It was 17 years since we'd met. Mick Jones, changed less dramatically than his circumstances, was pondering the reality of growing old.

On so fretful and so fearful a subject, it may not be possible to wax philosophical. Perhaps you wane philosophically, instead.

One of a Sunderland miner's seven children, he was born on the Plains Farm estate almost 57 years ago, stood a season ticket on the Fulwell End, became a Charlie Hurley centre half for Peterborough and Notts County, coached or managed everywhere from Black Country to Brunei, and having been all around the Wrekin - learned readers will doubtless explain the familiar phrase - now finds himself in the middle of it.

Mick's the manager of Telford United, once the ironmaster's town in Shropshire, and giving the Conference much to talk about. Crewe's conquerors in the FA Cup third round on Saturday, the Bucks now entertain Millwall, Dennis Wise men, in the next.

Bucks' Fizz headlines popped like Pomagne. A headier vintage altogether, the aim isn't the Cup but promotion to the Football League.

If the philosophy may be summed up as "live for today", however, the next big one is January 24. The only regret is that they weren't away to Sunderland.

"When the draw was made I was actually quite disappointed," he admits. "I would love to take a side to the Stadium of Light, dedicate the match to Our Kid.

"Maybe next round, maybe next year. It would still be for Our Kid."

Their kid, the younger brother to whom he was particularly close, died recently. The ever-admirable Billy Ayre, the Rowlands Gill-born player and manager to whose son he is godfather, died two years ago.

Perhaps remembering Bill Shankly's immortal aphorism on matters of life and death, he concludes that we - he and I - are on the slippery slope.

"You look at Billy and Our Kid. Fit lads, loved their football, but what can you do about this cancer lark.

"If I live as long as my dad I'll make 73, and if the next 14 or 15 years fly by as fast as the last 14 or 15, that'll be it.

"I always remember someone telling me that life was like a rocket, the first half all flames and boost and the second half falling away back to earth.

"I'm having a good time, but I cherish every year whatever happens, because you never know how many more you might have."

The last meeting, October 1986, had been amid the hell on hold that was forever Halifax Town. After 23 months as manager, he'd finally been allowed to buy a player.

Mike Galloway cost £1,500 from Mansfield. To find the fee, Mick walked 52 miles in just over 12 hours to the away match at Preston, raised twice as much in sponsorship, gave the balance to a children's hospice and recalls with enduring satisfaction that Town won 1-0.

Galloway went on to captain Celtic and to play for Scotland. "I like to think I know a footballer," says Mick.

Even before then he'd held track suit titles at Notts County, Mansfield, Kettering and Derby. When he left Halifax for Peterborough, he also left £1,000 to help pay the wages.

Subsequently he teamed with Neil Warnock, the canny chiropodist, to lead Notts County from the bottom division to the Premiership in successive seasons, joined Warnock at Plymouth and Huddersfield and spent three richly-rewarding years as national coach in Brunei.

A soccer mad sultanate of 300,000 people, Brunei won the Malaysia Cup - "the biggest thing in the South China Sea" - for the first time. The lad from the Plains Farm estate became a dem-igod overnight.

"It created a sensation," he recalls. "I couldn't go to the shops or anything without being mobbed.

"I never romanticised Brunei, always said that the reasons for going there were financial, but they awarded me a medal, like the OBE or something, that's normally only given for at least 25 years outstanding service to the state.

"You wouldn't believe what the sultan's palace was like. I have a letter from the government here saying I can wear my medal, but I haven't done yet."

As a football ground, Telford's Bucks Head stadium is little less palatial, sumptuous below stairs. Chairman Andy Shaw, a 38-year-old self-made millionaire who began life as a carpenter, has spent an estimated £20m on a ground, hotel and leisure complex and may not have had much change.

He even operated one of the cranes swinging girders into place. It's probably what's called hands-on.

The ground's in Wellington, just up the road, opened in the summer on the site of the old one but turned through 180 degrees. The Bucks Head pub stands, dwarfed, on one corner, the Spiritualist Church, entranced, on another.

Jones, head hunted, joined the Wrekin crew almost a year ago. "I was doing bits of jobs but enjoying smelling the roses, watching the games I wanted to, seeing my golf handicap fly down.

"Now I can't remember when I last held a golf club, but Andy paid me a big compliment and I'd like to be able to repay it."

Still, however, he waits to occupy his office beneath the stand. Shaw, a chairman with priorities, finished the corporate boxes first.

We sit instead in the high-tech control room, overlooking an 8,000 capacity stadium covered on three sides. The fourth stand will be built when the third division is reached.

The players have a day off. "We don't do much training after Christmas. There's me, the secretary, mebbe the cleaner but I'd be here even if you weren't coming. It's just the way I am."

His hair may be thinner but retains a competitive curl, the mutual moustache adds to a resemblance to the late Billy Ayre. He is straight-backed, sometimes straight-laced and remains, like Cassius, lean and hungry.

