YOU know the ever-recurring nightmare when you’re about to sit an important exam, have done all the homework and swotted your socks off and then discover you’ve been studying the wrong set books?

Thus last Saturday on the Railroad to Wembley, 8 18 from Darlington to Manchester.

The plan’s to watch 1874 Northwich – who play at Winsford, in Cheshire – against Tow Law Town (who play, about 900ft above contradiction, in wild west Durham.)

It’s shortly after 7 30 when Lawyers secretary Steve Moralee rings to report a pitch problem. Northwich have discovered a “soft” patch and called for a referee’s inspection.

The word “soft” is unfortunate, lending itself not just to the phrase “soft as clarts” but all too easily to variations of a more scatological nature.

The local ref’s unsure, calls for a second opinion. On the sort of mellow November morning on which John Keats must have been moved to write Ode to Autumn, the team bus leaves Tow Law at 9am.

They’re on the A1 in North Yorkshire when Northwich report that the second referee has rung the FA, that they in turn have cited “procedure” and that the match is off.

Steve’s greatly unhappy. In Tow Law they don’t even think of consulting the referee until the snow’s over the top of their wellies, and only then if there’s something they’d quite like to watch on the television.

News reaches the Backtrack band as the train’s approaching Manchester, the sun dazzling through the windows. On Piccadilly station the PA intones that, due to the day’s inclement weather, passengers should rake particular care with slippery surfaces.

It’s Pavlov’s dog, isn’t it? Over there they’re conditioned to its pouring down even when it’s lovely. The Tow Law lads decide to drown their sorrows with a day out in Leeds instead.

THE homework – the prep, as old Sammy our first former history master used to call it – had diligently been completed.

Winsford is the home of Britain’s salt mines, a million tons a year extracted from 135 miles of tunnels. We’d been there when they met Morpeth in 2012, observed that the banking and terracing behind one of the goals were so overgrown that they didn’t so much need ball boys as a search and rescue team.

Then there was Tow Law, now in the Ebac Northern League second division but enjoying their best season for years.

Two decades ago they’d been followed by a fair-weather fans’ group called the Misfits, ludicrously said by BBC 5 Live to be the most organised hooligan gang outside the professional game.

They weren’t, of course, though they did have malevolent moments. Years later, a tattooed former member had recalled the column’s observation that he had more rings than the Moscow State Circus. He’d quite liked that one, he said.

The Misfits have been re-formed. In the expectation of a trouble-free afternoon, we’d even dreamed up the headline “Perfect Misfit.” So much for doing the homework.

SALVATION is at hand. Runcorn Linnets, two or three stations beyond Winsford, are in FA Vase action at home to Sunderland RCA.

Six of us continue the journey, adjourn to a pub near Runcorn station. On Remembrance Day it provides the year’s first rendition of Don’t They Know It’s Christmas. Is this a record, as a juke box manufacturer might suppose?

Runcorn, a town of 61,000 souls, was chiefly built on chemicals. When Runcorn Town played Billingham Synthonia, also in 2012, we’d noted both town’s ICI links. “Runcorn achieves the not insonsiderable feat of making Billingham look beautiful by comparison,” the column somewhat unkindly added.

Town’s ground was like something from a Quatermass film, the fencing down one side hung with “Danger” notices because of chemical corrosion behind.

Only a duly authorised committee member was allowed to go in search of lost balls, it added, stirring thoughts of Town’s headed notepaper – chairman, secretary, and the bugger who climbed the fence to seek footballs amid the moonscape.

Linnets’ ground seems an awfully long way out of town, closer to Liverpool. RCA officials report that they’d bumped into some of the Tow Law lads at an A1 services and that they weren’t very happy. It may rank as the understatement of the age.

NIGEL Brierley, one of our travelling companions, invites us to detail the only occasion on which a UK top ten hit and the name of the group which sang it were both palindromes.

Gary Brand, a Tottenham Hotspur fan in a Haringey Borough hat, believes a palindrome to be the headquarters of Friends Reunited but in turn wonders if we’ve heard about the referee in that afternoon’s game between Blackpool and Portsmouth.

A day earlier, a court judgement had ruled that Blackpool’s owners, Oyston father and son, had “illegitimately stripped” the club of its assets, prompting much social media mirth at the name of the appointed ref.

He was Ben Toner. “Say it quickly,” explains Gary, insisting – amid much incredulity – that the Football League had duly taken the ref off the game.

Belief suspended, a little research confirms the story to be true. Poor Ben Toner has been sent to Carlisle United, whose owner is no doubt a model of propriety, instead.

Whichever way you look at it, the palindromic puzzler was Abba and SOS.

CLAD in green and yellow, the Linnets are third in the North West Counties League – that of Bootle, Burscough and Barnoldswick. The pitch is perfect, the match preceded by a short act of Remembrance, reverently observed.

Hostilities swiftly resume. After just seven minutes, a home player is sent off for launching himself at an RCA man with the inexorable intent of a V2 rocket.

A Linnets supporter supposes that the referee must be from Newcastle.

“If he was from Newcastle,” explains the RCA fan next to him, “we’d get sod all.”

The chant of “Fat Geordie b*****d” may likewise be culturally, if not physically, inappropriate.

By half-time it’s 1-1, both teams are down to ten men and Mr Tim Duncan has devoured a large bacon and mushroom sandwich, two pies and a cheeseburger.

Mr Duncan also reports that one of his mates back in Darlington has broken his leg playing walking football, that non-contact activity now growing in popularity. What’s more he was the goalie.

It’s sport, accidents happen, get on with it.

A grown man’s game ends 1-1 after extra time, Linnets down to nine late on when the goalkeeper’s sent packing. Some of the RCA lads are planning a night out in Liverpool: last we hear, the Lawyers are still in Leeds, and probably not on soft drinks, either.

THERE'S a PS. After the bones of Saturday’s events appeared on my blog – www.mikeamosblog.wordpress.com – a reader in Canada recalled The Splash, the famous photograph of Tom Finney in action at Stamford Bridge in 1952 that provided the idea for Sir Tom’s statue at Preston North End. Sir Tom neither drowned, got trench foot nor, so far can be ascertained, even caught a cold. If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, it’s that one.