Around Palmerston Park, Dumfries home of Queen of the South and the only League ground in Britain named after a Prime Minister invasion bells have been ringing. The English are back.

Once they'd have lit beacons along the Solway Firth. Now there were website warnings, overflowing letters columns, dark messages from cyberspace.

If they'd wanted a team of Geordies, said one, they might as well have signed Jayne Middlemiss.

If the side were to be full of North-East lads, wrote another somewhat mysteriously the new shirts should be skin-tight and shirt-sleeved.

In the 1960s, the team they call the Doonhamers had become hame from hame for North-East players. Allan Ball, former Hetton miner and Stanley United goalkeeper, played a Scottish record 819 games for the same club 507 consecutively and now owns a thriving car sales business in the town of Rabbie Burns' passing.

Other Northern League players quickly followed, men like amateur international and former Shildon Works junior Michael Barker left back, and how they loved him Ray Wilkie, Billy Roughley and Arnold Coates, George Siddle, our old friend George Brown, Jimmy Davidson and John Murray, said to have a tackle like a bear trap.

Now Glasgow-born John Connolly, manager last season of Ashington in the Arnott Insurance Northern League second division, is Queens' new part-time boss. In the summer he'd signed a veritable Northern League Select Xl - six from Ashington - which also included leading second division scorer Paul Weatherson from Newcastle Blue Star and Jarrod Suddick, Stephen Pickering and Tony Nelson, a player euphemistically described as combative, from Tow Law.

"I just hope they don't mind being called English bastards when they go up north," said Alex Wilson, the Palmerston Park PA man. "We get called that and we're from bloody Dumfries."

Should Doonhamers' fans be feeling a little xenophobic, however, it may be nothing compared with those in Airdrie, where manager Steve Archibald has signed nine Spaniards.

The two sides have been drawn in the Cup. Nelson versus the Spanish Armada, they reckoned, bloodthirsty in the Blackmill Inn.

Connolly, a Scottish international formerly with Newcastle United, believes he has placated the sceptics. "I needed players quickly and these were the ones I knew.

"All right, a lot of them were from the Northern League second division but there are eight or nine good teams in that. I know Scottish fans would prefer home-bred players but I've no fear of these boys letting me down."

Now 50, still hugely enthusiastic, he is an advertising manager for Golf Monthly magazine, loved his time in the North-East. Though there are no longer pit shafts down which to summon centre forwards, he'd still go back for more.

On Saturday they began their Scottish second division season at Stenhousemuir, visiting fans little comforted by the knowledge that things could hardly be worse than last season.

Queens finished second bottom, saved from relegation only because of Scottish League restructuring and because Hamilton players struck while the ire was hot - also, coincidentally, at Stenhousemuir. For their temerity, the Accies had 15 points deducted.

Stenhousemuir's part of Falkirk these days, the 110-year-old Ochilview Park ground next to McCowan's Highland Toffee factory - the sticky end, as it were.

"What odds on Tony Nelson getting booked?" asked Sixer, ruminatively, as we passed.

Inside the ground, Queens' new manager was collared by a programme-waving fan, concerned not so much that the bookies had made the Doonhamers favourites for relegation but that the programme writer thought it worth a few shillings.

"Show it to the lads in the dressing room," insisted the fan.

"The more people write us off the better," said Connolly.

Another fan carried a full size inflatable referee, or strictly a semi-deflated referee, for reasons we were unable to ascertain.

"Bloody English," he said, in a Scottish accent where "Eng" rhymes with "Leng" - more intimidating that way.

Alex Wilson, who looked a bit like Danny Baker, reckoned it a standing joke in Dumfries - reckoned Allan Ball its instigator, in truth - that you could go to half the pubs on Tyneside and find a better team than Queens had fielded in recent years.

His replica shirt bore the emblem "A lore burne", the Scots' rallying cry from a much earlier cross-border invasion. "It's been like a breath of fresh air this summer; you can't get a game for Newcastle unless you're foreign, so they might as well come to Dumfries.

"Clyde had a new manager last season who brought in a lot of juniors and they won the league. This could be the equivalent for us, only from North-East England."

(In Scotland, it should be made clear, a junior is simply someone from outside the senior league. Several of the pilgrims are closer the over-40s league than the under-21s.).

Alex was prepared to give them time, or at least until half-time. "Being born Scottish is the first prize in life's lottery. If these boys get us up, we'll make them honorary Scots."

Davey Hewitt, known thereabouts as Lord Haw-Haw, agreed. "You can bring in Scottish has-beens or North-East unknowns. I reckon if we had 11 players from the North-East who were mediocre, but honest, that would do us."

They began, in the event, with just five - Nelson, Weatherson, Jon Sunderland from Ashington, Andy Martin from Tow Law and Warren Hawke, who'd been in Sunderland's 1992 FA Cup final side and kicked around Scotland for several years thereafter.

Two more Ashington lads warmed the bench; former Whitby Town man Warren Pearson was coach.

Stenhousemuir, the Warriors, scored after 17 minutes, again after 24 - a Scot, ironically, called English - a third before half-time.

Queens seemed not so much Doonhamers as total strangers - oftcumdens, as they say in Yorkshire - kept in sight only by a goalie from Kirkcudbright.

You could tell the Scots, anyway. They were all called Jimmy.

"Defence shocking, midfield non-existent, only damage limitation now," said Alex Wilson, in the stand. A language barrier behind the goal made it impossible to understand precisely what visiting fans made of it, the only clearly understandable word one that may on no account be repeated.

Queens, it seemed, had abdicated after 45 minutes. Though play had re-started, two fans behind the goal were more intent on a conversation about computers, and a damn sight more inter-active than the visiting back four.

After 67 minutes, however, Queens scored.

Five minutes later Mr Nelson was sent off, and for what seemed the same offence - stamping on an opponent - for which he made an unscheduled departure from Tow Law's FA Vase final at Wembley.

Soon - ten men, ten minutes - they'd scored twice more, a hesitant Anglo-Scottish chorus of Blaydon races strangled at birth by the Warriors' 89th-minute winner.

The inflatable referee took a kick in the rule 12s, the fans shuffled miserably out of the sticky end, Alex Wilson thought the Geordie boys might still play a telling part.

Stenhousemuir 4 North-East Select X1 3, and not too much lost in the translation.

..... the player sent off for the first time in his 971st Football League game (Backtrack, August 4) was Peter Shilton, then with Plymouth Argyle.

Today back to the equally long-serving Allan Ball, cautioned one December 25 for the only time in his career.

"I said 'Something-something Jesus Christ'," he recalls. "Booked for blasphemy on Christmas Day."

He also remains one of only two Englishmen to have represented the Scottish League - readers may care to recall the other one.

We return, with memories of Sunderland's singing winger, on Friday