The Railroad to Wembley begins to resemble the Parable of the Rich Man’s Feast – in which, it will be remembered, all with one consent began to make excuse.

One of the usual crowd is in Australia, another in Spain, a third – as they say – bad in bed.

Only Mr Tim Duncan joins us on the 7.02 from Darlington to Kings Cross, and he’s really a rugger bloke. We’re met in London by Mr Gary Brand and in Bracknell by Mr Ken Gaunt, once a sports desk denizen in these parts.

Ken also covered Northern League for what then was BBC Radio Cleveland, usually along the No 1 bus route. From Shildon, he recalled, he’d tried unsuccessfully to rose-tint a particularly unexciting goalless draw.

“That was Ken Gaunt,” said the presenter, “sounding bored.”

This is different, excitement unalloyed, Brignall Town v Marske United in the Buildbase FA Vase quarter-final.

Brignall’s in Berkshire, 34 miles west of central London, one of those places – Lady Godiva’s Coventry may be another – best known for someone who didn’t exist.

Lady Bracknell is, of course, a snooty old bag in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, a role played by everyone from Edith Evans to Judi Dench. “Her ignorant and often absurd comments are a satire on Victorian aristocracy,” says a guide.

It was she who infamously observed that to lose one husband might be regarded as misfortune but that to lose two looked like carelessness and who also gave to English literature one of its most famous two-worders. “A handbag….?”

Designated a new town at the same time as Washington, it rather resembles its northern cousin – myriad subways, too-few pavements, lots of concrete and a soulless shopping centre. There’s also a Wilde Theatre.

Since it is to be a column of literary allusions, someone recalls the great Sir John Betjeman’s lines about another part of Berkshire. “Come kindly bombs and fall on Slough….”

We take pre-match refreshment in the Old Manor House, a Wetherspoon establishment where some of the beer tastes nearly as old as the 17th century building is and a chap asks to have his photograph taken alongside me.

Jokes about keeping the bairns away from the fire inevitably ensue.

Gary wonders out loud what the Old Manor House was before it was a pub. He is, it should be explained, a Spurs supporter.

Read at 125mph, Saturday’s Times carried a report of the previous day’s thanksgiving service for Doug Insole, former England cricketer, MCC president and Corinthian footballer.

David Harrison, it noted, had read poetry written in Insole’s honour by Hubert Doggart.

Hubert Doggart? Not just a scion of the family which gave North-East England its still affectionately remembered department store chain, he was also one of several outstanding sportsmen of that ilk. Every Doggart had his day.

Graham, his father, was born in Bishop Auckland and raised in Darlington, won both amateur and full international England football caps, played cricket for Durham County among others and was FA chairman when he died in the course of the 1963 annual meeting.

Hubert won Cambridge Blues at five different sports – four as captain – and played cricket for the university and for Sussex. Amateurs, he liked to recall, were put up at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, pro’s were sent home for the night. He twice represented England, against the West Indies in 1950.

MCC president in 1981-82, he still has his name on two cricket records – his 215 for Cambridge University against Lancashire in 1948 the highest score in a debut first-class innings and his 429 stand with John Dewes, Cambridge v Essex, the highest for the second wicket.

What The Times didn’t say was that Hubert Doggart had died on February 16, a week before the thanksgiving service. He was 92.

Old Doggart was clearly an accomplished poet, and published four books. Though nothing on the internet of his tributes to Doug Insole, there’s a splendid salute to his own sporting passions. It begins:

Of all the games that “we” invented

Some watched al fresco, others tented,

Soccer and cricket I’d persuade

To head my sporting cavalcade.

Further down, by happy coincidence, there’s reference to the 1956 FA Amateur Cup final between Corinthian Casuals and Bishop Auckland for which Casuals included both Doug Insole and the West Indian test cricketer Gerry Alexander.

The Wembley match ended 1-1, Frank McKenna – who died last year – hitting Bishops’ equaliser. Before the replay, at Middlesbrough a week later, Casuals tried further to bolster their international cricket delegation by flying England player Mickey Stewart home from the West Indies. It’s recalled in the poem:

One memory before I end,

In ’56 we bucked the trend

When a Wembley final saw us draw –

A replay then knocked at our door.

How sad that Mickey – ruled by fate –

From Trinidad arrived too late

To affect the vital replay’s score –

The effort seems amateur to the core.

Stewart arrived after kick-off. Obliged to play the same X1, the southern side lost 4-1 to two goals from Derek Lewin and others from Bob Hardisty and Tommy Stewart. The Bishops would be back at Wembley the following year.

Also entrained is Lee Weldon, for 31 years secretary of Newton Aycliffe Cricket Club, who may last have been featured hereabouts on April 4, 1995.

We’d been at the club’s sportsmen’s dinner, guest speaker the Durham and England batsman Graham “Foxy” Fowler. Though he’d spent six months organising the job, Lee was nowhere to be seen.

“My son Danny was born at ten past eight that night,” he recalls. “I get to the dinner just before half past nine and within a few minutes had registered him as a player.”

It proved wise. Danny, also on the southbound train and now an RAF man at Leeming, topped the second team batting averages last season. “Not bad for a bowler,” he said.

Lee also kept the 1995 cutting because it recalled that Fowler had recently been divorced, the business conducted by fax machine. He was Faxy Fowler thereafter.

Bracknell play in the Hellenic League, that of Frackwell Heath, Highmoor Ibis, Royal Wootton Bassett and the wonderful Brimscombe and Thrupp.

Marske is on the Cleveland coast, a small town hitherto best known for its Fishermen’s Choir and as a World War I base for Captain W E Johns, whose fictional hero Biggles appears to have been a rather better pilot than Johns was.

The football team, remarkably, has yet to concede a goal in 2018.

Stockton Town, their Ebac Northern League neighbours across the Tees, are also in quarter-final action, at home to Windsor.

The Bracknell pitch is 3G, the Larges Lane ground hung with notices forbidding swearing, smoking, cussing and – a new one – chewing gum.

You can tell it’s a big game because the match officials have things in their lugs and the ref’s carrying a tin of shaving foam in his back pocket.

The 1,082 crowd includes current FA chairman Greg Clark, a vocal contingent from Marske which provides a more earthy alternative to Betjeman’s thoughts on Slough and a man with the sort of beard about which Edward Lear wrote so memorably.

It’s possible that he only grew it for the purpose of concealing his chewy.

Glen Butterworth’s thunderous 20-yarder gives Marske the lead, the net moving before the goalie can. Curtis Round and Danney earl add second half goals for an impressive, comprehensive and thoroughly deserved win.

Word flies south that Stockton Town are also victorious against Windsor, another Hellenic League side. To lose two looks like carelessness.