The relentless argument over the difference between a sport and a game may at last be resolved: the night before the big one, top-class sports players are usually turning in by three o'clock.

Dominoes is different. Seeking their fifth British 5s and 3s singles title in seven years on Saturday, most of the lads from the Grey Horse in Darlington didn't get to bed until 4.30am, and then not always in the bed that had been intended.

It may help explain why big Norman Kent became the first man in history to undergo a fitness test before a game of dominoes - having damaged his knee in a darkest hour fall - and why thereafter he stood his dominoes on end, like toy soldiers on uncertain sentry duty. He'd also hurt his hands.

"I wouldn't care, it was my good knee an' all, I've just had an operation on the bad 'un," said Norman, a cross between Patrick Moore and Ian Paisley - and like the xylophone playing astronomer, in much demand as a musician. Norman plays the organ; Ian Paisley just plays hell.

"He just overbalanced, it's all those double sixes he carries in his trouser pocket," said team captain Tony White, who for the occasion had had a haircut of the sort last seen on a prison ship bound for the antipodes.

For the past 20 years the British championships have been held in Bridlington, that resort's hoteliers having made their beds and needing, come November, someone to lie on them.

Singles, doubles and "combinations" take place on separate occasions. The Grey Horse have won two other titles, but singles is the big one. "By far the best team in the UK," claimed Saturday's programme, anxious to disprove the theory that dominoes is all luck.

Derrick White, the skipper's brother, lives by the mantra that any fool can play a good hand but that it takes a decent player to play a bad 'un.

Norman Kent says it's about not taking chances - "Give them nowt" - while Colin Stainsby, known as God, moves in a mysterious way, his many wonders to perform.

Paul Ramshaw recalled an open night at his daughter's Roman Catholic primary school at which one of the nuns mentioned that she liked a game of dominoes and suggested they have a game some time.

"Mind," joked the sister, "I have God on my side."

"Funny," said Paul, "I thought we had."

Saturday breaks bitter in Brid; the championships start at 10.30am and will run - stagger? - well into the evening. Big Norman's reluctant to get out of bed - "You should have seen him in his Y-fronts," says Tony, "white, black and blue".

Though it may be the beer talking, estimates put the night's consumption at 24 pints each. Only Derrick White has been in bed early, his brother wholly unable to find his appointed room and bunking in a team-mate's.

"We even played I-Spy in the dark," says Paul Ramshaw. Their average age is probably 60; on finals weekend they're 21 again.

There are 64 teams, each with nine players. Seven play in any round - best of five games, 61 holes on the crib board, nine dominoes each.

"We wouldn't win so often if it was the best 64 teams in Darlington," says Tony. "There's more good domino players in Darlington than in the rest of the country put together."

The column arrives after the first round, Grey Horse v the Dolphin from Llanymynech.

Keith Masters, the dinner-suited chief organiser, reports that the Welshmen have flogged the dead Horse. There's an offence these days called causing harassment, fear or distress. We're about to call the police when Keith realises his mistake, and blames the MC.

"He always does," says the MC, cheerfully.

The Spa Royal Hall is part of a better-days entertainment complex on the goose-grey sea front. Sleeping Beauty rouses herself from December 18 - King Crumble and Nurse Tilly Lint also on stage - with several other forthcoming attractions prominently advertised outside.

The British Dominoes Championships aren't even in the small print, nor in the morning papers, nor even in the Bridlington Free Press (45p). Fifteen years ago, 1400 teams sought to qualify for the last 64, this year there were 140.

Keith Masters blames the lack of young people, the drink driving laws, the expense and the almost total absence of media interest. "There are probably more dominoes players than darts players, but they just tell us it wouldn't make good television."

Derrick White recalls that Tyne Tees Television once sent Wincey Willis, its weather girl, to the finals. "She took me down to the sands," he says, wistfully. "Unfortunately she only wanted to talk about anticyclones."

Grey Horse landlord John Wood can't even get sponsorship from the brewery. "We're the country's best dominoes team. If we were Sunday morning footballers, they'd be falling over us. I asked the rep about a few poxy T-shirts and out came the lap-top. I told him not to bother."

