As "Whitehall" is synonymous with government - though the Environment Department lives, more prosaically, at No 2 Marsham Street, SW1 - so "Lancaster Gate" has come to mean the Football Association.

The two are interchangeable - "Arsenal are being reported to Lancaster Gate" - though the FA, in truth, flitted two years ago. Probably hadn't paid the milkman.

Now the game's rulers are in Soho Square, an anonymous nine floor emporium - anonymous in that they curiously decline to have a nameplate outside - five minutes from Tottenham Court Road tube station.

"First right at the sex shop, left at the strip joint and then cross the road at the massage parlour", say FA men, and not entirely in jest.

(Lest the Association come all heavy handed about this, it's possible there has been a misquotation. It might be right at the strip joint and left at the sex shop.)

We mention it because, in an Albany Northern League capacity, the column was invited to join an FA working party which is looking at restructuring the "non-league" game.

Meetings, said the letter, would be in Soho Square. If not for the sex appeal then for the nine storey heights, we accepted.

Soho Square wrote again. There would now be two working parties, north and south. Whilst the southern comforts would forgather as planned within a window shopping walk of Tottenham Court Road, the northern party would be at Emley FC Supporters Club.

Emley is a village somewhere above Huddersfield, known for a faintly phallic television mast but not otherwise for its fleshpots. The FA sent a map. Immediately below "Emley" it said "England", though it has to be said that there were those in attendance - not least the otherwise excellent Mr Alan Farnworth, from the North West Counties League - who seemed fortunate even to have found England.

It was reminiscent of one of Simon and Garfunkel's minor hits in the 60s: For Emley, Wherever I May Find Her.

It's a remarkable place, nonetheless, a village of probably no more than 2,000 people with a football club - known inexplicably as the Peewits - pressing for membership of the Nationwide Conference and which three or four years ago played West Ham in the FA Cup third round.

Once their headquarters were in the local Brownie hut, now the stadium is described in Kerry Miller's History of Non-League Football Grounds as "an excellent example of what can be achieved in the smallest of villages."

Not, sadly, excellent enough. It's three-sided, bordering the village cricket club. Amid much local breast beating, the first team has shacked up with Wakefield Trinity, instead.

It would, of course, be improper to disclose what took place behind the closed doors of Emley Supporters Club, though the tea lady and her attendant grandchildren could sell the story for millions.

Suffice that two or three of us foot soldiers at the game's grass roots have now been re-appointed to a national working party which will meet in the south on September 21.

The venue is not, alas, within the prurient proximity of Tottenham Court Road tube. The Poor Bloody Infantry is being posted to Aldershot, instead.

For Mr Peter Livingstone, at Emley to hold the Wearside League's end, life hasn't always been a level playing field, either.

Formerly secretary of Northallerton Town, Peter recalled over lunch an FA Trophy tie against Bashley - southerners - on a storm swept North Riding day in January 1993.

Home skipper Lee Wasden won the toss and elected, improbably, to kick-off. Bashley claimed choice of ends, Northallerton objected. "Get on with it," said referee Richard Pulleyn, soaked to the skin and still not wet his whistle.

Bashley, 1-0 losers, officially appealed to Lancaster Gate (as then the London A-Z allowed them) that they had been denied the option of playing into the storm "and up a steep slope" in the first half.

An FA commission - including Sir Bert Millichip, the chairman - was quickly convened. "There wasn't a lot we could do about the rain but we hired a surveyor, cost us £80, who proved that the gradient was just 23 inches in 110 yards," said Peter.

For Bashley, after that, it was uphill all the way.

We all enjoyed the story over the pork pies and potted meat sandwiches, though it's possible that the Emley secretary would yet more greatly have been amused. He is a former referee called Richard Pulleyn.

Yesterday, perchance, the column found itself at Northallerton v Norton and Stockton Ancients, the adjoining Romanby sewerage works in ripe form. How do the neighbours stand it? Northallerton won 2-1, all the goals scored by the team kicking down that vertiginous slope. See what poor Bashley meant?

Further evidence that it never rains but it pours, our friends at Wolviston went out of the Wadworth Brewery sponsored National Village Cricket Cup in Sunday's semi-final.

The original game, it may be recalled, was called off nine days ago without a ball being bowled. Under competition rules, the game was switched to their opponents' ground - Elvaston, near Derby.

Wolviston struggled to 109, all out, after 38 overs. "You might have thought the game was over but we fought tooth and nail," says Mark Christon.

Finally, and with just 11 balls remaining, Elvaston - defending champions - again reached Lord's, for the loss of eight wickets.

"They're not a bad side," says Mark," but if we'd been at home, I'm sure we'd have had the edge."

Arthur Evans writes from Tremadog in North Wales. In his Shildon days they called him Taffy; in Tremadog, he's probably just Arthur.

He encloses, at any rate, a John North column circa 1975 which begins: "I have lost a four pint bet (and worse, to a Welshman) in a very curious manner."

Arthur's bet was that there was a Shildon lad in the Guinness Book of Records - and there was, of course.

He was Robert Percival, whose 1884 cricket ball throwing record on Durham Sands was recently, unavailingly, challenged in a Northern Echo sponsored competition.

Then as now, Arthur seeks information on Bob Percival - "he must have been an outstanding athlete" - believing him to have been a miner who lived opposite the Hippodrome cinema.

Shildon had butcher Percivals and milkman Percivals, too.

Help would greatly be appreciated. "And incidentally," adds our man in Tremadog, "you never did pay that four pint bet."

The hole truth (cont): dubbed Britain's unluckiest football club, Murton hope to be back on their again pristine pitch by the end of next month.

The grand canyon has been filled in and the collapsed culvert repaired, thanks largely to £80,000 from the Football Stadia Improvement Fund.

Now the parish council (bless it) has provided £26,000 so that the entire field can be re-turfed with the same Lincoln greenery that covers the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough and another £11,000 for grouting, whatever grouting may be. Turfing began yesterday.

After more than a year's lodging elsewhere, the Albany Northern League club hopes to return on September 22. "Whenever it happens," says club chairman Tom Torrence, "it'll be one of the proudest days of my life."

THE three members of England's World Cup winning team who never played in an FA Cup final (Backtrack, August 24) were George Cohen, Martin Peters and Nobby Stiles.

Another threesome, Brian Shaw today seeks the identity of Liverpool trio who appeared in each of the club's FA Cup finals between 1986-92.

More three line whipping on Friday.

Published: Tuesday, August 28, 2001