Seahorses or City? Neal's on Baywatch

"It was a fearful spot to play football," he recalls. "I used to wonder who on earth would want to live there, but now I absolutely love it."

In truth, Wednesday was pretty temperate on Co Durham's ridge too far. Birds decorated new homes around the Little House on the Prairie, nice old ladies leaned on the gates of the Aged Miners Homes seeking whatsoever gossip they might devour, Wooley Terrace Methodist Chapel - bless it - pointed eagerly towards Easter.

This, of course, is the Stanley above Crook, the one with the oft-confused namesake 15 miles north, and it was not to praise it that we came but to write a preview of tomorrow's FA Carlsberg Vase semi-final.

Whitley Bay host Durham City in the first of two legs. Neal Walton spent almost all of an outstanding playing career with one or the other, appeared in two FA Amateur Cup semi-finals with Whitley Bay in the sixties, knew the heartache of losing both.

Now, if only because his greater service lies there, he leans slightly towards the self-styled Seahorses.

"It would just be nice for them to get to a national final at last," he says as Ann, his charming wife, runs a hot scone shuttle service from the kitchen.

The charming cottage, once part of St Thomas's church hall, overflows with souvenirs of his hey days, with smiling team pictures and cartoons by the much- framed Dudley Hallwood.

It had all begun with a picture in Tuesday's column of the City side which won the Durham Benevolent Bowl in 1956. Young Walton was on it, and several others who - thanks to Backtrack readers - may be reuniting for one or both of the Vase games.

City were a good side, reached the FA Cup first round against Tranmere Rovers, but still weren't in the same class - though, of course, the same league - as Whitley Bay.

Neal was still at Rutherford Grammar School in Newcastle when Durham had signed him from Heaton Stannington in the Northern Alliance. He'd also been with Newcastle United N's, the Magpies' juniors, until ordered to leave by a headmaster who didn't appreciate the maxim about work and play.

"To be a 17-year-old in the Northern League was tremendous in those days," he recalls. "You got butterflies from the moment the postcard arrived on the Thursday morning telling you that you'd been selected.

"I was just a kid really, learning my trade you might say. It was an honour just to step on to the same field as people like Bob Hardisty and Harry Sharratt from Bishop Auckland."

(Ann had been a Bishops supporter, followed the Blues through the solid silver years, never forgets being asked up by Seamus O'Connell at a town hall dance but never regretted looking north thereafter.)

Neil signed for Whitley Bay when they joined the Northern League in 1958, was simultaneously gaining a degree in geology and physics, stayed at Hillheads for the decade in which the club twice won the Northern League and five times the Northumberland Senior Cup.

He toured with the renowned Middlesex Wanderers, played in a North-South England trial and was approached by several professional clubs, including Leeds United when Raich Carter was manager.

"I don't think I would have made a top-class professional footballer, though you never know, but there wasn't much money in the game in those days, anyway."

There was plenty, of course, in "amateur" football. "It's no secret any more," Neal concedes. "It used to pay the mortgage at Whitley Bay."

The side was managed from 1963 by Bobby Owen, the half back line almost always Walton, Oakley and Ramshaw.

Big Billy Wright, formidable up front, was described in one of the programmes as a crane slinger and no-one alive looked more likely to be able to sling one.

Wright scored almost a goal a game in 400 appearances. "Just looking at him would frighten the life out of you, but he was never a dirty player," says Neal.

"He was very, very difficult to mark but I never saw him deliberately foul anyone in my life. The team spirit under Bobby was tremendous, but the players were quite good, too."

In 1969 he rejoined Durham City - "I'd been dropped and didn't think I deserved to be" - under the guidance of the flamboyant Ray Wilkie and in the company of the column's old friends George Brown and Dave "Jock" Rutherford.

"They used to say Dave's biggest asset was his speed. I always thought it was his elbows," he says.

After three years at "old" Ferens Park, set scenically by the River Wear but uncomfortably close to the sewage works, he moved to Spennymoor United and later became manager at Brandon United and Esh Winning.

He played in the Over 40s League until ten years ago, gave up when part-time taxi driving became unsociable, still plays squash at 64 and has no more spare fat than two ounces of liquorice torpedoes.

"I'd probably still be playing if it wasn't for the taxi-ing," he insists.

His scrapbooks, kept faithfully by his father, embrace hundreds of cuttings, dozens of photographs, old programmes like the picture postcard size productions from Roker Park in the 60s.

That's where, when favourites, they lost 2-1 to Hendon in the Amateur Cup semi-final. Two years later they went down 4-2 in the semi-final to Sutton United - had Whitley Bay won, they'd have faced North Shields, two miles away, at Wembley.

