THE piece two weeks ago on former goalkeeper John Hope – Darlington, Newcastle United, Sheffield United and Hartlepool – stirred memories for Joe Coates of their junior school team days together back in Shildon.

Particularly, Joe recalls a cup final against St Helen’s – “virtually unbeatable at the time” – which Shildon Council School, as it was known, won thanks to their goalie. “Hopey was a great keeper,” says Joe.

They also played together for Darlington Reserves before Joe went off to teacher training college. He’s now in Scarborough, where the seventh in his North Bay Railway series of children’s books will be launched at this weekend’s train gala from 11am to 4.30pm on Saturday and noon to 4.30pm on Sunday.

Illustrated with photographs by Bernard Dixon, this one’s about Georgina, a new arrival at North Bay.

Joe also recalls two other stand-out keepers from his school days. One’s Henry Nicholson – now a Durham county councillor for the town and a former mayor – the other, honest, is me. “You were very hard to get a shot past,” he insists.

That’s coincidental because Steve Newton spots that Edinburgh City’s goalie in last weekend’s Scottish League play-off win against East Stirling was also called Amos. “I knew you were retiring as Northern League chairman,” says Steve, “but I didn’t know the reason was to be a Scottish goalkeeper.”

LEST they end up on the shelf, Tom Peacock rings about an overflowing box of rather older volumes that’s just been donated to the incomparable Lions Bookshop in Darlington.

Most are 1960s Soccer Book Club hardbacks by players like Bobby Charlton, Ronnie Clayton, Billy Liddell and Dave Mackay. Ghosts, like skeletons, were left in the cupboard.

Top referee Arthur Ellis’s autobiography is called The Final Whistle, Frank Taylor’s book on the Munich disaster – The Day a Team Died – is there, too.

Among those the column takes home is an autobiography by Aston Villa star Peter McParland, a consolation prize for former Northern League chaplain Canon Leo Osborn, who’s at the Guisborough match that evening.

Leo is Christendom’s No 1 Villa fan. Charlotte, his wife, is little less passionate about Norwich City. “We suffer together,” he said.

The bookshop’s at the end of Houndgate Mews. Everything’s 50p.

SHARP eyed amid the six-point, Martin Birtle spots in the Wearside League results in last Thursday’s paper the unlucky-for-some scoreline Annfield Plain 0 Redcard Athletic 13. They sound like a rough lot, he says.

LAST week’s column included a piece on the Walk of Champions around sunny Shildon, the final stage of the Last Legs Challenge.

That same morning I was back in Shildon for a meeting of the Durham Amateur Football Trust who, flatteringly, plan a July exhibition at the National Railway Museum to mark my 20 years as Northern League chairman.

Keith Belton, the trust’s indefatigable chairman, is also producing three large wall hangings depicting 27 years of Northern League magazine covers.

Though handsome in their own image, the posters also appear to have attracted interlopers as disparate as Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men and Christine Keeler (who, it might be said, make strange bedfellows.)

Keith’s unrepentant. “Oh aye, all sorts of women in there,” he says. The Durham Amateur Football Trust’s acronym is DAFT.

SHILDON’S splendid season had been completed the previous evening with a penalty shoot-out victory over Marske United in the Northern League Cup final.

These days the cup’s sponsored by Camerons Brewery, whose chairman David Soley was there to make the presentations – though his mind may have been elsewhere.

David’s also a Sunderland season ticket holder, the life-saver at the Stadium of Light over before the shoot-out was. “It’s been a good night,” he said.

THE final match at West Ham United’s Boleyn Ground, as formally it is known, served as a reminder of the column’s first – and only – visit. It was January 2004, Hammers v Chester-le-Street in the last 32 of the FA Youth Cup.

Chester-le-Street general manager Joe Burlison had been persuaded to be Radio Newcastle’s expert summariser for the night, prompting the suggestion of a sweep on how many times in 90 minutes the BBC would have to employ its infamous bleeper.

“Bugger that,” said Joe.

….and finally, last week’s column sought the identity of the only footballer to have scored in the Premiership, Championship, Leagues One and Two, FA and League Cups and for his country. As David Moyes in Darlington was first to twig, it was Robert Earnshaw.

Graham Phelps today invites readers to name the first cricketer, excluding wicket-keepers, to take 100 Test match catches.

Sunday’s the FA Vase final – Hereford v Morpeth Town and terminus for the eighth successive season of the Railroad to Wembley. It’s also a big day for former Hartlepool United and Sunderland favourite Tommy Miller – Shotton Colliery lad, 37 – now assistant manager of Halifax Town, who follow in the Trophy final.

More on Morpeth next time.