RICHMONDSHIRE RUGBY CLUB – so named, says the club website, to differentiate it from “some small backwater club near Twickenham” – play on a ground high above the old North Yorkshire town.

I’m invited to turn up for a Sunday morning session with the juniors – micros to under-18s, bit bairns to strapping young men – and am much impressed. Joe Clark, one of the game’s bigger names, makes a guest appearance, too.

None swears, none questions the referee and when a little lad suffers a painful knee injury the most audible expletive is “Ow.”

In sharp contrast to other sports, parents on the touchline might as well be watching their charges at choir practice.

Jon Moulding, the junior section secretary, taught maths at Richmond School, down the hill, and is now a deputy head in Redcar. The website further credits him with “new and interesting post-match frivolities.”

He started the junior section with three members – his son, his daughter and a neighbour’s child. “I didn’t want my son to play football,” he says. Nine years later there are 140 juniors, and fast growing.

“We were optimistic but I think a bit surprised at how fast it’s grown,” he says. “It’s a lovely atmosphere, we’re making great strides. We’ll never be the size of Middlesbrough or Harrogate, but the children love it.”

Clubhouse and dressing rooms are new, dressing rooms decorated with visual aids like “Respect”, “Discipline” and “Enjoyment” – though reminders hardly seem necessary.

“It’s learnt behaviour, respect for the officials, the opposition and for each other,” says Jon. “It comes right from the top, from the RFU. If they step out of line, we drop them. We want nice rugby here.”

TONY COIA, subject eight years ago of another of the column’s relatively rare incursions into rugby, has died. He was 80.

Tony had captained the all-conquering Bede College team in Durham in 1957-58 – it included future England international and Hartlepool Rovers man John Dee – and played for Durham City.

Back then they loved it but Tony, a retired headmaster, thought that the game had changed after the end of the amateur code. “We couldn’t even get on the bus unless we paid the half crown fare, even had to buy our own strip.

“We couldn’t afford to play cards which was probably why we sang so many songs.” The song most roundly remembered was Eskimo Nell.

Tony lived in Tudhoe, near Spennymoor, where his funeral was held on Tuesday. “Today rugby is all about clash, bang, wallop, height and weight,” he’d said. “It’s a great game, but I think professionalism has killed it off.”

THOUGH infrequent, meetings with former Durham County Cricket Club chairman Don Robson – who died last Thursday – were always cheery and frequently productive.

The most memorable took place, not at a cricket ground, but outside Fenwick’s in Newcastle one spring Saturday in 1998.

Just that morning, the column had noted that for three years running Durham’s official team photograph had been taken when scorer and self-imagined Duke of Edinburgh lookalike Brian Hunt was known to be 250 miles away.

Were they trying to tell him something, the Beardless Wonder wondered? Was it a take on the old joke about keeping the bairns away from the fire?

Though it was a chance encounter – “a handsome coincidence” the following column suggested – Don smiled broadly. “Tell him he’s got it in one,” he said.

FORMER Gateshead reserves goalkeeper George Alberts, long in Thailand, recalls seeing Don Robson make his Third Division North debut for Gateshead in Match 1954 – three appearances that season, five the following season. It wasn’t his greatest claim to football fame: Don also played centre forward for Shildon.

BISHOP AUCKLAND FC are mourning the passing of Frank Palmer, the Two Blues’ outside left in the 1950 FA Amateur Cup final, against Willington at Wembley. He was 92 and lived in Washington.

Frank, known back then as Pedlar – why are Palmers always nicknamed Pedlar? – had turned up at Crook two years ago when the cup returned to the region as part of the Northern League’s 125th anniversary celebrations and still watched Bishops’ games with his family.

Some of them attended the match against Morpeth Town when a minute’s silence was observed. The score was 2-2 when Bishop Auckland director Terry Jackson could clearly be heard urging his team to score one for Frank Palmer.

Twenty seconds later, Scott McCarthy did just that. “And he,” says Terry, “was an outside left, too.”

.and finally, the team with the longest Premier League sequence without a win (Backtrack, March 10) is Derby County, on 32 and still counting.

Graham Phelps today invites readers to name the three England cricket captains who’ve won the Ashes both in England and in Australia.

Dust to dust, the column returns next week.