous as downright neurotic.

That the cricket club now thrives, as we were saying the other day, is principally down to the longanimous arm of the law.

Pollisses hold almost all the key positions - the chairman's the polliss's dad - and could almost field a team between them.

There are at least nine - a bobby's job, as it were - including one reputed to park the police car round the back and to go out to bat with his walkie-talkie in his pocket.

"I'm sure Simon's a polliss as well," murmurs vice-chairman John Coe, one of those who helped resuscitate the dying club.

They'd resigned from the Durham County League, were turned down by the Darlington and District because they couldn't field two teams.

"We really were on our last legs," says John.

"We'd be turning up with eight or nine men, pleading to bat first against teams with a pro and ten others so that we might at least make a game of it.

"We'd beg, steal and borrow players for the second team, but clearly it couldn't go on like that."

Almost on the first day of the season they were taken in by the North East Durham League, won the third division in their first season and the first three years later.

Now there are firsts, seconds and three junior teams.

The ground remains immaculate, a bar - "small but perfectly formed," says PC Stephen Barker's club newsletter - added since last we were there and with immediate expectations of much greater things.

Plans on the wall detail "high class" social and sporting facilities. Planning permission is granted, hoops jumped through, funding optimistically awaited.

(There's also a 1924 team picture on the bar wall which includes Joe Kasher, Willington lad made celebrated Sunderland centre half, who on his death in 1992 - a few days before his 98th birthday - was the Football League's oldest surviving player.)

They're buoyant again, thrash the Crook bowling around a bit, are appreciated even at Critics' Corner.

"We're a real community club now," says Det Sgt Neil Moore, the treasurer. "It's a real pleasure to be here."

Meanwhile, back in the last chance saloon, nine or ten have gathered beneath the distress flags, wind whistling outside, some in response to a plea in that morning's paper.

At one time they could even have pulled rank, Durham chief constable George Hedges briefly the football club chairman - it was the question which stumped everyone in last year's Superbrain - until constabulary duty proved too demanding.

The under 18s won three trophies last season; there are eight other junior teams. It's the men's game which worries them.

The Northern League side had had an indifferent season, problems fielding a settled side - "Five of them were in the navy," explains Bob Nicholls, which doubtless didn't help - but chiefly needed help off the field.

"We're 96 years old," says Anne Robson, "we're not going to roll over and die so close to the century."

Eventually John Phelan, a teacher who is himself a contributor to these pages, agrees to return as chairman to his former club. Bob Nicholls continues as secretary, Anne Robson as vice-chairman.

There's still much to be done, of course, still lessons to be learned from the cricket club - but they're showing Willington, anyway.

After the FA and the PFA, the CDA - a bosses' union - may be about to make its football debut. It stands for the Chairmen's and Directors' Association, the energetic George Reynolds among its founding fathers.

"We're going to make it very strong," says the Darlington owner and chairman.

"There'll be funds to issue writs and to fight our corner. We've had no support at all really."

George also appeared in Tuesday's column, when we revealed his new alliance with "embattled" Carlisle United owner Michael Knighton.

The following day, perchance, Knighton was at the Quakers' new ground.

George Reynolds, he said, had been a tremendous source of support - and has also become a regular front man - since they met two months ago.

"There's been a lot of bile and I'm slaughtered every day by the local newspaper in Carlisle with whom my relationship is non-existent,

"My credibility in that city is zero but they like George because George is a straight talker and tells them where to get off."

Knighton will also back the CDA. "Just because you are a football club chairman, you shouldn't be treated like a paedophile pariah when things go wrong on the pitch.

"The last two months George has been a godsend to me. We speak to each other every day. He's been such a fillip it isn't true; I could never have wished for a better friend."

Since this is the column that knocks around with all the big cheeses, we bring news - via Kevin O'Beirne in Sunderland - of the annual eccentricities down the 1-in-3 Coopers Hill in Gloucestershire.

"Cheese rolling has made a triumphant comeback. Fifteen people were injured and two taken to hospital during yesterday's races," begins the Gloucestershire Echo report.

That didn't include those among the 4,000 crowd who fainted. Since it can't have been the heat, it must have been the excitement. Until foot-and-mouth grounded last year's event, man and cheese been hurtling headlong for hundreds of years - a fertility rite, it's reckoned (or not, as the case may be,)

"It's just about the only reason I'd go back to Gloucestershire," says Kevin, who hails from the Cotswolds.

The event involves 8lb Double Gloucesters with hilly billies in precipitate pursuit.

Television cameras attended from Italy, Germany and South Korea, where presumably there's been little other sporting action of late - and as Mr O'Beirne observes, it makes a change from the World Cup, anyway.

The ever-vigilant editor of the Darlington and Stockton Times draws attention to a report from their man in Thorp Perrow on the village cricket team's handsome win over Helperby last weekend.

Thorp Perrow's near Bedale, perhaps better known for its arboretum than for the sound of ball on willow. The cricketers prosper, nonetheless.

Top of the Nidderdale League fourth division, they face Rainton tomorrow with "Taiwan international" Andrew Carrick freshly available.

We have been unable to contact Mr Carrick, but fear that the standards of the Taiwanese national team may not match those of the Nidderdale fourth division.

"After last week's performance," notes the Thorp Perrow correspondent, "it is expected to be an unchanged team."

Driven indoors this year, Tow Law Town FC holds its annual real ale festival - this time with a malt whisky tasting, too - on July 5 and 6.

There will, however, be something approaching a patio - "in the event," says club chairman John Flynn, "that Tow Law's summer occurs that particular weekend."

The bar's open from 7-11 30pm next Friday and 12-3pm and 7-11 30pm on Saturday.

Reinvigorated from a week's holiday, the column will seek further refreshment before they drink it dry.

At Evenwood Town, meanwhile, cerebral new management team Ken Houlahan and Morc Coulson - more qualifications than the average degree congregation - have issued the lads with heart rate monitors similar to those given to Aston Villa's players.

The wretches of the tabloid back pages, unfortunately, got it into their collective heads that the Villains were being "tagged".

Ken's anxious to stress otherwise. "I'd hate to think we were trying to keep tabs on our players visiting the fleshpots of Teesdale," he says.

More on Evenwood's appliance of science very shortly.

Tuesday's paragraph on the continuing cricket exploits of 69-year-old Keith Hopper prompted an e-mail from Brian Dobinson, president of the Darlington and District League.

We also hear that North Bitchburn's Graham Dalton scored his first ever century at the age of 46 - if at first - but there's more of that elsewhere.

Though just a bairn of 48, Brian hit 110 - ten 6s and seven 4s - for Haughton II against Cockerton II on Saturday.

It was the third century of his career, took his seasonal average to over 80 and in adding 197 for the second wicket with Bobby Armstrong ("another oldie") established a Haughton record.

And because you're the league president, adds Brian, simply means you get no favours at all.

The last column also recorded former Darlington striker's sending off for violent conduct in a six-a-side "Masters" friendly and recalled his debut dismissal for Crook Town.

"You were unfair on him," says Crook secretary Alan Stewart.

"It wasn't five minutes it was 85 minutes before he was sent off. After that he played another three games and never got sent off once."

And finally...

The first player to score in successive FA Cup finals at Wembley (Backtrack, June 25) was Bobby Johnstone of Manchester City, in 1955 and 1956.

Following last week's piece on Gretna's elevation to the Scottish third division, a gentleman in Bishop Auckland seeks the identity of the last former Northern League club to gain Football League status.The column returns on July 9.

Published: 28/06/2002