IT was one of the most vivid sports images of 2016, Darlington RA footballer Mike Colman lying on the pitch with a double leg fracture, protected by a pile of coats and an umbrella.

An ambulance took almost two-and-a-half hours to arrive – from Hartlepool – and was then diverted to Durham because A&E at Darlington Memorial was overcrowded.

The rain and the mercury fell resolutely. “You wouldn’t have left a dog lying injured in the pouring rain for more than two hours,” said RA secretary Alan Hamilton.

Sadly, Mike hasn’t played since, but still keeps in touch with old mates – which is how the RA tapped him for a tenner in their sponsor-a-square-of-the-pitch initiative.

Asked which bit he’d like to bear his name, he at once identified the scene of his suffering. “I lay there so long,” said Mike, “I feel like I own it already.”

RECOMMENDED reading, my blog – www.mikeamosblog.wordpress.com – has been banging on (again) about gambling being a mug’s game. It brought a response from Tow Law Town treasurer Kevin McCormick. “I have never found it to be so,” he insists. Mr McCormick is a retired bookie.

THE closing music at Neil Edgeley’s funeral last Friday was Tom Jones singing Delilah. Why, why, why?

Neil, Shildon’s hugely regarded kit man, was also an ardent Stoke City fan and season ticket holder. For the last thirty years, Delilah has been the Potters’ theme song, enthusiastically embraced.

Though he was a quiet chap – “it’s like a church losing a mouse” someone at Shildon said – it’s recalled that at the 2011 FA Cup final, Stoke v Manchester City, Neil was standing on his seat giving Delilah the most ferocious what fettle.

The story goes that, circa 1987, a group of Stoke fans singing bawdy little numbers in the pre-match pub were warned by the polliss that they’d be thrown out if they didn’t clean up their act.

Someone struck up Delilah instead, and no matter that the reference to a knife was replaced by something rather ruder.

Neil was 70 – a gentle, genuine and greatly generous man. Stoke and Shildon will miss him no end.

FORMER Durham police inspector Gordon Bacon OBE (Backtrack, March 9) duly got to renew acquaintance with Sir Garfield Sobers in the West Indies last week. After the last occasion on which they’d shaken hands, it may be recalled, Gordon – then in Hong Kong – emulated the great man by smiting six sixes in an over. Now 73, living in Ushaw Moor, he doubts it’ll happen again – “but six Lottery numbers would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

LAST week’s note on Easington Secondary Modern School teams’ reunion – attended by Easington lad and former Sunderland striker Alan Brown – reminded Paul Dobson od Brown’s two goals in a 2-2 League Cup draw at St James’ Park, September 1979. Sunderland won the shoot-out.

Almost exactly 25 years later, September 21 2004, Brown’s son Chris scored twice for Sunderland in a 2-2 League Cup draw at Crewe, who won on penalties.

The 6ft 3in striker is now 32 and with Bury.

IT may not be a particularly apposite time to mention it, after Saturday’s events at Twickenham, but the chairman of the Scottish Rugby Union is Sir Moir Lockhead – West Cornforth lad, 11+ failure, former apprentice with the United Bus Company in Darlington and now chief executive and deputy chairman of the multinational but Aberdeen-based First Group.

FORMER Football League referee Terry Farley draws attention to a White Hart Lane presentation to Paul Trevillion, 80 years a Spurs fan. Remember Mr Trevillion?

He was the entertainer/motivator/positive thinker who in 1974 pitched up at Feethams – in the company of blonde singer Kathy Kirby – with the avowed aim of turning the Quakers into world beaters.

That the board declined to put “Fourth division champions 1974-75” on the programme cover may have had something to do with the fact that it was only September.

The patter and the publicity were also attended by a Saturday morning distribution of free fivers on the High Row – witnessed by A H Clark, frequent Hear All Sides contributor and urban eccentric. “Blimey,” he said, “I thought I was the biggest nutcase in Darlington.”

Darlington put six past Cambridge that same afternoon. “It was really a load of rubbish, but the funny thing was that I hit the best goal I ever scored for Darlington,” winger Don Burluraux once told the column.

Trevillion, 83 last Sunday, may best be recalled for drawing his “You are the Ref” strips, devised 60 years ago and still running. “His career and achievements are simply unparalleled,” former Spurs player Ledley King said at the presentation.

Darlington finished fourth bottom.

….and finally, the first player to score a hat-trick in each of the Football League’s former four divisions was John O’Rourke, best remembered hereabouts at Middlesbrough where he scored 38 in 64 games. One of the hat-tricks was in the last game of the season, a 4-1 win at Oxford, which clinched Boro’s promotion from the old third. O’Rourke died last year, aged 71.

Today back to some on-train reading. The Times on Saturday carried a piece recalling Manchester City’s record Premier League defeat. With the clue that Julio Arca played in that one, too, readers are invited to name the opposition and remember the score.

Adversity to triumph, the column returns next week.