Alan Murray has trained amid goose grease (a euphemism) in Darlington South Park and among detritus (another) on Seaton Carew sands. He has marched with the Saints and witnessed Portuguese men at war but never in his life seen anything like Blackburn Rovers.

"The set-up here is simply awesome," he says, and it is simply impossible to disagree.

He is a fighting 50 now, a nomad all his unwed days but a Rover for just two months. He had played for Middlesbrough, York City, Brentford and Doncaster Rovers, helped run a garage business, worked for Scottish and Newcastle ("split shifts, definitely not recommended"), assisted the KGB, managed Willington in the Northern League as well as Hartlepool and Darlington a bit higher, whispers tales of the gregarious Garry Gibson and the egregious Steve Morgon, was with Benfica until July 31.

Gibson, he says, didn't interfere much but did things without telling him. "Morgon, Reg Brealey's right hand man, was a real pain in the neck, didn't know a jot or a button about football. There were some terrible rows, I'm afraid."

For much of his life he has had a bachelor pad in fashionable Yarm - "I got in early doors," he says - fixed his weekly compass on the Saturday night football fraternity in the George and Dragon and travelled many miles to embrace it.

The KGB, affectionately named, was Kirklevington Great Britain in the Darlington Sunday Morning League. Alan was centre midfield.

Now he's in Blackburn, Lancashire, perhaps best known for the 4,000 holes of Lennon and McCartney's vivid imagination until a Channel Islands millionaire steel magnate called Jack Walker appeared with a monetary magnet wand.

It was Walker's cash which reinvigorated a once mighty club, saw them to the Premiership title and is said to have seen them right - made provision, as they say in legal circles - in his will.

"Left them £100m," says the taxi driver on the way out to the training ground in the Ribble Valley.

"I heard £120m," claims the feller on the way back. Taxi drivers always did like to bump it up a bit.

Walker's fortune endowed the training complex, too, and the yet more magnificent Academy up the hill. "There's just nothing like it anywhere," says Alan, proud tour guide and exceptionally nice man.

Now the very least they must do is get back into the top division. Graeme Souness, Murray's close friend throughout the 30 years since they shared digs at Phoebe Haigh's in the Boro and one introduced t'other (he says) to the local dens of iniquity, is the hugely rewarded man who directs operations.

Alan's chief scout, accepted the job over the phone, has a wall map not of the byways of Britain but of the main roads through Europe. British players, he says, no longer suggest value for money.

"Benfica offered me a new contract. But I took a pay cut to come here and hadn't even seen it. At least I know I'll get my money on the 25th of every month which wasn't always the case at Benfica."

Training ground and academy are perhaps half a mile apart amid a vertiginously up-market and security guarded new housing development in Old Langho, seven miles from Blackburn station.

The training complex is quiet, most first team players away on international duty, Si the chef barely breaking sweat. In one corner of the staff restaurant William Hague passes almost unchided on the television, in another a large table is laden with fruit, cereals and other testaments to nutritional necessity..

"We call it the bird table," says Alan. "People pick at it all day."

The Academy is busier, the chief scout gently rebuked by a cleaning lady ("quite right, too" he says) for wearing football boots in the immaculately kept young players' hostel.

"Ewood Park is just as well maintained, you could eat your dinner off the concourse the day after a match," says Alan.

He wears shorts, too. "I know I'm too slow, but I still keep hoping they might offer me a game of five-a-side or something. There's still nothing like playing, even when you're 50."

There's a gym that could fix an orthopaedic hospital, swimming pool, tartan track, huge indoor training pitch, endless outdoor ones, dining, social and educational facilities.

"We try to make decent human beings of them as well as good footballers, though some will never make either and if they can't play here they'll never play anywhere," says the chief scout.

"The thing that gets me is how big they all are. They must sleep in grow-bags, some of these."

