PASSING reference in last week’s column to Mr Tony Blair's alleged affiance to Newcastle United prompted an email from Redcar councillor David Walsh, who’s more a Gordon Brown man.

That he refers to Blair as “that bloke from Trimdon Colliery” rather reinforces the point.

Brown, says David, was a true football fan – not just loyal to Raith Rovers, his local team, but instrumental in 2005 in their survival. The club’s Wikipedia page confirms as much.

“The man from Trimdon,” adds David, “was as bad as Cameron – who couldn’t remember whether he was supposed to support Aston Villa or West Ham, due to the colours being about the same.”

FIRST football of the season on Saturday – Morpeth Town v North Shields, J R Cleator Cup final – and a return to the fray for Ebac Northern League secretary Kevin Hewitt. Duties done, back home in Langley Park, Kevin sat down to watch the darts when up from the audience was raised a placard. “Morpeth Town: FA Vase winners 2016” it said.

A BACKTRACK fixture these past 25 years, the Crook Games League presentation took place on Monday. For much of that time, the evening has ended with a dominoes challenge between the column and former England darts international Doug McCarthy, the very best of men, who recently has come second.

So where was he on Monday? There were familiar faces like Butch Knighton, still 13 darts maximums in the season – Alan Bell had 18 – and the giant known universally as Tree, former head lad of the Crook branch of the Ross County Supporters Club. “We haven’t been for years,” he said.

The White Swan, thereabouts the Duck, appeared to have been most successful.

And Duggie McCarthy? “On holiday. I wouldn’t care, he’s known the date since September,” said Alan Mangles, the estimable league secretary.

Doug had, however, sent a sub – his son-in-law David Neil, with 493 Crook Town appearances himself a local legend. At 10 30pm, Davey rang his 75-year-old father-in-law to tell him the score, finding him at a disco in Bournemouth.

Elated, Doug danced on.

WANDERING Wolviston last week, we bump into Les Crank, at Hartlepool United when Brian Clough was manager.

Previous Pools boss Geoff Twentyman – “not many remember him” – had signed him from Billingham Synthonia but, never getting beyond the stiffs, Les returned to the Synners.

Clough again came knocking, Les rejoined, discovered that the money had been cut by half and was again quickly up the A689. “The reserves were at Halifax one night, I scored twice, returned after midnight and got three quid. That was it.”

Years later he again encountered Clough in an hotel in Bilbao, where Nottingham Forest were playing in a tournament. “He treated me like a king, gave me tickets for all the matches, bought me drinks. I think he may have had a conscience.”

IT is indeed the case, as last week’s column supposed, that – like Backtrack – Richard Gibson of The Cricketer magazine watched Yorkshire v Somerset last month, his first Scarborough visit for 11 years.

He similarly loved the tradition of the place, of course, but seemed rather less perturbed by the infernal, eternal seagulls than we – or, indeed, most of the good folk of Scarborough – had been.

“Writers latch on to the birds here as they do to the cakes at Worcester or the pensioners at Eastbourne,” insists Gibson.

“What isn’t there to like in these troubled times about this metaphor of a harmonious Birdland of creatures restraining their instincts to live side by side in peace?”

Richard also makes the point that the last four teams to have won at Scarborough went on to lift the county championship. Sadly, though victorious at North Marine Road, the mighty Somerset are ignominiously going to break the sequence.

THE Cricketer – for which £4.95 has to be justified somehow – also devotes a couple of pages to memories of Sir Geoffrey’s 100th hundred, at Headingley 40 years ago next Thursday. Only former Durham man Graeme Fowler, featured among the month’s Top Tweets, may have been a little underwhelmed. “I’ve played v Boycott, spent a lot of time in his company and can honestly say that I’ve never enjoyed a single minute.”

THE wonderful Jack Chapman, than whom none is more knowledgeable about grass roots cricket between Tyne and Tees, noted in last week’s column on Lands CC the suggestion that the ballad extolling cricket around Durham had been written to mark the first recorded match, at Raby Castle.

It was written 80 years later. “I’m not quibbling mind,” adds Jack.

Up at Lands, at any rate, the grass roots may be a little better protected in the future. We’d noted that, unable to afford covers, the wicket had laboriously to be protected by a big black tarpaulin.

Now, reports club chairman Carroll Simpson, they’ve been offered buckshee second-hand covers. A square deal, if ever.

...AND finally, what made Esh Winning lass Dani Hazell unique among the England’s World Cup winning cricket squad (Backtrack, July 27) is that the 29-year-old is the only one who’s married.

Former Durham County man and women’s cricket fan Henry McLaren – “they play with a smile,” he explains – was first with the answer. “I rang her dad,” he confesses.

Still with the cricket – and Henry may know this one, too – Toby Roland-Jones’s test debut last week made him the first England cricketer since 1935 to have a double-barrelled surname.

Readers are invited to name the last – a North-East connection, too. Both barrels again next week.