"It was about the time we were just starting to go over the hill," he says.

Things have much changed since. Though semi-final crowds should comfortably exceed 1,000, that was a poor league gate in shamateurism's swansong sixties.

The man on the hilltop looks forward keenly, nonetheless. "The games will be great occasions for the North-East. I only wish I could be playing."

Memories, too, from Arnold Alton, now in Heighington, of his Durham City days in 1971. "By that time Neal was doing a Niall Quinn, providing excellent flick-ons for Jock Rutherford (the column's All Time Hero) and George Brown. Under Ray Wilkie's guidance it was a very effective combination."

Arnold also remembers being a lad at Bishop Auckland when the unforgettable Alderman Bob was announcing Durham's team over the public address.

Ayre, Adair - "and what about Dan Dare?" demanded a voice in the crowd.

"Do you remember Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future?" asks Arnold. Remember him? We soared with the Eagle simultaneously.

Among the others in the Durham City side of 1956 was Malcolm Lax, the goalkeeper who caused the Northern League management committee to see red by playing in all black.

"Grosics, the great Hungarian goalkeeper, wore a black jumper and reckoned it made it difficult for the opposition to spot him coming out for crosses," he insisted.

The league committee took a less monochrome view in the 1950s: any colour you want, they agreed, so long as it's green.

Malcolm Lax also made 24 appearances for Durham County Cricket Club - batsman, leg break bowler, wicketkeeper - became vice-chairman of the English Billiards Association and kept goal for Consett against Doncaster Rovers in the 1958 FA Cup first round.

When last we spoke, in 1996, he was full of stories about Consett's celebrated chairman, the steel town draper Hymie Sadler. ("There weren't many people called Hymie in Consett," said Malcolm.)

The best Hymie Sadler story, however, is told by Jack Amos - then a curious Consett Chronicle cub, now secretary of Durham CIU.

Hymie was complaining that the summer sunlight was fading his window display. "What you need is some of those Venetian things," said his friend.

Next day, swears Jack, Hymie had a collecting tin on the counter. "For the blind," it said.

Ever generous sponsors, Carlsberg are again holding a blazer brigade reception before tomorrow's semi-final - this one's in Prague. Prague, it transpires amid considerable disappointment, is not the splendoured Czech capital but a disco bar in downtown Whitley Bay.

Still on Whitley Bay watch, Steve Harland in Stockton - forever in speedway's slipstream - points out an intriguing piece in the latest Speedway Researcher magazine on dirt track racing at Rockcliff rugby ground, just a big kick from Hillheads.

It began in April 1929, attracted 4,000 on the opening night and up to 8,000 soon afterwards.

By May 7, however, the Whitley Bay Guardian was reporting that the Newcastle and Gateshead District Federation of Brotherhoods - the Masons, presumably - claimed dirt track racing was seriously affecting attendance at its meetings.

Though the claim was rejected by the managing director of Tyneside Speedways, Whitley Bay staged just 12 dirt track meetings before suddenly folding. Where there's muck, there's money.

Whitley Bay, perchance, were also up at Tow Law on Tuesday evening - talk round the Ironworks Ground still of poor Kevin McCormick's broken leg - "came one hell of a clatter," they reckon.

Kevin, as Tuesday's column noted, is not only Tow Law's treasurer but the local bookie. He slipped on the way home from a sportsmen's evening last Friday and on Sunday had 27 visitors - an all-comers' record, probably, for the new University Hospital in Durham. In Tow Law no-one doubts their bedside motive. "They all wanted paying out after Cheltenham."

Napping again, Tuesday's column wrongly identified the country on the wrong end of Malcolm Macdonald's international five - it was Cyprus, April 16 1975, not Luxembourg. Since Harry the Haddock was also mentioned in one of these columns on Tuesday, Grimsby Town fan David Robertson from Thornaby - who pointed out the big Mac muck-up - would like it to be known that he still has two. "Mind," he adds, "they're looking a bit deflated just now."

AMONG those who knew the five post-war England internationals whose surname begins with the letter "V" were Ralph Petitjean and Team Aalco Newcastle and Bob Baker from Sedgefield, an Echo reader since 1948 - "and still the best newspaper around for everything." The answer's Venables, Venison, Viollet, Vassell, Viljoen.

The Bearded Wonder, his sap rising daily, today seeks the identity of the former Durham County cricketer - dead but by no means forgotten - who won two FA Cup winner's medals and another in the Irish Cup final. That'll get 'em. Answer on Tuesday