STEWART Clarke, who spent much of his life running cricket, but every year took four days holiday in Hawes – “his close season” said his wife – died last week. He was 82.

He’d been involved with Guisborough Cricket Club for more than half a century, had been both secretary and chairman, was secretary of the North Yorkshire and South Durham League from 1993-2008 and its treasurer from 1983-2010.

Fortified by Nancy Clarke’s Easter cake, we’d spent an April evening in his upstairs office in Guisborough back in 2007 – a week or two before their golden wedding.

So which came first? “Oh cricket definitely,” said Nancy. “Cricket, golf, snooker, billiards, anything that involves chasing a ball around.”

All that he did, he did meticulously. He might even have three or four goes at writing the minutes. “He’s a perfectionist,” said Nancy. “He even folds his socks.”

“He is urbane, diplomatic, impeccably mannered and immaculately dressed,” said the column. “It’s probably what comes of folding your socks.”

Stewart had been a wicket-keeper, managed a few games in the seconds, but was never going to dislodge former Middlesbrough and Darlington footballer Derek Stonehouse – “the best wicket-keeper I’ve seen who never played county cricket.”

His office-cum-museum was as impeccably ordered as its principal occupant, a PC murmuring quietly in the corner, a computerised cuckoo in a pen-and-paper nest.

Together we eyed it suspiciously. “Somewhere,” the column observed, “a Remington typewriter may await the return to service, like the fabled National Steam Engine Reserve buried somewhere beneath the Mendip Hills.”

Stewart had worked for a steel company, ran a sports shop, was for 35 years a member of Guisborough Urban District Council and twice its chairman. The NYSD reflected his perfectionism. He was a top man.

WE recorded two weeks ago the death of Rowland Maughan, retired Northumberland FA chief executive and pantomime prince of North Tyneside. At his funeral in Whitley Bay last Thursday it was recalled that Roly had once done a summer season in Morecambe with the young Roy Castle. One of them got lucky.

BRYAN Robson limped stiffly into the Marton Hotel and Country Club on Friday evening, injured five days previously in a charity match in Cheshire.

“Both my calves just seized up,” he says over the roast beef and Yorkshires. “It was my own fault, I’d played two charity games in three days. My head still tells me I’m 21 but my birth certificate says I’m 59.”

The former England skipper and Boro boss was guest speaker at Marske United’s 60th anniversary dinner – 540 tickets sold and the hotel’s biggest bash for a decade.

Hauled to his feet, he told the story about Gazza and the new team bus at Hurworth – but everyone’s heard that one before.

UNITED – Marske, not Manchester – produced a splendid diamond jubilee brochure which helped illustrate football’s vagaries. Back in April 1994, Wearside League days, the club enjoyed its record win – 16-0 against North Shields. Three days later, they lost the return 3-0.

ROBBO also held forth on Alex Ferguson’s hairdryer. Kevin Dixon was among those who turned it on.

Back in 1988 he’d hit a hat-trick in Hartlepool’s 6-0 pre-season win over a Manchester United side which included Lee Sharpe, Mike Duxberry, Paul McGrath and Norman Whiteside and had a youngster then known as Ryan Wilson on the bench.

Pyrotechnically, Fergie plugged in, his ire particularly directed at goalkeeper Chris Turner. “I actually thought that Alex had gone mad before but that was nothing at all compared to that night in Hartlepool,” Lee Sharpe once recalled.

Kevin Dixon’s now assistant manager at Tow Law Town, the club for which he first played as an 18-year-old. Last week, aged 55 and in extremis, he turned out for them in the Ebac Northern League.

Suffice that Kevin – canny cricketer, too – scored three fewer against Northallerton Town than he had against Manchester United and may also have become the oldest player in Northern League history to be booked.

On Saturday he was no longer on the team sheet. “I’m thinking of going out on loan,” he said.

THE column was at Tow Law, too. Since it was April 30, it hardly snowed at all.

The bus from Scotch Corner failed yet again to turn up, the No 1 to Tow Law consequentially also missed. The bus to Crook was a further 15 minutes late; the driver blamed the wrong sort of sun. “As soon as it comes out, everyone wants to catch a bus,” he said.

After the match, an inscribed pint glass was presented to mark my retirement as Ebac Northern League chairman. They’d also hoped to hand over a courier-delivered piece of wall art depicting a No 1 bus. Yet again, however, the No 1 had failed to turn up.

….and finally, last week’s column invited the location where, on February 6, 1970, a golf ball had been hit for the first time and brought from John Davison in Spennymoor the answer that it was by Tony Jacklin on the roof of the Savoy Hotel.

Chronologically, he was close. That was November 1969, when that year’s Open champion had 18 unsuccessful attempts to clear the Thames.

Divined by Brian Dixon in Darlington, the slightly more spaced out answer is that it was the moon, the impromptu game played by astronauts Shepard and Mitchell from Apollo 14. “I always felt sorry for the guy stuck in the command module,” says Brian.

Today back to Leicester City, the third team beginning with the letter L to win the top division title – equalling the record held by S. Who were those three, then?

Back next week – and, speaking of S, with rather more on Shildon’s historic Northern League triumph.