The consultation process on the re-structuring of "non-league" football continued on Friday with a day-long meeting at Fleet in Hampshire. It meant leaving Darlington on the dawn raiding 5.24am train and being just 15 minutes late for a ten o'clock start.

It's what the FA call a central location. Consultation? Don't ask me.

We sat next to Jack Pearce, who's been manager of Bognor Regis for 26 years, though it's not a record because the Marine manager has held the boot room key for 32.

"He's a window cleaner," said Jack, as if that made everything translucent.

Diplomatically declining to mention Bognor Regis's greatest claim to fame - it's said that on his death bed, George VI was told that when he got better they could have a nice week in Bognor, replied "Bugger Bognor" and expired - we also discovered that Jack's best mate is David "Ticer" Thomas.

Remember David Thomas? He was the West Auckland lad whose grandfather played in West's 1911 "World Cup" win and who himself won eight England caps while with Burnley and Queens Park Rangers.

Now 50, he lives in Bognor Regis, does a bit of gardening, a bit of coaching and a bit of broadcast work. "A lovely, happy fellow," said Jack.

It was 11pm when we got home. The next meeting's in Didcot, Oxfordshire - "more convenient," they said. Most inconveniently, the Northern League chairman will be on holiday.

Then there's the Flying Window Cleaner, as Michael Little is known to Over 40s League team mates at the Half Way House in Sunderland. Hell for leather, presumably. Against North Shields Vets at the weekend, Michael was again proceeding apace when tackled by a Jack Russell and had to be taken to hospital for tetanus injections. League secretary Kip Watson is sympathetic. "I've had one myself, they're bad beggars."

We have been drooling over the region's most attractive cricket grounds, and more of that shortly. Football's most scenic home must surely be Esh Winning's little oasis at Waterhouses, where we watched the FA Carlsberg Vase tie with Crook Town on Saturday before hoofing off to present awards at Bishop Auckland Cricket Club's annual extravaganza.

There were precious few, a case of what do you give to a team that's won nothing.

Champions two summers ago, Bishops' first team finished bottom of the NYSD premier division for the second successive season and are relegated; the second team only penultimately better off in what is effectively the third division.

The trophy for the most outstanding display in a winning performance went unpresented, there having been just two wins - Northallerton, league, Willington, cup - all season.

Keith Stones topped the first team batting averages with 16 ("a bit embarrassing," he said), while skipper Harry Smurthwaite's bowling average of 19.5 - including 6-52 against Richmond - must be set against the realisation that he could soon be past his best.

He's 65 and, as he has every September since Bradman was a lad, has announced his retirement. "Harry talks like a twopenny drum," someone said, though to the column's old mother it was always a ha'penny book.

Club chairman Keith Hopper, 68, remained an all-round achiever in the seconds, where 61-year-old Derek Soakell - in the Durham side which beat Yorkshire in the 1973 Gillette - was a regular and 70-year-old George Waters made an occasional cameo.

Keith said the mood remained upbeat - "we've still got lots of good youngsters" - second team captain John Brennan told a joke about Mr and Mrs Duck (the one about putting it on the bill) and Harry Smurthwaite continued to play twopenny drummer boy. "This time," he said, "it's definite."

Across the boundary at Bishop Auckland FC, the mystery deepens over outside right Johnny Edgar's non-appearance in the 1951 FA Amateur Cup final against Pegasus.

We mentioned it three columns back. Johnny, Darlington lad, had played in every round before Wembley but - though his picture was in the programme - was replaced for the big one by John Taylor.

"Dig deeper," urges someone signing himself Colonel Mosquito, and there's also an e-mail from Johnny's old school team mate Gordon Blake - they even played together for the Empire cinema Saturday morning club.

"I distinctly remember him writing to me whilst I was serving in the Egyptian canal zone, telling me that Bishop Auckland had dropped him for the final."

The morning before final day, the Echo had reported an unchanged team. Twenty four hours later, however, we observed without incident that Edgar was injured.

The programme, sent together with his five bob stand ticket by Tom Yarrow in Darlington, only adds to the puzzle.

Presumably printed several days in advance, it included Taylor in the starting eleven but added that he got his chance "because of John Edgar being unfit."

Other attractions that day included community singing led by the fondly remembered Arthur Caiger and marching versions of the Thunder and Lightning Polka, Camptown Races and a selection from Oklahoma.

Whilst poor Johnny Edgar kicked his heels and nursed only his feelings, the band of the Royal Air Force played on.

Pegasus had been formed just two years earlier, a combined team of students from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Among the young gentlemen from Charterhouse, Repton and Winchester was J Maughan from Stanley Grammar School, reading theology at Keble College, Oxford. Now retired in Blaydon, Canon John Maughan spent his entire working life as a priest in the diocese of Durham - principally at Penshaw and South Shields.

Three more nominations for comeliest cricket ground, four if Harry Smurthwaite's for Durham City is considered.

Gary Bolton insists upon Guisborough, admittedly biased because he lives there and plays for them, but supported by a Northern Echo picture caption from a match in 1993: "A scene that captures the essence of rural England....a spectacular setting at the foot of the beautiful Cleveland Hills."

Alan Macnab agrees that Masham's is unbeatable - "everything a cricket ground should be" - but also much admires Dales CC's ground at Reeth and Middleham's, near the castle.

A castle looms large for Bernard Poole, too, 49 years with Raby CC and still smitten. The ground's in the shadow of the former Barnard family seat near Staindrop, though foot and mouth restrictions have meant that this summer they've not been able to cut the grass, much less play cricket there.

Bernard looks forward to his personal half century. "Next year," he says, "it'll be back in all its glory."

Ashbrooke,. Sunderland, is also all right in an urban sort of way, though it is to a rugby occasion - a lunch to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Durham County RFU, followed by a match between Sunderland and Houghton - that Chris McLoughlin invites us on October 7 to those celebrated grounds.

On formation they were simply "football" clubs; the invitation sustains the rules of that period.

"Backing in no case allowed, nor shall anyone wearing projecting nails, iron plates or gutta percha soles on his boots be allowed to play." No players, it adds, are allowed to stand on the goal bar to prevent the ball going across.

The Ashbrooke Football Field, directs the invitation, is some 15 minutes stroll from the railway station "with excellent connections to all mining and manufacturing districts within the bishopric. Parking for carriages and brakes is available adjacent to the villa residences within the Ashbrooke area."

Chris is the present County secretary; even his PS wears period costume. "We even allow associationists to attend."

Friday's column not only sought the identity of the ten Darlington FC managers who succeeded Ray Yeoman during the 1970s but invited them in chronological order. Ian Cook made it.

They were Len Richley, Frank Brennan, Ken Hale (caretaker), Allan Jones, Ralph Brand, Dick Connor, Billy Horner, Peter Madden, Len Walker and Billy Elliot.

Brian Shaw in Shildon today invites the identity of six England football captains since 1960 whose surnames have begun with the letter "C".

More airs on a C-string on Friday

Published: Tuesday, September 25, 2001