Arsenal have been back in the North-East for the second time in a week, last Friday playing Middlesbrough – FA Youth Cup – at Bishop Auckland’s Heritage Park ground.

No sign of the Gunners’ dear leader, of course, but Bishops’ secretary Tony Duffy still wore what he styles his Arsene Wenger coat and with the same difficulty in zipping it.

“The record’s 15 minutes,” said Tony, though whether quickest or slowest was uncertain.

Such occasions represent good value – £3 admission, £1 for codgers – a deal reflected in a 471 cold-night crowd which included retired Shields Gazette sports writer and ardent Arsenal man Mick Worrall.

Though still on Tyneside, he’d headed to Swansea for the midweek debacle. “Dreadful,” said Mick, without need of journalistic licence.

Arsenal’s youthful squad appeared a little less cosmopolitan than that which had beaten Sunderland six days earlier – even a Smith and a Thompson and, in Danny Ballard a skipper with a name from The Tiger.

Boro’s captain was Nathan Guru, a man from whom there is no doubt much to learn.

Emil Smith-Rowe and Tyreece John-Jules put Arsenal ahead, Tyrone O’Neill and Nicholas Hood equalising before Ballard’s early second half strike proved ultimately decisive. 3-2 to the Arsenal.

Before this Saturday’s match with Shildon, Bishop Auckland will unveil several plaques – one to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Munich disaster and the three Bishops’ players who answered the consequent call to Old Trafford. Warren Bradley and Bob Hardisty are themselves now dead; amateur international and former FA Council member Derek Lewin, coming up 88 and bright as a blazer, may be unable to attend because he’s recovering from a replacement hip operation.

Apropos of very little, a letter in The Times last week regretted that the great Sir Bobby Robson hadn’t arrived at St James’ Park in time to instil a little cultural awareness into Bedlington boy John Trewick.

It was Trewick, eight goals in 78 games for Newcastle, who on West Bromwich Albion’s revolutionary tour of China in 1978 had been taken to the Great Wall and, infamously observed that once you’d seen one wall, you’d seen them all.

History ignores Trewick’s insistence that it was a joke, just as Mick Martin’s claim that he’d bent free kicks around bigger walls may be supposed to have been.

The Chinese, it’s said, were inscrutable.

Speaking of former Magpies, Paul Dobson got talking in the pub in Durham to 81-year-old Gordon Hughes, 18 goals in 133 right wing appearances between 1956-63. Paul asked his most difficult opponent.

Gordon immediately named near-legendary Sunderland left back Len Ashurst, now back on Wearside and 79 in March. “By, he was a hard un,” he said.

Paul’s email is headed “The Garfield flyer.” Since Garfield is a cat of curious ways, it’s possible that he means Garesfield, a village in north-west Durham. He blames the spellcheck, of course.

Newcastle’s deadline day signing of Islam Slimani on loan adds to a squad that already includes Mohammad Diame, Jesus Gamez and Christian Atsu. Is this, wonders Backtrack reader Neil McKay, what’s meant by keeping the faith – though it was a Pope who save Burnley last Wednesday.

Brian Clough, one of Len’s early contemporaries at Roker Park, tops the bill at a film show in Hamsterley village hall in west Durham tomorrow night. It’s a close call, though.

They’re showing I Believe in Miracles, a film recalling the rise of Cloughy’s Nottingham Forest side from second division to European champions. Since it’s Hamsterley, wood for the trees, organiser Simon Raine also promises a Forest-related quiz.

The B-movie will be The Testing of Eric Olthwaite, the Ripping Yarns episode from the 1970s filmed on location in Tow Law and other Co Durham beauty spots.

Olthwaite, played by Terry Jones, had a girlfriend called Enid Bag – the regular drag act at the Boot and Shoe in Darlington is Miss Ann Bag – and was a particularly dull Yorkshireman with a fondness for shovels, black pudding and rain.

Then he robbed a bank. The “bank”, inexplicably, was the North Point Hotel in Tow Law, the subsequent police chase down Campbell Street. Other scenes were shot in Sacriston, on Bollihope Common and at High Force.

The evening – the Hamsterley O2 Arena, Simon calls it – begins at 7pm. £3 donation for parish church funds.

The note a few weeks back on Ralph Ord, now a global sports administrator and shortly headed to the World Cup in Russia, recalled that he’d once managed Wearhead United in the Crook and District League.

Another reader notes on the Durham FA website that DFA hopes to begin talks with the Crook League, one of few Saturday survivors, about becoming part of the National League System.

“By 2030 we could have Wearhead United playing West Ham United,” he says. Best make that 2031.

….and finally, the nine Newcastle United managers who represented their country in World Cup finals (Backtrack, February 1) were Bill McGarry, Bobby Robson, Jack Charlton, Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer – all England – Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness (both Scotland), Ossie Ardiles (Argentine) and Ruud Gullit (Netherlands.)

Today back to Bishop Auckland. Monday’s Daily Mail devoted a page to the story of how Bradley, Hardisty and Lewin joined the Busby Babes – readers are invited to suggest Warren Bradley’s unique claim to football fame.

More unusual than unique, the column returns next week.