THE Railroad to Wembley is oft a solitary adventure, on occasion accompanied by one or two companions and a carrier bag.

For last Saturday’s FA Vase final, North Shields v Glossop North End, six other members of the Ebac Northern League management committee have entrained and each of them in apparently legitimate possession of a senior citizen’s railcard.

It’s what gentlemen call a gerontocracy and others the old, old story. Pretty soon after leaving Darlington, it lives up to its one-foot billing.

There’s talk of gout and of gangrene and (honest) of hymns that we’ve chosen for our funerals. (Thine Be the Glory, thanks very much.)

The lugubrious theme is picked up by the lady opposite, a North Shields supporting district nurse who, detecting a faint pulse in the body corporate, starts not only to talk about resuscitation techniques, but to demonstrate them, too.

At nursing school, she says, they were taught to do chest compression to the tune of Nellie the Elephant. If they got to the bit about the head of the herd was calling, the poor sod had probably had it.

ALMOST coincidentally, it’s my 100th match of an ageless season. All but four have involved at least one Ebac Northern League club, the others stretching from the once-bitten Outer Hebrides to the urban environs of Dulwich Hamlet, in south London.

Lochs met West Side last September in the deciding match of the Lewis and Harris League, a summertime competition. It was Wednesday evening, the crowd about 500, but still more God-fearing folk in the hair-shirt kirk nearby.

A hair-shirt’s one thing, a million midges an infinitely greater penance.

Dulwich Hamlet played Metropolitan Police, Ryman League, crowd 1,459. The club enthusiastically embraces all forms of diversity, a liberal agenda that included free admission for members of the local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender association.

The atmosphere was booze-fuelled and brilliant. Were Dulwich Hamlet a newspaper, the column observed, it would have to be The Guardian.

The others that helped write the tale of the century were South Bank v Grangefield Park in the Stockton Sunday League and Trimdon Vets v Hartlepool Stag and Monkey (no less) in the Over 40s fourth division, possibly fifth.

The South Bank game was 125 years to the day since the Northern League began in that Teesside town, former Boro and Northern Ireland player Terry Cochrane among those at the subsequent reunion.

Terry recalled tough times. “If you lived in South Bank and had two ears, they thought you were a sissy.”

The veterans’ match, on a rough-hewn school field in Sedgefield, marked the 80th birthday of referee Mick Henderson, a retired teacher from Ushaw Moor. He was due another match in the afternoon.

“Why pack up something you thoroughly enjoy,” said Mick. “So long as I get my sausage and chips after the first game, I’ll be happy.”

His cards stayed in his pocket, though one old lag incurred considerable wrath. “That was one hell of a bollocking,” said Mick afterwards. “A hell of a bollocking from Mick is the equivalent of a tallow card.”

THERE’S a problem. Engineering work at Neasden or somewhere means that there’s no Underground service to Wembley Park. “Boris wouldn’t have let this happen if it had been a bloody rugby final,” someone grumbles.

We take the Tube to Baker Street and rely upon a gout-afflicted and Spurs supporting native guide to steer us the 200 yards from thence to Marylebone, preferably without passing Go. Not even Baker Street’s most famous former resident could have imagined greater mystery than what happens next.

Finally close to the stadium, we essay a pre-lunch, plastic glass pint in a near-empty pub – even the bouncer seems deflated – and are joined by a Shields supporter trailing one of those suitcases on wheels big enough to accommodate the Band of the Coldstream Guards.

“How long you down for, then?”

“If we win, three weeks, if we lose I’m going home tonight.”

The lunch is excellent, the FA as hospitable as ever. It’s the last time that Vase finalists will have the place proudly to themselves; from next year the Vase and Trophy finals will be on the same day.

Just about the only person who seems uncomfortable is Northern League management committee member and Chester-le-Street FC chairman Joe Burlison, whose back’s so bad that he could hardly hobble from the train seat to the netty.

Suddenly he leaps six feet into the air, turns a couple of cartwheels and essays a handstand for good measure. Not only have his beloved, benighted Sunderland scored in the lunchtime kick-off against Everton, but the marksman is former Chester-le-Street player Danny Graham, a striker hitherto said by one of the papers to be in danger of action under the Trades Descriptions Act.

If scoring his first goal in 28 appearances is pretty special, making the lame walk seems positively miraculous. That Joe has lost an eight-match accumulator by also forecasting an Everton win – a classic example of hedging your bets – pains him not a whit.

Seemingly forgetting the scripture about not storing up treasures on earth, Northern League chaplain Leo Osborn lifts five match programmes from the free pile in the corner.

Outside it’s a lovely day; it almost always is for Wembley finals. Back home it’s still pouring down; that seems pretty persistent, too.

NORTH Shields have done wonderfully well. Promoted from the Ebac Northern League second division just last year, playing on a ground sponsored by the local undertaker, the Robins had won the old FA Amateur Cup in 1969 but never been past the Vase first round.

It’s perhaps portentous that a poll to find Britain’s national bird had last week been decided in overwhelming favour of the robin.

Red-red-ribboned, they’ve been followed south by 5,000 fans who include club resident Malcolm Macdonald, his first Wembley visit since an illustrious playing career ends. “I only come when I’m involved,” he says.

Glossop’s in Derbyshire, as previously we have observed the smallest town ever to host a top flight Football League club, but these days champions of the North West Counties League. Though they start strongly, it’s goalless at half-time.

Stunning the majority of the 9,674 crowd, Glossop score early in the second. From the posh seats, the Robins’ songs are oddly inaudible. They appear, however, to be claiming to be mental and mad – and if not mad, then not very happy, anyway.

Ten minutes remaining, blighters’ cramp felling them like nine pins, the prolific Gareth Bainbridge heads a jewelled equaliser.

After seven minutes of the second half, Adam Forster hits what proves to be the Shields winner. Team mates and subs bench pile upon him, for all the world like a pile of bright red coats upon an unmade bed.

The PA man announces that it’s 107 steps to the royal box, an ascent made altogether more flighty for the Robins. It’s the sixth time in seven seasons, the eighth in my 19 years as chairman, that a Northern League team has lifted the trophy. It’s just like the old days, really.

SO ends a very good week. Shildon have won the Northern League Cup on Tuesday, North Shields the Vase on Saturday and on Friday morning I’ve claimed a somewhat optimistic £5 bet with Penrith FC secretary Ian White that the Conservatives would have an overall majority in the election.

In the triumphant pub afterwards, a stranger approaches and says he has something for me. It’s Ian’s son Dan, who lives in London and has been asked by his dad to seek me among ten million people in order to relocate the fiver.

It’s a brilliant gesture. As the entire Northern League committee might suppose, one to tell to the grandbairns.