Retirement party

Tommy called to offer a hugely generous donation to the end-game charitable effort. Others, no less magnanimously, have followed.

The plan, lest any missed it, is to attempt during season 2015-16 a 500-mile sponsored walk – about 12 miles apiece to each of our 44 grounds in time for kick-off.

It’s called the Last Legs Challenge and the target’s £10,000, half of which will go to the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation – Sir Bobby was a great friend to the league and its clubs – and half to community-based charities nominated by the clubs themselves.

Still plenty of time, of course, but further support might wing the heels a little. Donations can be made electronically to www.justgiving.com/lastlegschallenge or by cheques made payable to the Northern Football League and sent to me at 8 Oakfields, Middleton Tyas, Richmond, North Yorks DL10 6SD.

BORDERING on the irrelevant, a paragraph in the middle of last week’s FA Cup final column noted that the Richmondshire parliamentary seat is adjoined by no fewer than ten other constituencies. Since Eddie Roxburgh correctly names them, others may also care to try for the perfect ten before further proceeding. The constituent parts a little further down.

SIMILARLY rambling, if not quite round in circles, the Wembley column reported not just a pre-match promenade through Pinner – millionaire Middlesex – but recalled Mike Pinner, England’s amateur international goalkeeper in the 1950s.

Brian Dixon and Martin Birtle remembered him. Brian even found a photograph of Pinner in QPR colours in the 1961 Book of All Sports, published by the News Chronicle. While still a London lawyer, he also turned out as an amateur for top clubs like Man United, Aston Villa and Chelsea – his sole appearance a 5-4 defeat to Wolves – and (it says here) for Lisburn Distillery.

Pinner, now 81, won 52 caps. Bishop Auckland’s eccentric keeper Harry Sharratt, brilliant in any book, managed just four England appearances in his shadow. Harry built a better snowman, though.

We’d also had a pint in a Pinner pub called The Case is Altered, suggested that it might have been a legal term. A further theory from Malcolm Dunstone in Darlington – our man in Watford yellow – supposes a corruption of “Casa alta”, Italian for high house.

Brian also recalls that Jimmy Case, perhaps better remembered at Liverpool, Brighton and Southampton, made a single Darlington appearance at the end of his career. Ah, says Brian, the case is altered, indeed.

A POSSIBLE plan for last Monday evening had been to watch the networked premiere of the Paul Gascoigne film – with live Q&A thereafter from the Brixton Ritzy Picture House, honest – at the multi-screen Showcase Cinema in Stockton. An on-line listings check failed to spot it, however. Other options included Pitch Perfect, Fast and Furious, Cinderella, Unfriended and Sponge Out of Water. Delete as appropriate.

LAST week’s note on “singing spinner” Eddie Gratton repeated his claim that, at Mainsforth, he was frequently mistaken for the sight screen. It was coincidental that Martin Birtle should be at Mainsforth on Saturday when Pakistan test player Faisal Iqbal made his home debut – “a scratched 16” – and the wind was so strong that the screen blew over, displacing all its slats. It would never have happened to the once-portly Mr Gratton. Further evidence about old uns and best uns, anyone else notice that the Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme bagged 4-8 against Cockerton on Saturday? Charlie Walker is 74.

THE ten parliamentary constituencies which have a common border with Richmondshire? Westmorland and Lonsdale, Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, Darlington, Stockton South, Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East, Scarborough and Whitby, Skipton and Ripon, Thirsk and Malton and, not least, Penrith and the Border.

….AND finally, the only Chilean other than Alexis Sanchez to score in an FA Cup final (Backtrack June 4) was George Robledo, for Newcastle United against Arsenal in 1952.

Thomas Spresser had not only immediately picked up on the BBC’s error in suggesting that Sanchez was the first Chilean, but sent his Facebook page to prove it.

A former Yorkshire miner and Huddersfield Town part-timer, Robledo moved from Barnsley to St James’ Park for £26,500 – on condition that his brother Ted, whom the Magpies didn’t want, came as part of the deal.

He scored 82 goals in 146 games, a record for an overseas player in the top flight that stood for almost half a century until overtaken by Dwight Yorke. Ted had 37 games at left half and never scored once.

The brothers returned to Chile. George died following a heart attack, aged 62. His brother fell from an oil tanker when just 42, his body never recovered.

Chris Orton in Ferryhill, first with the answer at 8am last Thursday, seeks by way of a supplementary the identity of the Chilean top division team named after the illegitimate son of a former governor of Chile and viceroy of Peru who was born in Ballynary, County Sligo.

Chris wonders if it’s too tricky and, since it may be, the improbable answer is Club Deportivo O’Higgins.

Readers may instead care to name the only cricketer to have captained England in ten or more Test matches and never been on the winning side.

Every one a winner, the column returns in a fortnight.