LAST week’s column, it may be recalled, rejoiced greatly at being brought down to earth (if not necessarily with a bump.)

The Northern League’s phenomenal FA Vase success these past two decades has meant that the royal box at Wembley became a familiar vantage, the seats – like the league chairman – well padded.

All very well, of course, but the royal box is a place to which people – physically, perhaps figuratively – look up. It is not an ideal home for those like me, so helpless with heights that even standing on a stool is likely to induce a panic attack.

No longer in office, I’d watched South Shields’ Vase win not from the grand circle but from the twopenny stalls. The relief was indescribable.

On Saturday we were there again, £85 FA Cup final tickets for me and the elder bairn. If that seems steep – there’s a scarf and a flag on every seat – it positively qualifies for membership of the Flat Earth Society compared to the vertiginous seats in which we found ourselves.

We were at Level 5. Any higher and you get clocked by air traffic control at Heathrow, not so much a bird’s eye view as an astronaut’s.

All Wembley tickets warn on the back that Level 5 may be unsuitable for those with vertigo, though it’s a rather different medical condition which most immediately threatens to become evident.

Nor does it help having all the visual acuity of Blind Pew in a pea-souper – yet harder to see much when eyes are tight-shut in holy terror.

Theatre folk call these giddy heights the gods. If God’s really in his heaven, then he’s having a laugh (and we’re almost close enough to hear him.) Whatever the spelling, an eyrie experience, and nor is it possible to find comfort in the booze.

A can of Tetley’s is £4.50, what may be known as taking the rough with the Smoothflow.

The bairn, who’s 20-20, rather enjoys the experience. “It’s a better perspective up here,” he insists, “Ozil looks even worse than he does on the telly.” (Note to editor: umlauts are in the second drawer down.) The old man demurs. Wembley was formerly marketed as the Venue of Dreams, but this is the very stuff of nightmares.

WE are, of course, Arsenal men. In the match build-up, Wembley unfurls huge team banners at either end.

Ours says “History, tradition, class”, Chelsea’s says “Pride of London.” In these days of linguistic larceny, it makes them sound like a gay rights march.

After barely three minutes, Sanchez hits the net. We, almost literally, hit the roof. Then it’s noticed (by some) that Gary Beswick – the assistant referee from Newton Aycliffe, also featured in last week’s column – is waving furiously (and probably not just at his dad.) Referee Taylor confers, constructs, conflicts. 1-0 to the Arsenal.

It’s still 1-0 after 70 minutes, the Gunners much the better side, when Moses throws himself to the ground as if seeking shelter in the bulrushes and is exiled by Mr Taylor.

Even in the mile-high club, even to the incorrigibly myopic, it’s clear that the referee is playing a blinder.

Costa equalises for the outnumbered, Ramsey heads Arsenal’s winner immediately afterwards. The rafters raise, oft-perfidious Gooners sing “Arsene Wenger, we want you to stay.”

It’s the eighth time that I’ve seen us lift the FA Cup: history, tradition, class.

Onwards and upwards, Arsene?

AT least the sun shone on the writers. Some of those unable to get Wembley tickets pitched up for a final at Richmond, North Yorkshire, where the monsoon was so heavy that half-time had to be extended to 40 minutes. “I couldn’t have been wetter if I’d jumped in a swimming pool,” reports Mike Rayner. Rather appropriately, it was the Sunderland Shipowners’ Cup.

JUST four months after his yellow-card coronary, former FIFA referee George Courtney, 75, made his comeback on Sunday morning in the slightly less rarefied atmosphere of Coxhoe Athletic.

Hand on dicky ticker, had there been times when he’d thought he wouldn’t make it? “Oh aye,” said George, “three days after the operation for one.”

Coxhoe’s a few miles south-east of Durham. He’d last refereed there 50 years ago, Steetley in the Auckland and District League. Steetley quarried dolomite: the ground was built on the stuff. “I can’t find the bluer plaque,” he says.

It’s a quaint and charming little place, the sort of tin tabernacle at which ground hoppers prostrate themselves in adoration. An elderly notice by the gate warns that those entering do so at their own risk.

“I’ve taken my tablets, I’ve got my spray,” says George, who also has a coronary stent.

It’s a charity match, reds against blues, in memory of 35-year-old Gemma Robson and to raise funds for Lupus UK.

“The blues are mainly ex-professionals and the reds are everybody and anybody,” explains the lady selling raffle tickets.

It’s organised by Bobby Orton, another old friend of the column’s, who kept goal for Doncaster Rovers and Gateshead but may locally be better known as a cricketer.

“Bobby talked me into it,” says George. Those who know Bob will understand.

The pro’s include Mark Summerbell, ex-Sunderland and Hartlepool man Tommy Miller and 17-year-old Kenton Richardson, grandson of the late Fred Richardson, post-war Pools favourite and himself a Coxhoe lad. Kenton’s also at the Vic, reputedly lightening the gloom.

Bobby, 60, alternates in goal – they don’t swap jumpers – with Beth Vasey, who plays for Coxhoe Ladies.

It kicks off at 11am, not so much a game of two halves as of three equal instalments. That several men in the crowd leave on the stroke of 12 can only be because their dinner’s ready.

George referees the first period, takes a line-out thereafter, appears to know everyone. “I’ve been a little bit conscious of things,” he says afterwards. “It’ll be a leisurely comeback, but I hope to have more games next season.”

Then he’s off, a 1.45pm first tee in the Bartholomew Bowl at Bishop Auckland Golf Club. “My wife thinks I’m mad,” he says.

That the game has ended 2-2 is down in part to a brilliant double save late-on by the 60-year-old goalie (which excludes Beth, then.) “Class is permanent,” says the sexagenarian.

The ex-pro’s take the penalty shoot-out. The blues have to win something, don’t they?

SO ends another football season – 92 games from Ayr United to Arsenal, Whitchurch to Whitby Town and Wearhead United to Wembley.

There’ve been some memorable encounters, a list in which Bishop Auckland v Billingham Town, Guisborough Town v Whitley Bay and the Gunners’ 6-0 mauling of FC Lugorets stand prominent.

It may not truthfully be said that the best was left until last – but there’ll never be a penultimate experience like Saturday’s.