HERE’s the intro to the column’s report on Bedlington Terriers’ appearance in the FA Vase final, May 1998:

“Wembley was as clement as ever. If Wasdale in the Lake District is England’s wettest location – as always we were taught in O-level geography – then those few acres in north-west London must be the driest. Probably it explains why so many fair weather fans get there.”

Thus it was with weather eye not Wembley eye that last Saturday we forsook the opportunity to join the 3,500 at South Shields’ FA Vase semi-final second leg to bolster the 25 who paid to watch Bedlington play Billingham Town.

That’s the story in a shell. Of all those supporters evermore, those tails-up Terriers of unproven pedigree, barely a dozen remain. The other half were from Billingham.

Oh but they were great days for the Woof Woof Terriers, so impoverished just six years previously that the Northern League had suspended the club’s fixtures for a month in an attempt to buy time and salvation.

Now they were at Wembley, at the start of a run of five successive Northern League championships, had beaten Colchester United 5-1 in the FA Cup first round, lost gallantly at Scunthorpe in the second and would twice more reach the later stages of the Vase.

The ground’s called Dr Pit Welfare, rammed back then like the Northumberland Miners’ Picnic. Teeth bared, the team emerged belligerently to the song Who Let the Dogs Out. None dreamed that the woof might come with the smooth.

FOUR years ago, the Terriers attracted yet greater global attention when Bob Rich, an aptly named American biscuit billionaire reckoned the world’s joint 488th wealthiest man, received an imaginative birthday present from his wife.

She bought him the titular rights to the Manor of Bedlington, a town previously little known save for pugnacious canines and for the early 20th century murder of a police officer by a madman called Amos.

Rich did his homework, liked what he saw. He and his family visited several times, the team toured the US, the BBC made a half-hour documentary.

Short of his being called Billy Benefactor, the name could hardly have seemed more appropriate nor the portents more propitious.

The new lord of the manor, it should be stressed, had never promised the parable of the Rich man’s feast. A £30,000 digital scoreboard, of which a Minor Counties cricket club might be proud, remains the most tangible evidence of his largesse.

Last summer the Rich Corporation ceased even to sponsor that. The cookie had crumbled.

BEDLINGTON'S Wembley appearance provided the most embarrassing experience of my 20 years as Northern League chairman. There were a canny few contenders.

A couple of weeks previously, my briefcase had been stolen as I passed the time of night on the last bus from Crook.

Looking after the new one at the national stadium seemed imperative, not least because it contained great armfuls of priceless league magazines, but what could possibly go wrong at the pre-match lunch?

Leg room at a premium, I left the briefcase about six feet away, propped against a pillar. It wasn’t until the three-chocolate mousse that I realised it was missing.

The lady at the banqueting suite reception desk essayed the sort of smile probably once employed by the check-in bod at Bedlam and directed me, under escort, to the royal retiring room.

That inner sanctum, it transpired, has a concrete-lined recess for use in the event of emergency. Royalty not being in attendance, unless Mr Graham Kelly were included, it contained rather a lot of boxes of Elastoplast and a bright new briefcase.

The chief security officer was wholly courteous but necessarily critical, what in other circumstances might have been called a controlled explosion.

It also meant that I discovered what goes in that holy of holies: it’s where you get your whatnots chewed.

THE clubhouse is festooned with scarves, photographs and mementoes of the recent triumphant past. What it doesn’t have is many customers.

“Things are going canny,” insists one of the stalwarts, “the ladies darts team won their league last year.”

Ronan Liddane, the club’s assiduous chairman – local businessman, former Blyth Spartans player and Crook Town manager, UEFA-B coaching licence holder – offers a little lad there with his father £2 to be ball boy.

The kid’s not keen. “It’ll buy your dad a Christmas present,” says Ronan, prematurely.

The programme offers annual sponsorship packages which, admittedly, seem a bit ambitious – £10,000 for the kit or ground naming rights, £7.500 for the scoreboard, £5,000 to have the company name on the hospitality box behind the goal.

“It’s just fighting fires all the time,” says Ronan. “As soon as you put one out, another one starts. There’s always an excuse when I try to get people to come to the match. I bet today it’s the England rugby on television.”

He’s wearing a V-neck jumper. A piece in one of that morning’s colour magazines gas said that V-necked jumpers are “terrible”, especially when worn by the Duke of Cambridge.

“It’s all I need,” says Ronan.

The Jack Carter Stand, named in memory of a dedicated club stalwart, houses precisely two people. A dugout is patched up with a Commons-crested advertising board for neighbouring MP and shadow cabinet member Ian Lavery, chairman of arch-rivals Ashington.

It probably wouldn’t be wise to read too much into it.

Billingham Town are fourth in the Ebac Northern League second division, hoping for promotion. Terriers are mid-table, safe but hardly secure.

Barely two minutes have passed before someone hoofs the ball over the stand and out of the ground. The chairman, acting ball boy, goes chasing away after it.

IT'S a terrific game. Terriers, dogs with a bone, go three up before visiting striker Craig Hutchinson – 50 goals this season – adds two to his tally in the final 15 minutes.

Town also include Matty Crossen who a few years back had a stroke when just 23 and who represented Great Britain in last year’s Special Olympics. The match, goodness knows, deserves a great deal than a crowd of 26.

Ronan buys the Brown Ale afterwards. “All you can do is keep on battling,” he says. “Who knows what’s round the corner; it’s happened before, hasn’t it?”

The Railroad to Wembley, of course, will resume when South Shields make their appearance on May 21 – the ninth time is as many years that the Northern League has had at least one team in the final.

May the sun continue to shine upon the Mariners and their followers, on the incomparable Northern League and on the two dozen who still believe in silver linings.