The hunger is for success, the enthusiasm undimmed, the work appetite no less prodigious.

"I'm enthusiastic and I like enthusiastic people around me," he admits, still old-fashioned enough to fine players who arrive with hands in their tracksuit pockets but progressive enough to spend hours exploring the Internet and studying coaching worldwide.

"I hate to see footballers with their hands in tracksuit pockets, it makes them look round-shouldered," he says. "I've told them if it happens again, I'll ban coming to work in tracksuit bottoms altogether."

His players have also been punished - "fun fines" he insists - for wearing hats ("those silly baseball caps") on the team bus or for inappropriate use of mobile phones.

The squad must also take lunch together every Thursday. "I always say that a good dressing room will win you ten points and a bad one will lose you ten.

"It's a bit like the way people imagined Dennis Smith when he was at Derby. Everyone thought he was old school but underneath he was employing psychologists, scientists, dieticians. Diet and fitness are a very important part of this club, too."

New ground, new broom, in the summer he signed a completely new squad of 18 full- time professionals, none of them paid a signing-on fee.

"It makes a bit of a difficulty because almost everyone else does, but it's the chairman's policy and I have no problem with it," he says. "Andy believes in rewarding success, not failure."

After an iffy start, they sit behind the leading pack. Promotion is "unrealistic but do-able", he says, Conference football fantastic.

"The standard has doubled in a year. When ITV Digital collapsed, so many Football League players became available and some on better money than they could ever get in the third division.

"Experience tells me that my sides have always got stronger after Christmas but the FA Cup, and then the FA Trophy, may interfere.

"I have to get through to the players that there mustn't be an After the Lord Mayor's Show, that the most important game is always the next one."

It'll probably be his last job, he supposes, maybe a bit more time to spend with his family - he still coaches his son's Sunday morning side - back on the golf course or unravelling the mortal coil.

"I remember leaving home when I was 15, a steam train from Sunderland to Derby County that took about eight hours and stopped at every station in Britain.

"For the first three weeks all I wanted to do was come back home again, but after that I never really looked back. You grew up fast.

"I've had disappointments, like breaking my leg when I was a youngster at Derby, but I honestly have no regrets.

"I won two championship medals as a player and was involved in six Wembley occasions.

"There are great players, managers and coaches who've never been there once."

"If I were taken tomorrow I'd be content, but I'd rather Telford were in the Football League first."

Warnock: He's the daddy

Neil Warnock, says Jones, is the "daddy of all man managers", the man most able to get the best out of players.

"I always tell him that if he had five England caps he'd be managing Chelsea or Arsenal or some other top side."

Having got Notts County into the Premiership, they were drawn in the first game against Manchester United.

"They'd signed Kanchelskis on the Thursday. We didn't know a thing about him, but we did after half an hour. He was amazing."

County lost 2-0, Pickering lad Craig Short among those who'd experienced the difference. "He came off the pitch and asked me if it was always like that.

"I told him it was and that he'd have to get used to it.

"But, credit to him, he's still there with Blackburn and doing really well. Like you have to do, he learned."

Backtrack Briefs

On October 18 last year, we presented the annual awards at Crook Cricket Club. Among the recipients, scorer of a disappointing season's only century, was an engaging young man called Michael Cooper, known to his friends as Tommy.

Just before Christmas, Michael died after falling downstairs at his works' Christmas party in a Bishop Auckland pub. He was 18.

"It's a tragedy that has affected us all," says Crook CC official Alan Stewart.

Michael had been playing cricket since he was ten, represented under 13s, 15s and 18s, had become a second team regular and played several games for the firsts - "hard-hitting batsman, good medium pace bowler and excellent fielder," says Alan.

His parents are giving the club the bat with which he scored the century against Shildon Railway. It'll be kept in a showcase alongside his photograph, cap, a bottle of Newcastle Brown - his favourite drink - and that scorecard: M Cooper, bowled Nevison, 103.

David James, a long-serving former secretary of Ferryhill Athletic FC, has also died. He was 60. "He was hard working, conscientious and one of the reasons that Ferryhill survived in the Northern League as long as they did," says former league secretary Gordon Nicholson. David's funeral is at St Luke's church, Ferryhill, at 11am today.

That wide-eyed little lad with the FA Cup in Tuesday's column proves to have been six-year-old Rhys Halpin, from Spennymoor. "His grandad took him when the Cup was at Shildon, Rhys was thrilled to bits," says Angela Wilson, another family member.

Reproduced on the front of the FA's Christmas bulletin, the picture was seen by football folk all over Britain. We're trying to gather together some spares.

And finally...

the high-profile manager who replaced Jock Wallace at Rangers (Backtrack, January 6) was Graeme Souness.

Since we, too, have been all around the Wrekin, readers are today invited to recall the 1979 television series Telford's Change - and to name its two principal stars.

Good as a rest, the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 09/01/2004