GENOA is a city of 620,000 people in northern Italy. It has been home to three Popes, two Nobel prize winners and to Christopher Columbus and is about 2ft 6in above sea level.

It is thus not easily confused with Tow Law, which was home to Jimmy Jones, has a population of just under 2,000 and has the highest senior football ground in England.

Genoa was European Capital of Culture in 2004, has several World Heritage sites and a university with 40,000 students.

Tow Law has a Chinese takeaway.

In Genoa, home of the magnificent San Lorenzo cathedral, Saturday's temperature was recorded at 18C and the sunshine described on the BBC website as "glorious."

In Tow Law, home of the first Co Durham vicarage to have double glazing - and for Godgiven good reason - the thermometer sat just above freezing and the hailstorm could be seen like an avenging angel, sweeping down the dale.

It was like the old after-dinner joke about why Tommy Smith/Chopper Harris/Billy Bremner - delete according to speaker - was nicknamed Exocet. You could see it coming, but do bugger all about it.

As ever, the good folk of Tow Law - once mentioned in a Mark Knopfler song, something about Hill Farmer's Blues - were stoical. "It's nowt this,"

said club treasurer Kevin McCormick, hail ricocheting from his cap, "it'll be a lot worse tomorrow."

There is a point to this Anglo- Italian job: a group of football fans in the city of both Sampdoria and of Genoa FC - nine times Italian champions - want to form a Tow Law Town fan club, too.

"I thought someone was pulling my leg at first, but there's a whole section about us on their website," says Lawyers' secretary Steve Moralee. "I don't think anyone's been, but they just seem to have fallen in love with Tow Law."

In truth it's Ross, the secretary's 17-year-old son, who's been handling most of the correspondence, and with nothing lost in the translation.

The world being the size it now is, however, he was away on a school trip to Canada.

Tow Law played Durham City, perhaps a more obvious choice for a cultural exchange, Arngrove Northern League first division. The programme revealed that Mark Eccles, the splendid home skipper, was sponsored by Aldaberto di Angelo.

Perhaps it was the first fruit of the new entente cordiale, or whatever the Italian equivalent; perhaps he owned the local pizza place.

It was a very enjoyable game, the crowd huddled heroically beneath the better-days corrugated iron shelter at the leeward end. "I bet it's not like this in Genoa," someone said, and with little prospect of contradiction.

City won 2-1, effectively to clinch the league title; the Lawyers, in mitigation, could consider themselves a bit hard done by.

Back in the clubhouse, where a bucket collected water from an inconsiderate hole in the roof - "the Spa End," said Kevin McCormick - conversation turned more easily to tonight's home match with Whitley Bay than to the prospect of a preseason friendly with Sampdoria.

Sandra Gordon, the club chairman, had been told that the Genoese were planning a visit, possibly during the summer - which usually falls in the third week of August.

She hadn't herself spoken to the new fan club, but had clearly been practising her diplomacy. "I think," said Sandra, "that they may be in for a surprise."

Shildon's star juniors reunited

OLDER and doubtless wiser, senior citizens to a man, the all-conquering lads of Shildon Works Juniors gathered on Saturday evening for a reunion.

Exactly half a century ago they'd played 44 and won 40 of them, scored 281 and conceded 54, won the Darlington Junior League double, lifted the Durham County Junior Cup and the SW Durham Cup, too.

The papers simply called them the Red Devils; now, perhaps, their horns had been pulled in a bit.

All have survived. Fifty years later, however, there were fellers gathered in Shildon Civic Hall who barely even recognised one another. "That's nowt," someone said. "I look in the mirror in the morning and hardly even recognise mesel'."

"It was really all down to the committee, they did everything for us," insisted Derek Dowson, who scored 201 in three seasons.

Gordon Bryan hit 124.

There was even a time, Derek recalled, when he'd scored nine or ten in the first half an hour against Rocket Juniors of Darlington - Rocket who'd clearly failed to take off - then went left back so his mate could have a go. They won 23-0.

The name was misleading.

Few were apprenticed to the British Rail workshops which, 24 hours a day, went hammer and tongs at the business end of the town. The rules allowed anyone living within a threemile radius, providing that there was no nearer team.

In the County Cup they'd beaten Bowburn 20-0, come back from 2-0 down to beat Chester-le-Street - strictly Chester Modern Old Scholars - in a clarty semi-final, walloped Spennymoor Juniors 5-0 in the final at Bishop Auckland.

"There were more thrills and interest than in many Northern League games on the Kingsway ground this season," observed Ranger in the Northern Despatch.

Derek Dowson had trials with Newcastle, signed as an amateur with Spurs - "Danny Blanchflower was captain, Bill Nicholson the manager" - came home again because his father declined to let him turn professional.

"He was one of those old-fashioned fathers, said I should get a proper job," he recalled, without bitterness.

The usual team was Keith Fodden, Terry Barlow, Michael Barker, Dick Longstaff, Keith Simpson, Alan West, Bill Stokoe, Brian Prudhoe, Derek Dowson, Gordon Bryan and Bobby Guy - an outside left with an eye both for goal and for a target.

Despite losing an eye in an accident, Bobby - who lives in Toft Hill - became a world shooting champion.

Michael Barker had been a West Auckland miner, went on to win seven England amateur international caps and who had five years as a professional with Queen of the South.

"The Works Juniors were a brilliant team, a footballing side from goalkeeper to outside left,"

he said. "It was a pleasure to play with them and it's a real pleasure to see them all again."

They played on the British Railways field, changed in an old railway carriage, had everything first-class.

Bill Hardy was chairman, Bill Hutchinson secretary, Jack Coates trainer - qualified by being a member of the British Railways ambulance class and Jack Lowe the kitman. "We could be walking up the old railway line after the match and the strips would already be out on the line," said Derek Dowson.

"We weren't just the best team we were the smartest, too.

Everything was absolutely pristine."

The reunion had been organised by Dickie Longstaff, scorer of the first goal in the County final and the Auckland Chronicle's undisputed man of the match.

Dickie had even brought along a collection of those hand-written postcards that weekly would inform a player he'd been selected. Another advised details of the end-of-season outing to Blackpool.

"What a hoot that was," said Dick, "half of them had never even been out of Co Durham."

All seemed fit enough. Keith Fodden had travelled up from Stoke, Alan West now lives in Australia and was thus outside the three-mile radius.

All, too, seemed delighted to be part of the reunion. "A great occasion," said Dickie Longstaff. "Just for a few hours, a lot of old men are suddenly 17 again."

... and finally

THE link between the 1849 and 1877 university boat races, the 1984 women's Olympic freestyle swimming final and the 1997 Nunthorpe Stakes at York (Backtrack, Friday) was that all ended in a dead-heat.

Peter Birch in Saltburn today invites readers to suggest what the three scorers in this year's Carling Cup final had in common.

Common as muck, the column returns on Friday.

9:29am Tuesday 8th April 2008

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