JUST 18 months after she became the first female referee in the Over 40s League – “to be honest, I think they were just glad to have anyone,” she said after the match at Trimdon – Helen Conley has been appointed an assistant ref in the FA Women’s Cup final.

The 6ft blonde, who lives near Bishop Auckland and referees in the Wearside League, is just 26.

“I still can’t believe it, it was such a massive surprise,” she insists.

She began at 18, in youth football, graduated the following season to the Northern League second division line. “It was just love of the game. I’d never have been good enough to play at a high level, so I decided to try to do well as a referee,” she says.

The next step, she hopes, will be promotion to the Northern League first division. “After that, it’s FIFA.”

Qualities? “One of the main ones is a sense of humour, that and the sheer enjoyment of the game. It’s no good even starting if you don’t enjoy it.”

The final’s on Sunday, May 26, at Bristol City, between Birmingham and the winners of this Sunday’s Arsenal- Chelsea game. It’ll be live on Sky Sports 2. “I think,” says Helen, “that it might have quite a big audience in County Durham.”

LAST Friday to the launch in Newton Aycliffe of the Ebac Foundation, company chairman John Elliott’s £30m gift to the community. The keynote speaker was former government minister Lord Digby Jones, pictured below.

“God is alive and well and keeping goal for Aston Villa,” he began, though whether that marked him out as a grateful fan of Villa or of one of the Premiership’s other endangered species, it was wholly impossible to tell.

ONLY 17 days to go, so best again mention the all-Northern League FA Vase final – Wembley, Sunday, May 13 – between Dunston UTS and West Auckland.

West are also closing in on the Northern League championship, despite the setback of a 4-4 draw at Penrith last week.

It was only after everyone had gone home that Penrith officials realised that their visitors had taken a number of the home club’s match and training balls with them.

Though clear that it was wholly inadvertent, Penrith secretary Ian White puts the mistake down to his side’s last-minute equaliser. “It reminds me of my almost forgotten youth when people took their bat home if they were losing. No one said anything about a draw.”

The finalists, meanwhile, attended another Wembley briefing on Monday.

It finished at 4.30pm, after which they decanted into the Wembley Tavern and arrived at Kings Cross fourand- a-half hours later. There’s a 9.15pm email from team manager Peter Dixon. “I knew I’d chosen the right club,” it says.

PETER and many others are still at the 10.30am launch next day of League of Our Own, the special ale made by Wall’s County Town Brewery in Northallerton to celebrate the all-Northern League final. The launch is at Dunston – media maul, great hospitality, free beer. There’s a key role for the poor league chairman, too. All hot air, I get to blow up the blue and white balloons.

Details of how to buy the beer, of where to buy Wembley tickets and of much else on northernleague.org LAST week’s column told the story of George McKellar, former Third Lanark goalkeeper and for the past 50 years a dedicated refereeing man in County Durham.

Some remembered George – “one of the best local league referees I ever knew,” recalls Alf Hutchinson in Darlington – yet more recalled Third Lanark, the Glasgow side which folded in 1967.

Among Third’s better cross-border exports, says Keith Bell, were future Newcastle United stars Bobby Mitchell and Dave Hilley – who’d lived around the corner from one another in Glasgow, attended the same school, played for the same junior side and, when Hilley followed Mitchell south, lived in the same street in Gosforth.

Martin Birtle recalls working on the rigs in the 1970s with a chap who’d left Third Lanark to play for Darlington. This was probably Jim Cannon, a man of a thousand potential headlines, but who made just 12 Quakers appearances in 1956.

Celtic fan Ian Andrew, in Lanchester, reckons Glasgow’s sectarianism nowhere near as bad as once it was.

“When I was a student in Edinburgh in the early 1960s, we’d head straight home after playing matches in Glasgow without even having a shower.”

Gavin Aitchison in York sends details of a website about Cathkin Park, Third Lanark’s home, now semi-preserved by the city council like some municipal Marie Celeste.

Trees grow amid the terraces. “Quite eerie all told,” says Gav.

In an earlier incarnation, the site points out, the ground hosted Scottish FA Cup finals and internationals, including one against England in 1894. In those days – honest – they called it Hampden Park.

THAT column also suggested that Scottish football fans were crying into their plastic cups over new that production of granulated Bovril was to cease. “I’m much perturbed, surely it can’t be true?” says Gav Aitchison. At risk of prompting panic, it appears to be.

Buy now while stock lasts.

...and finally, last week’s column invited the names of the two clubs, other than the Boro, for which Craig Hignett and Bernie Slaven had both played. They were Darlington and Billingham Synthonia.

Not quite music to the ears, readers are today invited to suggest how Synthonia came by their much-mispronounced name. The score, once more, next Thursday.