BRIEFLY, for these columns overflow, we mentioned last week the death of Dave Dale, a passionate football man and a genuinely great lad.

Thereafter a couple of beers in the Boro with Peter Livingstone, Dave’s close friend and fellow fighter, elicits the wonderful story of how Davey got his hands on the European Cup.

A south banker but not strictly a South Banker – he was from North Ormesby, at least a mile away – Dave had latterly worked in Worcestershire. One evening, as you do, he got talking football to a feller in the pub.

Dave and Peter were not only committed to reinvigorating South Bank FC, formed in 1868 and the region’s oldest football club, but jointly organised the Ellis Cup, a handsome piece of silverware first contested by Teesside clubs in 1889.

The Ellis had been coveted as the inaugural Football League Cup in the 1960s, an approach rejected by Bankers’ chairman Jack Kidd. Famously, the league then crossed the river and secured the Haverton Hill Shipowners’ Cup instead.

Davey, at any rate, was telling the chap in the pub how magnificent the Ellis Cup was. The other guy said to be there the following evening, when he’d bring in a trophy yet more splendid.

Good as his word, he walked in with the European Cup, or least a faithful replica. He was Gordon Cowans, a Co Durham lad named PFA Young Player of the Year in 1979, capped ten times by England and in the Villa side which conquered Europe in 1982.

Though born in 1958 in West Cornforth, near Ferryhill, Cowans played for Mansfield schools – raising the likelihood of a pitman father who, with many others, had migrated to Nottinghamshire to find work.

Coincidence, no doubt, both West Cornforth and Doggy are known locally as Doggy: two doggies, one tale.

Dave had worked for British Steel in South Bank, devoting much of his spare time – and some of the company’s – to football. “I doubt if he ever did a complete 2-10 shift, especially on a Sunday” says Peter. “Sunday nights were bingo in the clubhouse. Davey was needed.”

Together they worked to keep alive the famous old club of which Dave had been chairman in the 1980s, dreamed of a return to the Northern League from which the Bankers had been suspended in 1993, treasured the Ellis, were writing the history of both club and cup.

South Bank now play in the Stockton Sunday League, but on a ground with no facilities save white lines. “The council says we’re a priority,” says Peter. “We’ve been a priority the past ten years. I think I might have to win the National Lottery.”

And the European Cup? “Dave still told Gordon Cowans that the Ellis Cup was better.”

BACK to the Boro on Monday evening for the North Riding Senior Cup final, 1,400 in the Riverside Stadium. The trophy was first contested in 1881-82, South Bank winners on eight occasions but only once since the war. Middlesbrough have lifted it 55 times, Scarborough 20 and York City ten. More inexplicably, Stockton are eight-time winners while Darlington and Billingham Synthonia have three apiece – and all three are firmly in Co Durham. No such worries on Monday: Whitby Town 3 Pickering 1.

THE eulogist at Eric Henderson’s funeral in Marske last Wednesday recalled the infamous occasion in 1963 when a “friendly” between Scotland and Austria became almost a declaration of war.

Eric was one of the linesmen, Jim Finney the referee. Horst Kemel had already been sent off for spitting at the ref, Erich Hof for “a diabolical tackle at waist height” when, after 79 minutes, Finney decided that he’d seen enough and headed down the tunnel.

That Denis Law had just kicked a lump the size of the Stone of Scone out of a defender may also have had something to do with it.

“I felt that I had to abandon the match or someone would have been seriously hurt,” said Finney.

Eric had had a heart bypass when he was 72, lived another 22 years to tell the tale. The 99,596 in Hampden Park probably wouldn’t have forgotten it, either.

CHELSEA'S Premiership triumph propels Marcus Alonso and Victor Moses to the top six of an all-time table matching appearances to points over a top flight season. Alonso averages 2.655, Moses 2.643. Assuming three points for a win, Scottish international James Hannah of Sunderland remains top with 2.727. Sunderland finished top of the only division with 21 wins and 96 goals in their 26 games. It was 1891-92. Times change.

….AND finally, the five teams who’ve dropped from the Premiership to the fourth tier of English football (Backtrack, May 11) are Swindon, Bradford City, Blackpool, Portsmouth and now Coventry City.

Today back to the Riverside Stadium where posters in the gent’s (as doubtless elsewhere) proclaim that Ramsdens, the long-time principal sponsor, sell jewellery and buy gold. What do they that the company doesn’t sell?

All that glisters? Once again at the end of the Railroad to Wembley, the column returns next week.