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FIRSTLY, a word of explanation: Scottish "junior" football is played between consenting adults in public, like English "nonleague"

only with Iron Brew and imprecations. Child's play it's most certainly not.

It will thus become clear that Cumnock Juniors play a man's game, and never more than when they meet Auchinleck Talbot.

They're former Ayrshire mining villages, a mile and a half apart, and as neighbours go have all the friendly relationship of, say, Israel and Palestine.

"You wouldn't say there was rivalry between Cumnock and Auchinleck," says Eddie Kyle.

"It's more like hatred."

Cumnock are known as The Nock, presumably as in hard Nock; Auchinleck take their name from Lord Talbot de Maldahide - who sounds like he should be well preserved - the toff who gave them the ground.

Somewhat ungratefully, they really wanted to be known as Auchinleck Boswell Thistle, but getting on 100 years ago lost a play-off with Lugar for the eternal right to the suffix.

We'd bumped into Eddie, former assistant manager of Darlington and of Hartlepool, at Billingham Synthonia v Durham City on Saturday. He'd been alternatively invited to be a special guest at that afternoon's Scottish Junior Cup quarter-final, Cumnock v Auchinleck. Discretion dictated otherwise.

"I'd have quite enjoyed it," said Eddie, "but I fear they have long memories in Auchinleck."

The sides hadn't met at that stage of the cup for 32 years.

When last they did, Valentine's Day 1976, Eddie not only scored both goals in the Juniors' 2-1 win but saw the opposing centre-half sent off for what the papers called a "shocking" challenge on him from behind.

"Maybe I wound him up a wee bit," concedes Eddie, now a travel agent in Yarm, Teesside - and who'd commuted from Darlington to Cumnock even after moving across the border.

In 1976, the ground held 6,000.

So many were outside half an hour before kick-off that the police gave orders for the gates to be opened. The attendance was estimated at 12,000, 40 fewer after the arrests. The pressure, says Eddie, was intense.

The Daily Record felt the pulse in last week's match preview. "This game is absolutely mental," it said of the upcoming Ayrshire derby.

"There are tales of sendings off, referees running scared, fans fighting on the terraces, buses being stoned, everything except cattle rustling."

The websites caught the mood, too - one message was even signed "Eddie Kyle's love child." Eddie quite liked that, though he hasn't yet told their lass.

He also recalls the Majorcan holiday a few years back when, in a favourite bar, the landlord asked another Scot if he recognised the grey-haired lad in the corner.

"Not Eddie Bastard' Kyle," said the other feller - clearly a Talbot man - finished his drink and was never seen on the premises again.

"The bar owner was my friend. I lost him a lot of good business," says Eddie.

Saturday's match ended 1-1 before a crowd of 4,000, and with not so much as a selfrespecting stooshie. "I've never seen so many coppers at a match," said the Record's reporter.

Junior show time kicks off again this Saturday. Eddie doesn't think he'll be at that one, either.

LAST Friday's column had a Scottish flavour, too, and this Friday's looks like heading the same way. Thanks also to those who've been in touch about Queen of the South - more of that particular north/South divide on Friday, also.

PRETTY canny on Saturdays, the Arngrove Northern League is clearly Sunday best - the FA Sunday Cup final at Anfield on April 27 will be between Coundon Conservative Club, the holders, and Hetton Lyons Cricket Club - winners the year previously. Both teams consist almost exclusively of ANL players.

In Sunday's semi-finals, the Cons beat Brantham Athletic 2- 1 in Suffolk, while Hetton won 2-0 at Liverpool club Paddock.

"The final's going to be like an old pals' reunion," says Coundon manager Paul Aldsworth - forever Pele - though the semi-final was a bit like that, too.

"We came out of the dressing room at Sudbury and the first person I saw was Keith Emmerson, who'd played for Shildon when they reached the FA Cup first round and who knew half our players.

"I told him how good it was of him to travel all the way to watch us and he said he hadn't, he was playing for the opposition. He'd not let on at all."

Pele, understandably, remains a bit high. "We had several out through injury, didn't get to the hotel until nearly one o'clock in the morning and when they needed to dig deep, they did it.

"They all play for nothing, wouldn't take a couple of quid if I offered it, and it's great. It's going to be a great Co Durham day out at Anfield."

FRIDAY'S Backtrack noted that Echo editor Peter Barron's first racing tip for Northern Cross, the monthly newspaper of the Roman Catholic diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, had come home at 6-1. Today's column should therefore acknowledge - though the world and his wife may already have heard of it - that Denman, his second, won the Cheltenham Gold Cup. His third - and to be fair to the guy, they're chosen several weeks in advance - is Point Barrow in the National, though Pete's stalling a bit on this one. "In its prep race it ran like a donkey," he says. A distinctly unholy trinity? We supplicate accordingly.

A BUMPER bundle of programmes from our friends at Darlington Hole in the Wall FC - of whom the column is president - reveals that the longest unbeaten run in the club's undistinguished history has finally come to an end.

It lasted 11 weeks, though the fact that they hadn't played for ten of them may not entirely be irrelevant. Eventually they met Darlington GSOB, who had not only failed to gain a point all season but were on minus three after some indiscretion or other.

GSOB won 4-1.

"It takes them," reports Alan Smith, dryly, "to the dizzy heights of having no points at all."

11:00am Tuesday 18th March 2008

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