Ebac Northern League chairman Mike Amos recalls some painful hands-off experiences

IT’S possible that my membership of the Goalkeepers’ Union has lapsed. It’s possible, even though it’s said that you have to be mad to be goalkeeper, that it was laughed out of court.

Like Andrew Grainger, I was a goalie, nonetheless. It’s just that one of us was maybe a bit better than the other.

Probably I kept goal because it was where they put the fat kid.

Probably it was compounded by being the fit kid in beer-bottle glasses.

The fat kid with beer-bottle glasses and the hand-eye co-ordination of an under-performing elephant.

At school we once played a crucial house match in which I performed particularly badly. At house prayers the following morning – yes, we still had them – the housemaster rose to offer a report on the debacle.

He was a Methodist local preacher, a devout and sincere man accustomed to public speaking – but on that occasion words failed him.

“That bloody Amos,” he began, and retreated to his history class.

Getting on 20 years later, I was between the sticks for The Northern Echo in a match of thinly-disguised press gang warfare against the Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough.

Testament to innate inability, my secretary – ah yes, those were the days – had embroidered a flying pig onto the back of my Bukta goalkeeper’s jersey.

Many supposed that the original Flying Pig was Liverpool’s Scottish international keeper Tommy Lawrence.

Several Northern League men of similar girth and commensurate ability – not least the late and much lamented Stephen Tierney of Billingham Synthonia and Horden – come to mind.

The Gazette match, at any rate, was less than a minute old when a long ball was hoofed hopefully towards my penalty area. Up until that point I hadn’t so much as touched the thing – and neither had the opposing centre forward, a photographer who made me resemble Twiggy by comparison.

“Keeper,” I shouted, and lumbered myopically towards it.

“Blow that,” said the centre forward – or words to that effect – and stampeded like a herd of hippopotami in the opposite direction. The collision was akin to Big Daddy meeting Giant Haystacks: neither of us got anywhere near the ball.

I vaguely recall being taken to the dressing room supported on my elder son’s pushchair, thereafter to Sunday morning casualty at Darlington Memorial. The doctor counted to two, did all the other tests, did wonder about the significance of a flying pig on the back of my jumper.

The diagnosis was swift. “Mr Amos,” he said, “there is nothing seriously wrong with you, but if you want to keep fit in future I would stick to jogging.”

That’s why I so admire Andrew Grainger. He’s a bit better than I was. In truth, I’m many times on the record as supposing that, for the past ten years, he’s been the Northern League’s best goalkeeper.

He’s very agile, incredibly brave, wonderfully loyal, perhaps surprisingly articulate – you know what they say about goalkeepers – and, maybe best of all, a thoroughly nice man. May his richly-earned benefit be a success in every way.

Sooner or later, of course, the guy will decide to use his gloves for gardening.

He’s going to be an awfully hard act to follow – but if Benfield ever need a replacement, my number’s in the league handbook.