Cricket season begins in January

This is wholly misleading. Sometimes this trio of retired roustabouts take in six or seven games, or bits of games, in a day. They are cricket ground-hoppers, and they make the likes of former Hartlepool postman John Dawson seem almost sedentary by comparison.

The forward calls them The Three Musketeers, but since two are West Yorkshiremen by birth and the third by adoption, the irresistible comparison is with the Holmfirth infantry, Compo, Clegg and Co.

The column comes immediately to attention, however, at the first line of the acknowledgments - "Mike Amos, Northern Echo." An acknowledged authority after all these years, but what on earth had we done to deserve it?

It thus provided weekend reading, and it was page 120, of 132, before the mystery was explained.

Mostly, though by no means exclusively, their itinerary is within 30 miles of Leeds GPO, where they play for things like the Heavy Woollen Cup and have teams like Old Modernians, Cambridge Methodists - who, of course, are from Leeds - and Yorkshire Gentlemen.

"My Lancashire friends," observes one of the triumvirate, "wonder how Yorkshire Gentlemen can raise 11 men."

Frequent North-East forays include to Chester-le-Street ("a cornucopia of pubs with fine food and company"), Darlington ("always good food here, but the players have to eat first") and Seaton Carew, where they bump into the column's old friend Tony Day, aka Jesus.

Any North-East cricket lover asked if he'd found Jesus might reasonably reply: "Certainly, and with a pint in either hand."

The nomads - Tony Hutton, Mick Bourne and Brian Senior, citizen - also enjoy frequent forays into the North Riding, where they found the ground at Newburgh Priory, near Thirsk, "a magical place."

The "season" began on January 15 last year - Appletreewick v Malhamdale, an annual eccentricity - and ended on Boxing Day, North Leeds v the Northern Cricket Society, every bit as improbable.

By August 18, when it poured and he could no longer dodge the showers, Brian Senior had watched cricket on 88 successive days, embracing 213 matches.

So, ball by ball, to page 120, and the county Over 50s final between Yorkshire and Sussex at Horsham, in which our old wicketkeeping friend Tom Stafford - southerner, Arsenal fan, recently retired Yarm newsagent - kept wicket for Yorkshire. Their overseas pro, the column observed at the time.

The Echo - "a splendid paper", the musketeers concur - was the only publication in which an account of the match was published.

"Mike Amos," add these men of Heavy Woollen country, "has for many years delighted us with his tales of league cricket and non-league soccer as well as his tantalising quizzes, but he perhaps excelled himself with the quote about the overseas professional."

That was the one where Tom, who's 59, said he now preferred a leg-side stumping to sex - "and had been repercussively reminded of it, not least by his loyal wife, ever since."

The book is equally diverting, thoroughly enjoyable, contains some pleasant colour photographs and at just a fiver is a cricket lovers' bargain. That's the debt acknowledged, an' all.

Off the Beaten Track is available for £5, plus £1 postage, from Dr Peter Davies at the Department of History, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH. Profits go to the university's Cricket Heritage Project.

Pure chance that, just before Sunday bedtime, John Dawson should ring with an update on his still-rolling football season. Eight of the North-East hoppers watched Pennycuick v Scone - as in stone - on Saturday and will be back across the border for Keltie v Montrose Rose Lea this weekend, before the Scottish season finally ends. Thereafter, it may be July 1 before John gets to see another match - "I'm looking at Llanelli in the Intertoto Cup" - though the Keltie lads aren't as lucky. They've been told to report for pre-season training on June 30.

The only problem with the Over 40s League, whose annual presentation we again attended in Sunderland on Friday evening, is that they look younger by the year.

For founding secretary Kip Watson, as ever afforded a standing ovation, the league has offered the elixir of youth, however. Kip will be 90 in December. "No-one has ever been more lucky," he said.

It began 27 years ago with five teams. Now there are 72 in three counties with 2,000 registered players, the newest arrivals from Shildon. (That'll show 'em.)

Former Premiership referee Ken Redfearn was named referee of the year but blew for time when asked his age. Ken is forever 47.

There were long distance awards for the likes of Andy Reeks, who travels from Aysgarth to play for Croft, near Darlington, and for Hamish Joyce, who lives in Appleton Wiske, near Northallerton, but passes Croft on his way to Trimdon Vets.

Familiar names like Doug Grant and Paul Rowntree - forever Jellies - again won awards for their scoring prowess, though the season's quickest came in six seconds from Doug's Newton Aycliffe colleague Lee Killopp. He won an additional award, sponsored by the Backtrack column, in memory of Melanie Egan, a former Miss Scarborough and wife of Horden Comrades secretary Colin Egan, who died last year. Colin and his daughters were there for the presentation.

It would have been fitting to report that the top division championship had been won by the appropriately named Norton and Stockton Ancients, Paul Rowntree's team, but a schedule of 18 games in the season's last two months finally took its toll.

They were second, and the league is now looking at ways of reducing the burden. "You can't expect it of Over 40s, they just hadn't the limbs for it," said Vince Williams, the league's assistant secretary. Their legs had turned to Jellies.

Andy Orkney, the column's stable jockey in the 1990s, appears to have changed horses. Andy and his wife Barbara have won this year's Marie Curie Cancer care national bridge tournament. "We were very lucky the cards fell as they did," he says, self-effacingly. An optician in Leyburn, he remains a steward at Catterick.

The funeral of Warren Bradley, the former Bishop Auckland and Manchester United right winger whose death we reported on Saturday, will take place on Wednesday, June 20 - which would have been his 74th birthday.

Alan Adamthwaite, who wrote a book on the Bishops' heyday, kindly sends photographs of Warren and former team-mates again with their hands on the FA Amateur Cup - at a Wycombe Wanderers dinner in April to mark the 50th anniversary of Wanderers' Wembley visit.

Alan also remembers a snowy first round replay in 1956 at Crook, the fiercest of local rivals, which Bishops won 4-3 after extra time when Warren laid on a goal for Frank McKenna.

"The playing conditions were nigh-on impossible but the diminutive Bradley skated across the surface despite some close attention from an uncompromising Crook defence. He simply excelled."

Following the Munich disaster in 1958, Warren became the only man to win England amateur and full international caps in the same season. The funeral is at 1 30pm at St Mary's church, Deane, Bolton.

Amid the exaggerated euphoria of England's win in Estonia last week, few may have noticed Armenia's victory over Poland the same night - a remarkable triumph for national coach Ian Porterfield, Sunderland's 1973 FA Cup winning hero, who is fighting cancer of the colon.

The week previously, they'd beaten Kazakhstan. "This is history for Armenia. They have never before won two in a row," says the engaging 61-year-old Scot. "The flags are out in the streets. It's lifted the country so much."

Yesterday and on Sunday, he underwent extensive chemotherapy, but believes he's winning the battle. "The football federation here has given me the best treatment money can buy, no matter what the cost.

"I'm trying to keep things low key, but I think I'm going to be OK."

AND FINALLY...

The first club to suffer automatic relegation from the Football League (Backtrack, June 8) was - as several readers knew - Lincoln City in 1987.

Today, back to Warren Bradley - one of only seven post-war footballers to be capped for England at both amateur and professional level. Readers are invited to name the other six.

Capped as ever, the column returns on Friday.