Inverness Clachnacuddin, perennially familiar on the pools coupons, are again just one game from the jackpot. The Scottish Cup first round proper, anyway.

The Gaelic name means something about the place of the washing stones; the reality is less romantic. Inverness also has a prison, in appearance altogether more inviting than Clachnacuddin's clubhouse.

Top of the Highland League, ahead of the likes of Forres Mechanics and Inverurie Locos, Clach played Wick Academy in a qualifier, the match officials famously sponsored by Specsavers.

The referee at Esh Winning the other night suggested that the Albany Northern League chairman had lost two stones. Perhaps the ANL should see an optician, an' all.

Clachnacuddin play at the Grant Street stadium, in the penal part of town, a truly vintage cover over one end accompanied by a warning that the roof will not hold any person's weight and by several gaping holes, as if to underline the danger.

Uniquely in the Highland League, it's said, the walls are also topped with razor wire, though whether to keep them in or out we were unable to discover.

The home side, bereft after the marriage between Caledonian and Thistle, were clearly superior. Though instructions from the dug-out may in those parts lose something in the translation, it may not have helped that two of the Academy's star pupils appeared to be called Mary and Daisy.

The rest were called Wee Man.

Admission was £5, programme £1, the first better value than the second. Encouraged by a drummer in a cadaverous mask, defied by an outstanding goalkeeper, the home side won 2-0: canny Clach, wick Academy.

Up the A9 in Dingwall, Ross County - they with the supporters club branch in Crook - were in action against neighbours Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

Forever remembered for their role in sports journalism's greatest ever headline - Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious - Thistle may now be in line for an All Time Intro award.

The Scottish edition of the Sunday Times began its derby match report: "After a surreal pre-match stunt involving a window cleaner who is to marry his ladders at Gretna Green...."

Stuart Laundy, who married on a Friday so he could open the batting for Ingleton on the Saturday, has pitched wicket on Orkney, where he averages 92.7.

"Seven games, four 50s, three not outs. They'll be amazed in the Darlington and District League," says the 36-year-old.

Opportunities are limited, however, since any opposition must travel by boat or air. Caithness came, batted first, and were all out for 52. The islanders knocked them off in ten overs.

"There was time for a pretty good drink before the ferry went back," said Stuart, a journalist who is now head lad on The Orcadian.

Usually Orkney's cricketers play against each other, England v Scotland. England win, of course.

Early September, we met in a pub in Kirkwall where the juke box persistently played The Pogues' Christmas in New York as a reminder that Orkney's dark nights draw dramatically in. Much more of how Stuart landed on Orkney in the John North column on Thursday.

Much excitement on the Island of Lewis, meanwhile, where for the first time two local sides were contesting the final of the Highland FA Cup and last week's Stornoway Gazette devoted an eight page pull-out to the occasion. Early rounds are now regionalised after an Orkney team were drawn on Lewis in a game watched by a man and several hundred sheep and were obliged to charter a plane to get there. It cost them £2000.

Another drop in the ocean, the October issue of Winger magazine reports on the football section of the Island Games, claimed to follow the Corinthian ideal that competing is more important than winning.

It was perhaps unfortunate, therefore, that Rhodes had two men red carded against Guernsey, that the other nine had to be ordered to return to the pitch by a Greek Orthodox priest, and that three others were subsequently sent off. Six to go, the match was abandoned.

Fifteen teams, including Orkney, entered the competition for teams with a population of under 200,000. Sark, which has 500, lost 19-0 to Gibraltar - which may not be an island at all - 20-0 to the Isle of Wight and 16-0 to Greenland before bottoming out in the last place play-off, losing 15-0 to Froya.

The next Games will be on the Shetlands in 2005. Distance and a lack of match practice, says Winger, may make Sark's continued participation improbable. Rhodes may simply be chucked out.

Southbound on Saturday, we looked into Alnwick where Bob Johnson - Tyne Tees Television weather man and king of Hearts fans - also watched the Albany Northern League match with Murton.

"Hearts haven't a match," he said.

A couple of weeks earlier, Bob and grandson Calum had been to Berwick v Stranraer, where sticks of celery where thrown at the visitors as they took the field.

"Apparently it's tradition, but I've no idea why," said the friendly forecaster. Green fingered readers may be able to explain.

Still homeward, we looked that evening into Coxhoe Cricket Club's reunion and the chance of another chat with 78-year-old Fred Richardson - Hartlepools' centre forward when United had an 's' on the end.

Fred, said Ronnie Taylor, would also have made a very good cricketer - "them great big shoulders" - if it hadn't been so hard to get him out of the workmen's club on summer Saturdays.

Fred reckoned he'd turned down the chance to become Coxhoe's professional. "The money wasn't too clever," he explained.

There, too, was 81-years-old Jackie Tate - "batsman, bowler, dogsbody, chief scrounger and the feller who made the gate to keep the cows out" - who recalled that the club, founded in 1866, recommenced after the war with fourpence in the bank and that they'd to take water in a milk churn because the ground hadn't a mains supply.

John Dobbin was up from Berkshire, Derek Cutty from Stoke, former club captain Doug Arnold from somewhere up the road.

"I said I'd help them out if they were short and stopped for 25 years," said Doug.

Among those missing was club stalwart and local furniture emporium owner Wilf Gatenby, for some reason preferring his villa in Portugal to a wet night in Coxhoe.

The do was at the Cricketers, formerly the Victoria, and a Cricketers tea to end all cricket teas. They talked of the days when they'd catch three different buses to get to a match - "now they won't drive three miles" - of how Bobby Orton may or may not have taken 5-5 against Coxhoe and how they dismissed Siemens for five, four of them extras.

Towards the end of a lovely evening, Fred Richardson - also with Barnsley, Chelsea and West Brom - recalled taking nine wickets for eight runs but couldn't quite remember against whom.

He is held in much affection thereabouts. "Give him another pint," they said, "and he'll have tekken all ten."

The night before heading over the border, we had a couple of pints in the Durham highlands - Tow Law Town FC's annual beer and whisky festival, in a marquee on the ground.

It's a courageous venture for several reasons, not least that someone has to sleep each night in the tent. On the Thursday it had been club chairman John Flynn and his dog - the chairman's dog is barking, it should be said - the following night committee man and local polliss Steve Moralee camped out.

Much the greatest problem, however, was the Tow Law weather. Though they had beers like Summer Hog, Marrow Freezer would have been altogether more appropriate.

Probably it explained why the karaoke competition appeared to be falling on deaf ears. "Next August," said PC Moralee cheerfully, "we're having a snowman building competition instead."

And finally...

the wicket keeper w hom Alan Smith replaced on England's 1962-63 tour (Backtrack, August 29) was John Murray.

Michael Hull in Bishop Auckland today invites readers to name the seven goalkeepers who've played for Newcastle United in the Premiership.

Safe hands again on Friday.

Published: 09/09/2003