TRULY these Vases overflow. After all the excitement of Wembley, the column moves across to Twickenham – the faces just as ecstatic – for the RFU Senior Vase final.

The triumphant team is West Leeds, 42-22 winners over Withycombe, the North-East connection the chap on the right holding the baby – it’s Tudhoe lad George Carpenter, to whom the column alluded three months ago.

The Carpenters are better known as water polo men. George senior, a former England international, now heads Sedgefield Polo Club. His elder son, Scott, is one of the world’s top players and is now in Australia.

Young George was himself a junior water polo international, but also excelled at rugby, a highly promising 19-year-old with Newcastle Falcons until a knee injury ended his top level career.

“He can still play at this level,” says his dad. George, and no doubt baby Penelope, seem pretty pleased about it all.

NOBBY Stiles has dementia. The gap-toothed terpsichore of the 1966 World Cup final is “very, very ill” his son John told a stowed-out gathering at Tindale Crescent Club, near Bishop Auckland, last Friday night. Stiles junior blames heading too many footballs. “In my view,” he added, “he has been abandoned.”

JOHN Stiles is a comedian on the sportsman’s dinner circuit, talks of his rough upbringing in Manchester. “I went to the Sisters of Saddam Hussain High School,” he is given to observe.

It was the second time in a fortnight that the column had heard him. On the first occasion he was supporting former Boro manager Bryan Robson, who tackled scripted questions, declined to answer anything from the audience and after 25 minutes sat down again.

At Tindale, the principal speaker was Robson’s former England team-mate John Barnes. He spoke wonderfully well for an hour and ten minutes, invited questions afterwards and might have been on his feet yet had not the hot beef sandwiches been in danger of getting cold.

The evening had three beneficiaries: Witton Park FC, needing funds to repair their new pavilion after vandal attacks, the Butterwick Hospice in Bishop Auckland and St Mary’s Boys Club, whose 18 teams have again been greatly successful and who, next season, look to Dubai.

John Barnes spoke of his move from Watford to Liverpool, greeted coolly by a small group of supporters for no other reason than that he was black. “They said we couldn’t stand the cold – they were right, I can’t – and that I’d be playing in tights,” recalled the Jamaica-born star.

He’d played in two away games before his Anfield debut, against Oxford, in which he scored a screamer. A resultant remark was overheard by one of his friends in the stand. “He’s not as black as I thought.”

I’M sitting next to a Bishop Auckland Golf Club member, which prompts the thought of how Baz Mundy – this year’s captain – is getting on with his clubhouse swear box, proceeds to the stroke ward at Bishop General. “It’s tailing off a bit, I think I’m getting through to them,” reports Baz the following day. His colleague disagrees. “It’s making a ******* fortune,” he says.

MOURNING two weeks ago the death of former NYSD Cricket League secretary and treasurer Stewart Clarke, the column noted that he’d sometimes write three or four drafts of committee minutes before deeming them fit to be sent out. Stewart’s reputation for meticulousness was taken up by league president Chris West in his eulogy.

The attention to detail, said Chris, differed markedly from Stewart’s legendary predecessor Herbert Trenholm, also a Football League referee. “Herbert famously had the minutes done before the meeting took place.”

A memorial service for Stewart takes place at St Nicholas’s Church, Guisborough, at 10.30am on Tuesday, May 31, followed by a reception at Guisborough Cricket Club.

A FINAL Ebac Northern League meeting as chairman tonight means that, first time in donkeys’, I’ll miss the Over-40s League presentation in Sunderland. There’s just one problem with it: the winter’s been so unremittingly wet that, four days to June, they still haven’t finished the fixtures. “I don’t think any major issues are involved,” says league secretary Vince Williams.

….and finally, last week’s column sought the identity of the first cricketer, excluding wicket-keepers, to take 100 Test match catches. It was Wally Hammond, who in 85 tests held 110 catches.

Today back to Wembley, if not to the FA Vase final. Manchester United’s FA Cup victory on Saturday evening meant that teams from London or the North-West have lifted the trophy in 36 of the last 38 seasons. Without googling, readers are invited to name the two exceptions.

Exceptional as always, the column returns next week.