Tour over, he orders the lunch - salmon, chicken jalfrayze, macaroni chicken - table cloths, blue and white, on the management table alone. "It's the same colour scheme as Hartlepool, though I think that's where the similarity ends," he says.

In the persistent background, a young Frenchman wanders sad eyed, seemingly alone. Souness has just told him that he won't make it at Blackburn and that he can catch the next plane home.

"Graeme will have been very good about it," says Alan. "I think he could do something about his public relations, but people have a completely wrong perception about the gaffer."

In the chief scout's office, three or four times bigger than the average lower division manager's, he's slipped into flip-flops but still wears shorts.

"Never say never," he says on the chances of a kickabout, a phrase repeated on the question of managership ("though not with one of these new hands-on chairmen") and of matrimony.

There was a six year girlfriend once but he ended up managing the Quakers in Darlington while she ("a very bright lady") managed Marks and Spencer in Dagenham.

"If our territories weren't so far apart I suppose something might have happened. I obviously regret not having children but there are plenty of plusses about not being married.

"I'm free to move around quickly or to walk out and become a van driver without necessarily having to worry where the next pint is coming from or how I'll pay the mortgage."

He was born in Newcastle, severed a seven month apprenticeship at Wolverhampton because he was homesick, recalls that at Molineux each Monday and Tuesday the apprentices' job was to sweep the previous's weekend's litter from the terraces, the head lad breathing Cullis and Capstan down their necks.

"The bank behind one goal alone held 20,000 and that's a hell of a lot of dog ends, but it certainly gave us a sense of proportion and respect for what other people had achieved.

"We each had four professionals to look after, got a Christmas box off them and that was it. Now there's a bloke who cleans all the young lads' boots and someone else to ensure they've clean kit and a nice jacket every day. They never even get their hands dirty.

"The socialists or whatever you call them won't let them do anything like that, which is sad because I'm sure it would be good for them. There's more to life than being mollycoddled, I'm a bit old fashioned like that."

He joined Middlesbrough instead, made just ten Football League appearances, was pretty much on his way out when Souness arrived from Spurs.

They also worked together at Southampton and at Benfica, where Alan was youth director and had four games as first team coach after his friend's acrimonious departure.

"People say he's my mate, and he is though we used to have some tremendous arguments playing squash, but he wouldn't employ me if he didn't trust me to do the job. In a sense it's even harder because there's pressure on him for taking me on in the first place.

"Graeme isn't the man many people perceive him to be. He's a loyal friend and a hard taskmaster even to his mates, but what he really has is presence.

"I think sometimes his PR isn't the best, that he comes over as a bit arrogant. I'm maybe a bit more easy going than him, more likely not to react instantly, but what he really has is presence. Steve Redgrave has presence, Seb Coe has presence, Kenny Dalglish has. All the top people have.

"In company that he trusts he can very easily let his hair down, but he's very wary of certain elements, those who exploit situations."

The manager has gone, sadly, by the time the conversation ends. Tony Parkes, ever faithful assistant, is drinking tea at the gaffers' table, Roy Tunks, goalkeeping coach, is essaying a feeble Geordie accent, fitness coach Phil Boersma hovers over the bird table.

Alan Murray wraps a verbal arm around the rejected Frenchman, admits it's the hardest part of the job - "that apart, I'm getting well paid for doing something I love."

Tomorrow he's back in Portugal, sifting the international with Wales, won't be back in time for the brains trust in the George and Dragon. "When I came back after two years with Benfica they were all still there,. Same seats, same faces, just a bit older and slower.

"Yarm will always be home to me now. If I can keep on working at Blackburn until it's time to win the golf club championship at Richmond, then I'll have been the luckiest lad alive."

the first player to be sent off at Wembley (Backtrack October 3) was the Yugoslav Bransislav Stankovic in the Olympic football final against Sweden in 1948.

The day before Wembley's swansong, Bill Moore from Coundon invites the identity of the eight current Nationwide League teams who have never played there.

Twin towering again next Tuesday