Other teams have fared better. One team shirt bears the slogan "World Leaders In Domino Technology."

Derrick's been playing league dominoes for 51 years, prosaically supposes that it's just another night out, still keeps himself right (as probably they say in Darlington) for all that.

He's on morning coffee, Tony and others topping up on cider, Norman Kent and Colin Stainsby on Lucozade Sport, femmer relief. "Look at Kenty," someone says, "knows all there is to be known about 5s and 3s and can't even open a Lucozade bottle."

Keith Masters says he wouldn't bet, once again, against the Grey Horse. "There's a magic, an aura, about them. You'd expect a really good team to win maybe 65-70 per cent of their games, but these lads consistently win 80 or 90 per cent. You can't cheat at singles, they're the best team in Britain without a shadow of a doubt."

Games are played simultaneously, the constant shuffling like a centenarians' convention. It's the rattle not of simple men but of single minded ones. When you get as far as the Spa, 5s and 3s adds up to serious fun.

Tony White, 80 or 90 per cent proof, compares the joy of dominoes to the joy of sex. "It's just that these days, dominoes takes a little bit longer."

In the second round they're embroiled with the Drunken Duck, from Walsall, in the last 16 drawn against Coventry CDA. Mostly it's thoroughly good natured, though there was an incident at the "combinations" in September which led to a player being banned under several of the rules which cover good behaviour.

"There's bound to be a little bit of green-eyed God, you get it any sport when you're doing so well," says Tony.

He's undecided whether to play Wilf Parkinson or brother Derek in the quarter-final, calls a round-table meeting of senior players and opts for Derek.

"He's a better shuffler," says Tony.

"It's because I'm boring, drinking orange juice," says Wilf, but takes it in great good part. They're winning 4-1 when the last two concede.

It's 4.30pm and the column has to be off to make the annual, now almost perennial, presentations at Stafford Place Cricket Club in Thornaby.

We wish them well. "Win or lose," says Tony, "we'll probably have a drink."

Though it may be shorter, and swifter, by sea, Bridlington to Thornaby involves four train journeys, changing at Scarborough, York and Darlington. Three of them are late. It's nine o'clock before the glad handing can begin.

Though just sixth in the Langbaurgh League, they won the Gjers Cup - Stafford Place pronounces it "Jeers" - with an epic victory over Broughton and Kirby described epically by our old friend Brent "Bomber" Smith.

Dave Metcalfe takes the batting award by several nautical miles, Steve Livingstone pips Bomber for the bowling trophy by virtue of having a ten-year-old from Hutton Rudby caught off the last ball of the last game.

Bomber, now 53, takes it like a true sportsman. "Next time I see that kid," he says, "I'm going to beat his brains in."

The Grey Horse, Sunday lunchtime. Cheese and pickles are on the bar, the British championship trophy, bright burnished and beribboned, behind it.

Home the heroes, most of the lads are drinking quietly in the corner. Big Norman is playing 5s and 3s. Old habits.

The final had been against a team from West Bromwich, Grey Horse trailing 3-1 with three legs to play.

Wilf Parkinson and Colin Stainsby had made it 3-3, Colin maintaining his 100 per cent record. Norman, playing through the pain barrier, had been left with the deciding leg to stand on.

"That's where their lad made a mistake," jokes the skipper. "He went to the toilet when it was Norman's down."

Norman's game took an hour and a half, the final ending at 9pm, dancing thereafter to a band appropriately named Rapture. Tommy Corrie, it is reported, was bopping like a good 'un, pint of cider in each hand and never spilling a drop.

"That's because he'd bought them himself," says Paul Ramshaw.

It's their fifth British singles championship in seven years. Only white horses are lucky.

And finally...

The team which achieved Football League status after a second vote at the 1978 annual meeting (Backtrack, November 25) was Wigan Athletic. (And, baby, look at them now.)

John Briggs in Darlington today seeks the identity of the international footballer who scored ten goals in his native country, signed for a top Premiership club but netted only once. After failing to score for another European club, though he did get one for his country, he returned to the Premiership and scored just once.

The score, but no more knocking copy, on Friday.

Published: 29/11/2005