The witch of Frome must not be confused with the Demon of Frome, who was Colin Herbert Dredge, but seems a pretty influential lass, nonetheless.

It was halfway through last football season that Frome Town, who'd scored 31 goals away and just three at home, decided there must be curse - or worse - on their Badger's Hill ground and recruited the lustrously-named Titania Hardie to give things a bit of a lift.

Ms Hardie, said to be Britain's foremost consultant white witch, has degrees in psychology and English literature and has sold 1.2m books with titles like Bewitched, Hocus Pocus and Hubble Bubble. (Hubble Bubble was a cookery book.)

What happened next, says Wiccan Weekly - or some similar witch report unearthed on the Internet - was "the stuff of neo-pagan legend."

What the Frome folk say she did was have the dressing rooms painted in more pastel shades, leave a few vases of flowers scattered about the place and "cast a little spell or two" on the pitch.

What Ms Hardie says she did was "surround them with a huge positive energy", like a sort of out-of- body Lucozade.

Frome won eight of their nine remaining home games, finished in the top five of the Western League for the first time in ages - "top five" is a journalistic term, meaning fifth - got themselves on Japanese television and this season carried on where Titania had left off.

Beaten just twice and clear favourites for the league title, they had also reached the quarter-final of the FA Vase - and then they came up against Jarrow Roofing.

Frome, pronounced as in "room" or possibly in "front room", is a former woollen town in Somerset which, like Jarrow, grew around a seventh century monastery.

The west country's mission statement was from St Aldheim.

Colin Dredge bowled his heart out for Somerset from 1976-88, his 443 first-class wickets at 30.10 frequently in partnership with the more illustrious Squire of Ravensworth.

I T Botham, the Frome lads recalled on Saturday, was accustomed to driving around the cider county in a sponsored top-of-the-range Saab; C H Dredge had an Austin Allegro on which only two gears worked.

The Demon remains in Frome, where his seven brothers all played for the town's cricket team. Still a local hero, he may not be called upon to offer expert analysis on Sky.

If Jarrow Roofing have a demon, though more dynamic than demonic, it's a little feller called Richie McLoughlin, who formed the South Tyneside League team 18 years ago, achieved Northern League status in 1997 and with the help of lofty, made-to-measure puns continues to raise the Roofers.

The ground that Richie built is actually in Boldon Colliery, that football no-man's-land between Tyne and Wear where loyalties flow in both directions. An unequivocal sign behind the top goal proclaims "Haway the Roofers."

Reckoned 55 - he claims 49 - Richie remains chairman, manager and treasurer, sufficiently passionate to have named himself as a substitute in the fifth round replay at Tipton and to have been sent off without ever coming on.On Saturday he was content with a more conventional middle-aged role, familiar bobble hat slung low over his ears - excited, animated, properly proud.

The wind was about force five, distinctly north-easterly, the 540 crowd including a lass with a long frock, black shawl and Wurzel accent. She may have been the witch of Frome, but it seemed a little indelicate to ask.Roofing, fourth bottom of the Albany Northern League first division, were underdogs until the moment that Craig Nelson scored a wonderfully composed 17th minute opener.

Once with Middlesbrough, Nelson's proudest moment was hitherto said to have been scoring against Man United at Old Trafford, though the pen pictures fail to say that it was for the youth team.

It was in any case eclipsed by his second, an individual goal so exquisite that Titian should have been at the Brockley Whins end to paint it.

Paul Hodgson's 60th minute third was barely less sublime, turning swiftly to lob the flailing keeper: spell broken, game won. The Frome faithful, it has to be said, were absolutely magnificent - sporting, magnanimous, a J Walter Thompson advert for non-league football - the Jarrow lads off to celebrate back in The Shack.

The two-leg semi-final kicks off this Saturday at Didcot, the dream of a first all-Northern League national final since 1954 - Bishop Auckland v Crook, FA Amateur Cup - still bright burning.

The final's at White Hart Lane on May 14, the prospect of the biggest mass exodus from Jarrow to London since those damp and depressing days of 1936. Bedlington Terriers, the league's other representatives, first foot at Sudbury. Whatever happens next, they will talk of Saturday from here to eternity. The Roofers were simply magic.

Observing Bedlington Terriers' quarter-final win over Newbury in last Tuesday's column, we noted that Newbury's manager was the once-prolific former Portsmouth striker Guy Whittingham, now 40, and wondered how he came by the nickname Corporal Punishment.

Apart from the fact that he gave defences a lot of stick, several readers - including Kevin O'Beirne in Sunderland and the Rev Leo Osborn in Newcastle - offered the real answer. Pompey were so keen to secure his service, they bought him out of the Army.

Eleven weddings and a funeral, much the most poignant service in Gretna last Friday was for Ian Dalgliesh, the ever-hospitable former chairman of the town's born-again football club.

Best bib and tuckered, the present promotion-winning squad stood at the back of a crowded church, former club secretary Ron McGregor recalling in his eulogy how Ian - once a baker - had a passion for proper catering at football grounds.

The Northern League, in which Gretna played from 1982-92, was very much to his taste. The HFS Loans League, into which they were promoted, left him so hungry for more that Ian began marking the hospitality out of ten."There were several who earned the Norwegian nuil points," said Ron.

"They improved when they found out Ian was on to them." One of the readings was that passage from Ecclesiastes about everything to its season, Ron McGregor topped it with Rabbie Burns.

Ian had devoted almost 60 seasons to Gretna football, an auld acquaintance never to be forgotten.Long familiar among local league cricketers in south Durham, the Eggleston Cup now has a website - and competition secretary Steve Gill is anxious to have anecdotes, articles and photographs to help furnish a history.

Run since 1939 by Darlington CC, it was first won by St Cuthbert's and in its early days by teams like Summerson's, Darlington NFS, N Winn's XI and The Moths (fly by nights, obviously.)

Rockliffe Park have won it seven times, Cockerton six, Mowden Park and Spennymoor five apiece.

The website's at www.communigate.co.uk/ne/egglestoncup; Steve's at sg.sport@ntlworld.com

And finally...

Friday's column invited readers to identify the Premiership side which could field a genuine 4-4-2 formation of first team squad players with a double letter in their surname.

Try Liverpool: Carragher, Finnan, Hyypia, Pellegrino; Gerrard, Hamann, Kewell, Riise; Mellor, Cisse. Subs: Pongolle and Le Tallec - unknown to Dave Kilvert, who posed the question, until he came on against Newcastle a fortnight ago.

The first person to provide a correct answer was Matthew Homan of Linthorpe, Middlesbrough.

Since the past two columns have had a Gretna green tinge, readers are today invited to name the club which they replaced in the Scottish third division. This side of the border, the column returns in three days.

Published: 15/03/2005