HALF-an-hour before kick-off and Bill Penman, Crook Town’s indefatigable vice-chairman, is standing just inside the turnstiles at the historic and much loved Millfield ground.

“Now then, Bill, how’s things?”

“Bloody awful,” says Bill.

Immediately behind him, a young lad is trying to sell match programmes, with which they’re giving away copies of the brochure produced to mark promotion from the Northern League second division in 2012-13.

Apparently it’s part of his Duke of Edinburgh award, the gallant young un having chosen to sell programmes to a measly crowd on a miserable afternoon rather than something relatively easy like (say) climbing Scafell Pike.

The vice-chairman has a point. Once one of the most famous non-league clubs in the land, five-times FA Amateur Cup winners and five-times Northern League champions, Crook have fallen into a pretty desperate abyss.

After two struggling seasons back in the NL first division they were again relegated, won just one of their 42 games the following season and were 18th out of 22 last year.

Before Saturday’s match with Thornaby, they’ve not won since mid-October, conceded 22 goals in the last three games, drawn crowds that wouldn’t even overflow the netty and appointed another new manager.

“We don’t keep managers here,” someone says. “They just sign the visitors’ book.”

The team’s been disappointing, some supposing that the best summer signing was Roxy Wilkinson as clubhouse stewardess – “young, bonny and outrageous,” says Bill.

Outrageous? “You should see her tattoos.”

They’re second bottom. Should they stay there, the threat is of relegation to the Wearside League, the talk among the faithful few no longer of silverware but of the hope that football’s curious workings might somehow jam the trapdoor.

“It’s bloody hard, to be blunt,” says programme editor and former Frankland prison governor Dave Thompson, who produces the programme from Australia.

Bill Penman’s blunter yet. “My own opinion is that if we went down into the Wearside League we wouldn’t survive. No offence to it, but it’s a very hard place to get out of.

“The council have been pestering us for years to build houses on this ground. If we’re relegated they might get their way. Things are as difficult as that.”

Ah, but the good old days. Older hands recall tours of India, Spain and Norway, floodlights inaugurated in a match against the Manchester City first team, gates regularly topping 10,000 for FA Cup and Amateur Cup ties – the highest an estimated 19,000 on February 23 1952 against Walton and Hersham.

Bill Penman was 12. “Five turnstiles and still the double gates went ower. There was a small foundry and some cottages on the far side and we all sat on the roofs. Even when they could have got in for nothing, the miners still chucked their tanners into the bucket.”

Club chairman Vince Kirkup – “fleeing about like an idiot” he says – is recovering from a seventh gall stones operation, one of those smile-for-the-camera jobs.

“Down the throat, into the duodenum and then the common bile duct,” he says, though it’s probably not as gruesome as the recent history of Crook Town FC.

The fans, he admits, are getting a bit fed up – “I’m thinking of buying a grumpometer. We’ll always struggle unless we can get some new blood.”

Bill’s back with the £5-a-time gate money. “£120, just about enough to pay the match officials,” he says.

A more assiduous correspondent would count the crowd, by way of putting in a few seconds.

Suffice that on the near-goal terrace, which once thrummed and thronged with thousands, there are precisely eight men and, yes, a dog.

A few more gather beneath the 92-year-old stand, still bravely turned out in unchanging amber and black.

Among them are Dawn and Jeff Patterson and their 17-year-old daughter, named Amber as a sort of birth mark and faithful ever since.

“The only difference now is that I have to wait while she puts her make-up on,” says Jeff, who remembers as a boy playing hide and seek among the crowd.

Now his mates call him Dark Cloud.

Oh aye? “I think it’s because I’m so gloomy,” says Jeff.

The afternoon’s not very clever, either, the tea hut – called Only Foods and Sauces – alone likely to offer much comfort.

In the little guest room beneath the stand, an honours board records the five FA Amateur Cup wins and waits eternally for a sixth.

Retired hairdresser and club historian Michael Manuel, a youngster at four of the successful finals between 1954-64, accepts that times change. “We’ve no millionaires in Crook, no big industrialists any more, not really much money at all.

“There’ll be more people in Crook sitting in the pub watching Sunderland and Newcastle on dodgy television than there will at the match today.

“I know there’s talk about building houses, but if the ground’s still here when I go, I’m going to have my ashes scattered on the centre circle. They can build their houses then. I’ll come back and haunt the buggers.”

New manager Wilf Constantine has managed seven or eight Northern League clubs in the past 25 years, most recently Esh Winning, whom he helped save from relegation last season.

“I seem always to get that sort of job. People are starting to call me Big Sam but saving Crook from relegation is the reason I came. It would be unthinkable not to have them in the Northern League.”

His team shows nine changes from the one beaten 7-0 the week previously, the six new signings including Ethan Payne, who last played in Indianapolis and had to receive international clearance. “Crook’s the one I had to come back for,” he says.

They’ve also signed Christian Holliday, who sounds a bit like a week in the Lakes with the church youth club but who answers universally to Bisto, allegedly because of his gravy expertise as an Army chef.

The first half’s goalless. Early in the second, Callum Johnson – known, perhaps ironically, as Smiler – puts Crook ahead.

Behind the goal, Michael Manuel seems to be quite excited. “Excited?” he says. “I’m berserk.”

“We can only get beat 10-1 now,” says Bill.

Peter Brown grabs a second, Bisto makes it three in the last minute, spectators so chuffed that in the post-match clubhouse they even manage to sell a complete domino card.

If one swallow doesn’t make a summer, it doesn’t half do wonders for a mid-winter afternoon.

“It’s a massive win for us, massive. Who knows what this could start,” says the chairman.

“Bloody marvellous,” says Bill.

  • Crook Town FC would love to hear from potential sponsors, supporters or helpers. Vince Kirkup’s on 07805 163244. Clubhouse functions can be booked through Roxy Wilkinson on 07854 514123.