THEY held last week’s dinner at the Village Hotel on a North Tyneside business park. It was organised by the Fairs Club, formed in 2006 in a bid to ensure that if Magpies fans only had memories to live on, at least they’d do it in style.

Last year, outside St James’ Park, they erected a £10,000 brass plaque, weighing half a ton, in memory of Joe Harvey, who died in 1989.

Bill Gibbs, the Fairs Club chairman, was a 19-year-old shipyard worker – “£3 5s 4d a week,” he remembers – in 1969. He was at the first leg, had visa problems ahead of the second, probably couldn’t have gone, anyway. “The package was £15 10s 6d.” After victory in Budapest, he recalls that they all just went home. “We’d been drinking all day. It was just ultra, fantastic.” He awaits another silver celebration.

“In my lifetime? It’s not looking very much like it, is it?”

IT’S a brilliant occasion, wonderfully well organised.

Jackie Sinclair died in 2009, Benny Arentoft can’t make it.

All the rest are there. Bearing gifts, Ujpest players Laszlo Fazekas and Antal Dunai are there, too, the latter having flown from Amsterdam to Aberdeen and still in Newcastle on time.

Fazekas is hobbling a bit. “We did our job,” jokes Bob Moncur.

“We thought that after Leeds United, Newcastle would be no problem,” admits Fazekas.

“It turned out to be a very big mistake.” Among other former players is Vic Keeble, the only survivor of the 1955 FA Cup winning side, now living near Colchester.

We fall to reminiscing about the late Hal Mason, Colchester United’s long-time programme editor, who spent every summer holiday in Tow Law.

Tony Green, another all-time St James’ Park favourite, still serves on the Pools Panel – even in summer. “You’d be surprised how many Australian matches get called off,” he says.

There, too, are North-East journalists John Gibson, Doug Weatherall and Bob Cass, all in Budapest for the moment of victory though in Bob’s case, not quite as expected.

New to the Sunday Sun, too late to apply for a press pass, he persuaded the editor to let him go f the highest order” – but still hadn’t a match ticket.

Joe Harvey not only got him into the ground and, since it was the only seat available, let Bob sit beside him on the bench.

They chain smoked in unison – these days the Newcastle papers aren’t allowed in the press box.

It also allowed insight into Harvey’s tactical nous.

“Foggon,” he told the young sub, “get on there and run your bollocks off.”

He did, Newcastle United did.

Forty-five years later they talk of little else, and only partly because there’s little else of which to talk. EXACTLY a year ago, we wrote of John Morton’s final bow – Stanhope Town v Howden-le-Wear Australian – after 43 years as a referee. The whistle was still willing, but the knees were shot.

The sequel isn’t just that he’s still been laying down the law this season – “only if they’re really short”

– but that he’s won two top FA accolades.

At a ceremony on July 7, he’ll pick up the Community People’s Choice awards both for County Durham and for the whole of the North-East and Yorkshire.

“It was completely out of the blue,” says John – Jackie to most in football. He’s 67, began refereeing in 1970, joined the Darlington and District League committee a year later, became a Wear Valley Sunday League man in 1995 and league secretary in 2008. He’s also a leading member of the Durham FA.

One of a declining number of Sabbath leagues, the Wear Valley pays clubs’ affiliation and league fees, gives them footballs with which to play and next season will add free first aid kits with which to address the results. “It’s all about trying to keep clubs going. There are a lot falling by the wayside,” says John.

Back in May 2013, they made a handsome presentation in Stanhope Club. The arthritis had finished him – “the doctor says it’s bone on bone now” – said John, from Bishop Auckland.

So what does the ever-supportive Helen say when he packs his kit bag one more time? “She just says, ‘Get out’,” says John.

MIKE Tracey, who scored twice in Crook Town’s FA Amateur Cup final win over Barnet in 1959, died on Friday. He was 79, and had been one of 13 children.

Previously with Corinthian Casuals, he joined Crook after being articled to Marquis Penna, a firm of solicitors in the town’s market place.

He later played for Luton Town, his career effectively ended by a non-malicious tackle by the great Charlie Hurley.

“He was one of those people who was just good at all sports, from golf to snooker,” says his friend Ian White, secretary of Northern League club Penrith.

After practising in Worksop, he moved to Ireland 30 years ago. “Though he didn’t officially work in the law there must have been people at his door seeking advice almost every day,”

says Ian. “He never charged a penny.”

In the Irish way of things, his funeral was on Monday, three days after his death.

FOLLOWING last week’s note on Fleetwood’s promotion, Eric Smallwood in Acklam, Middlesbrough, points out that though the club’s ground may still be called Highbury, its location has changed. We’d also noted that there was a ferry from Fleetwood to Knott End on Sea, which Eric reckons well worth the passage. “There’s a brill café,” he adds.

LAST week’s anticipated Feversham Cricket League trip to Spout House, playground of royalty, was unsurprisingly washed out. On that most vertiginous of cricket grounds they were up to the oxters already.

Firstly, and without telling the club, the ground owners dug a drainage trench inside the length of the top wall – the problem with that being that the top wall’s the boundary.

Then veteran opener Paul Donaldson was working in a trench elsewhere when it collapsed on him, resulting in fractures to three ribs, both collar bones and his breastbone.

Finally they managed a league match at Slingsby, near Malton, which had to be abandoned after Spout fielder Richard Parker broke his ankle in an unsuccessful chase to the boundary. The paramedics took 90 minutes to arrive, the ambulance two hours.

Spout’s between Stokesley and Helmsley, the visit rearranged for July 1. By then, it’s to be hoped, the clouds will finally have lifted.

LAST week’s note on ukulele king George Formby, who may (or may not) have played football for Annfield Plain, prompts David Walsh to recall that Formby was one of few Britons to win the Order of Lenin.

His spy comedy Let George Do It proved a massive hit in Moscow, albeit with the title changed to Dinky Doos – “”not I would have thought a well known phrase in the Politburo,” says David.

We’d also mentioned a Formby statue on the Isle of Man – depicting Formby in crash helmet and leathers, says Bill Bartle in Barnard Castle, and commemorating the film No Limit made during the 1935 TT Races.

Up until the late 1960s, adds Bill, the film was always shown in Douglas during TT week. “A bit like the Rocky Horror Show, the audience would join in the dialogue, knowing it almost off by heart.”

…and finally, English football’s frirst £2m transfer (Backtrack, May 29) was Paul Gascoigne’s move from Newcastle United to Spurs.

Still with Tottenham, Gavin Ledwith in West Rainton asks what links the Spurs sackings of Ossie Ardiles, George Graham, Christian Gross, Harry Redknapp and Tim Sherwood.

Still in a job, the answer to that one next week.