THOUGH it remains the permanent way, the Railroad to Wembley was temporarily abandoned last Saturday. There’s a limit to how many times the beaten track from Darlington to Thornaby may be traversed without a déjà vu view. We catch the X66 bus instead.

Though an improbable way to get your kicks, the X66 has two advantages. Firstly, it starts but 50 yards from the William Stead in Darlington, the Wetherspoons pub where the group big breakfasts, and secondly it stops but 50 yards from the Sun Inn in Stockton, where pre-match preparations continue.

You don’t get that with Northern Rail.

Come to think, there’s a third advantage. All but one of us claims codger qualification; the young un, barely 55, has to pay £7.

Paddy power, both pubs are marking St Patrick’s Day, an emerald occasion recently annexed by Messrs Guinness. Barmaids wear leprechaun hats, perhaps in tribute to the patron and perhaps to Seamus the Diddy Man, whose muse had died a few days earlier.

The way it’s snowing outside, they might in any case have been more convincingly clad as Santa Claus.

The Sun, a former workhouse off Stockton High Street, is legendary not for Guinness but for draught Bass, at one time selling more than any other pub in the land.

Traditionally, the pint pots are already half full, topped up with a head that in other circumstances might further be enhanced by a couple of slices of cucumber and a strawberry. A Cadbury’s flake might look quite fetching, too.

The beer’s excellent, just £2 40, the pub otherwise characterised by a great many television screens. It’s 12 30pm: one’s showing Swansea v Spurs, another the races, a third approaching kick-off in the Six Nations rugby international in Italy.

Thus it’s possible for the unusual audiovisual experience of an English side scoring against a Welsh side to the soundtrack of Flower of Scotland being bellowed in Rome (and on St Patrick’s Day.)

On yet another screen, a weather girl is suggesting that the afternoon may be horrendous. She is unlikely to win first prize for prescience.

Outside awaits Marske United v Stockton Town, two Ebac Northern League teams in the semi-final first leg of the FA Vase.

IN reality, Marske’s pitch so greatly resembles Great Grimpen Mire that a search has begun at the start of the week to find a more porous alternative.

None being available, the animals having gone in two-by-two and battened the hatches behind them, it’s decided that both legs will take place on Stockton’s 3G pitch, for which the familiar term is “all-weather”.

Just when they may have supposed that they’d seen all weather, they get a day like last Saturday. The only problem with 3G is that you can still watch football on days when sanity screams sanctuary, and another log on the fire.

The ground’s part of Stockton Sixth Form College, the day what might best be described as a learning curve. The thermometer’s below zero, the snow periodically sweeping across the pitch, the wind howling like a banshee in the final stages of a particularly difficult labour.

Around 1,500 turn out, foul weather fans if ever, for what technically remains Marske’s home game. Whether they’re singing Tee-tee-siders or Sea-sea-siders is lost in the storm, but perhaps they’re interchangeable.

Stockton lead after ten minutes, the unfortunate Josh Rowbotham adjudged to have headed past his own keeper. Fred Woodhouse adds a more conventional second before half-time.

The crowd seems significantly to have diminished after half-time. Mr Lance Kidney, one of our number, persistently checks his watch. “It’s longer than waiting for Godot,” he says. Mr Kidney is a retired English teacher.

Though Marske dominate proceedings, it remains 2-0. The second leg, all ticket, is same-place-same-time this Saturday. The final’s at Wembley on May 20 – for one of them, it’s to be hoped, a blessed day in the sun.

TWO seasons ago, Town were in the Wearside League. Should they emerge triumphant on Saturday, it would be by no means the first time that a Stockton side has been in a national final.

A previous Stockton club, nicknamed the Ancients, was still wet behind the ears when three times winning the FA Amateur Cup – against Harwich and Parkeston at Middlesbrough in 1899, against Oxford City in a replay at Darlington in 1903 and against neighbours Eston United, again in a replay, ay Ayresome Park in 1912.

The Ancients were also four times defeated finalists, never more memorably than against Kingstonian at Darlington in 1933, after which LNER fireman and English amateur international centre forward Ralph “Bullet” Smith was suspended for a year.

It’s thought that Bullet had forcibly advised the FA gentleman where he might relocate his losers’ medal, but we’ve told that shotgun story before.

NORTHERN League clubs have long been familiar in the FA Vase final, of course, perhaps most emotionally when Tow Law – little old Tow Law – reached Wembley in 1998.

The column was reminded of it at a pub in Consett last week, when approached by a gentleman with an image on his mobile phone.

“Bet you don’t know who that is,” he said, showing a picture of a burly, bearded bloke in sporting action.

“No idea.”

It was Sam Gordon, back then Tow Law’s 10-year-old mascot but prohibited from leading out the team at Wembley because rules is rules and the FA didn’t allow it.

Tackled by the chairman of Tow Law and of the Northern League, FA chief executive Graham Kelly at once moved the goalposts to a more sensible position. There’ve been FA mascots ever since.

Sam became a Middlesbrough Under 15s goalkeeper, won a sports scholarship to America, but has now switched sports. In the action image his dad’s showing in the pub, the big lad was playing rugby for Consett.

SOME way from Wembley, but Shildon’s FA Cup first round game at Notts County in 2003 remains the last time that a Northern League side has reached the competition proper.

Indelible, it was recalled by midfielder David Bayles at a clubhouse talk-in last Friday evening.

Bayler, good bloke, remembered the qualifier at Shirebrook when the team was police escorted out of town after goalkeeper John Jackson had squirted the contents of his water bottle at the nastiest bloke in Nottinghamshire.

He talked of the home replay against Frickley Athletic in which the kick-off had to be delayed to let everyone in – “queuing past the fish shop” – and of club chairman Gordon Hampton, who dyed his grey hair purple and black to mirror the team’s colours.

At Notts County they were 3-0 down in 18 minutes – “like the Alamo,” said Bayler – but scored two quick second half goals before County’s immediate fourth.

“You know what they about great moments in sport,” the subsequent column began. “On Sunday they lasted about 20 seconds.”

Davey reminisced, engagingly and wholly without charge, for an hour or more. He is an accountant, If a Northern League club reaching the FA Cup first round is now rare, an accountant not seeking a fee must be supposed unique.