EVERYONE knows about the improbable, impregnable Arsenal, a contagion passed genetically from father to son and to my own boys yet more virulently.

What, though, of Somerset, the county of sunshine, cider and the Bishop of Bath and Wells?

Fewer know my lifelong allegiance to Somerset County Cricket Club, a rumpy-scrumpy passion kindled in the first form at Bishop Auckland Grammar School where after-school cricket was mandatory “Mandatory” was a four-syllable word which at the age of 11 we little understood, save that cricket couldn’t be skived even if – then as now – I couldn’t see the ball.

So, arbitrarily, we were allocated to “counties” by Mr Hill, who also taught apostrophes.

Mine was Somerset, for whom I kept wicket a) because it wasn’t so far to run and b) because in football season I was a great, gauche goalkeeper.

The county side had good players like Roy Virgin, Peter Wight and Bill Alley, an Australian all-rounder reckoned the best player never to be capped by his country and who was also unbeaten in 28 middleweight boxing contests.

Most memorably of all they had wicket keeper Harold Stephenson, born and raised in Haverton Hill, near Billingham, played both cricket and football for Billingham Synthonia, represented Durham in the 1947 Minor Counties season and though he spent the rest of his days in the west country, never forsook his Teesside twang.

Known in Haverton Hill as Stivvie and in Somerset as Steve, he was quite a squat chap whose pads sometimes seemed several sizes bigger than he was. He made 427 appearances, bagged 1,080 victims, scored seven centuries and, like Bill Alley, was inexplicably overlooked by his country.

As a goalkeeper I was Jack Kelsey, Arsenal’s wonderwall. As a wicket keeper, I was Stivvie.

THE infatuation became a love affair, unilateral and unrequited. Somerset subsequently had heroes like Fred Rumsey, like Colin Dredge – the dear old Demon of Frome, whose seven brothers all played for the town team – and like the late Peter Denning, known universally as Dasher for (it’s said) his speed across the covers.

In the early 1980s we also recruited Joel Garner, the Big Bird, IT Botham, Squire of Ravensworth, and Viv Richards, a charismatic Antiguan by whom the lady of this house was sacklessly, ceaselessly smitten.

One glorious July day – it must have been 1981, she was eight months pregnant with Thierry Henry – we went to watch Somerset at Worcester, in the shadow of the cathedral.

Dasher dashed, Blitzen blitzed.

By lunch Denning and Richards had put on 140 together. The lady who’d dreamed of the day was nowhere to be found, causing a tea hut search party to be raised. She was found fast asleep, behind the heavy roller.

Even then we under-achieved.

In more than 100 years Somerset have never won the Championship. Yorkshire’s hugely deserved triumph last week might have been the first for 13 years, but it was the 18th overall.

This week the two counties are meeting in the season’s final match. Slightly querulously – last of the summer whine? – it was time to head to Headingley.

THE first thing to know is that the nearest railway station isn’t Headingley at all, but Burley Park. On the walk to the ground, I fall into conversation with a chap from Redcar who’s not only a fellow Gooner but whose uncle, George Wright, was Arsenal’s physio in Bertie Mee’s double days.

“I got to meet all the stars,” he recalls. My uncle was caretaker of Timothy Hackworth Junior Mixed.

I got to meet the boiler man.

The cricket ground, of course, is much changed since it was laid out by Charles Samuel Craven, the man who founded the Northern League and who, in 1883, was Darlington FC’s first secretary.

The Carnegie Pavilion dominates like a dry-docked liner. Pavilioned in splendour, as the hymnist has it, and – right now – girded with praise.

For all that, it’s a curious, afterthe- lord-mayor’s show sort of occasion, a dewy 10.30am start where the cognoscenti bring cushions and the unwary get wet backsides. Yorkshire want to win, of course, but it’s not so much a cricket match and more a four-day lap of honour.

The crowd’s 1,500 or so, scattered about the place like a particularly democratic pie chart. The occasional autumn fly drones drowsily.

“Never mind,” says a Rotherham gentleman just back from a Scottish holiday, “it’s better than those blooming midgets.”

For reasons of work and of education, they’re largely elderly, the mood – ingrate expectations – somehow less than celebratory. Most bear the mien of Compo, having discovered Norah Batty in bed with Norman Clegg.

It rather resembles a meeting of the Wilfred Pickles Appreciation Society. There’s a chap endlessly essaying a Fred Trueman impression – “aa just don’t know what’s going off out there” – another who claims intimate detail of the players’ holiday arrangements. “Sidebottom always goes to Butlin’s,” he insists.

A third has won some sort of prize, presented by Dickie Bird. A thousand-to-one it’s Dickie’s autobiography: he’s awfully keen on shifting them.

ADMISSION’S £10, entirely reasonable, a burger £3.50.

Durham followers complain bitterly that, at Lord’s on Saturday, a burger was £9.80 and a hot dog £6.50. Perhaps they were subject to capital gains tax.

The champions win the toss and bat. Somerset, with the exception of the mighty Marcus Trescothick and local hero Peter Trego a group of nearly men and South African settlers, have squad numbers on their backs.

In many cases the squad number seems higher than the batting average.

Even the umpires have sponsor identification on their coats these days, though – unlike Scottish League referees – it’s unlikely to be a promo for Specsavers.

Alfonso Thomas, known somewhat cadaverously as a death bowler, claims two early wickets. When Overton bowls the splendid Root for 35 – fair deracinates him – I forget myself and cheer.

Headingley, incredulous, falls yet more silent. The phrase about fart and diving suit comes incorrigibly to mind.

At lunch, 110-or-so for 3, there’s a talk-in of almost breathtaking banality with Tykes’ skipper Andrew Gale – unwillingly hors de combat – and with country chairman Charles Grace who because of a malfunctioning microphone sounds like Norman Collier.

“As I keep on reminding people, we’re a cricket club,”

says the chairman profoundly.

There’s also the chance to be photographed with the skipper.

Yorkshire responds as one. “’ow much?”

THEREAFTER Somerset do quite well, the atmosphere as flat as a scrumpy shandy.

An old lady in front is fast asleep; Pyrah, the Yorkshire batsman, seems similarly to slumber before finally being removed for two.

Rashid, who in the season’s first game against Somerset had hit a century, departs without scoring. A spectator checks his age on his mobile.

“Thirty seven,” he says.

“Ri-ite,” says his mate ponderously.

“So 38 next year.”

The terraces turn to Lancashire for comfort. Unless they can sort out Middlesex in their own final game, Red Rose will be relegated in the season that the white is all-conquering.

In Shipley it’s what they call schadenfreude.

An engagement back in Darlington means I’ve to leave at tea, Yorkshire 210-8. No matter that bad light prevents much more play, that the tail-end Charlie delays things, that the champs are 241-9 at the close.

It’s still just about the best day we’ve had for half a century. Where wast thou, Stivvie, at this hour?