We have been talking these last two columns about those with a sneaking for Brechin. It is as naught, a mere breeze around the block, compared to the boys who take the high road to join the Ross County set.

"I used to support Wimbledon but they got too big," says Trevor Smith. Instead he formed his own Crazy Gang - the Crook branch of the Ross County Supporters Club.

"It was in a pub," says Trevor - information which may be considered superfluous - "I liked the sound of the name.

"It's an absolute passion now. We know all the players, even used to sell Ross County lottery tickets but they still prefer Sunderland and Newcastle down here."

Ross play at Dingwall, 20 miles beyond Inverness and the most northerly League ground in Britain. The journey from Crook takes seven and a half hours.

Just 11 were on the first Highland fling; Trevor expects a full coach - wives and girlfriends, too - when Crook's tour sets off for the sell-out derby with Inverness Caledonian Thistle on March 31.

"Before the first trip we were expecting to put the names of the smaller clubs in a hat and pick out another one to follow but everyone was so friendly, we stuck with Ross," says Trevor, known thereabouts as Tree.

"It's because he's tall and hairy," says our informant, curiously.

Ross joined the Scottish third division in 1994-95, won it four years later and are now in the first. Among those who principally helped ensure their elevation was Darlington-born striker Neil Tarrant, rejected at Feethams then transferred from Dingwall to Aston Villa for £250,000.

Like the mighty Pool, they play at Victoria Park. Like Hartlepool they also had a ramshackle old stand which they deliberately (and legally) set alight. Hartlepool left theirs to the Luftwaffe.

Now the ground's both impressive - £2m invested in the past ten years - and set splendidly.

"If points were awarded for scenic surroundings, Ross County would be in the Premier League," observes Simon Inglis in The Football Grounds of Great Britain.

Back in lowland Crook, meanwhile, the club's seven chief stalwarts - the Ross boss men - installed a sort of swear box behind the bar of the Golden Fleece, a 10p fine every time they mentioned Ross County, Dingwall or any of the players.

Within four weeks it has topped £400, proceeds to the Inverness Cally trip - two nights in the National Hotel, two evenings in the County social club, meal laid on free.

"The whole place has been taken over," says Fleece landlady Corinne Heslop. "It's more Ross County than Durham County in here."

Can't beat 'em, she'll also be on the next trip.

The column may well join them there, though not - after the last dose of the DVTs - on the coach. For that reason, we have also declined a place on a boys' bus to Brechin. Knee room at the inn.

A somewhat shorter journey, but the car load returning from Burton Albion v Bishop Auckland on Saturday fell to wondering (as you do) if it were the first time that clubs with the initials BAFC had played one another. Unless Bishop have been to Banstead Athletic, or Burton entertained the Billingham Arms, they could possibly have a point.

Should they wish to affiliate to a small club, of course, the Argonauts could always try Crook Town - about 350 miles closer to the Golden Fleece.

Town are having a hard time, their first win of the season last Wednesday arriving despite a lock-out and a fascinating half-time diversion.

The five times Amateur Cup winners were at Hebburn, unaccustomedly leading 3-1 at half-time when it was discovered that someone had inadvertently dropped the latch on an internal dressing room door. There wasn't a key.

Something similar apparently happened in Gateshead's FA Cup tie at Halifax in November, the visitors' second half passion stoked in the Shay boiler room.

While Hebburn officials attempted a method of entry familiar in some other areas of Tyneside - they took a concrete-crusted sledge hammer to it - Crook's players were obliged to receive the half-time homily in the sanctified surrounds of the guests' tea room.

It was neither congratulatory nor expletive deleted. If that's what happens when they're 3-1 up, someone said, what's it been like the rest of the season?

Still, finally they won 4-2 - a victory a long time coming, the faithful few ecstatic. "We can build on this," said stalwart supporter Michael Manuel - and on Saturday they lost 13-0.

Humbler still, there's Darlington Greyhounds - president: Backtrack - back in action after an unwanted winter break. Under the headline "Where are they now?", the programme reproduces a Northern Echo report of the life sentence for stabbing to death his gay housemate passed in Manchester on 31-year-old Rodney Dale - four times our boys' goalkeeper last season and on one occasion man of the match. Where are they now? Strangeways jail, very likely.

The Bearded Wonder reports the death at 88 of former Warwickshire cricketer Jimmie Ord, born at Backworth, north Tyneside, and so highly regarded at Edgbaston that his benefit in 1950 raised £4,834.

Jimmie made 273 Warwickshire appearances between 1933-53, top scoring with 187 a year before his retirement - "hugely popular but known to be a bit cantankerous," says the BW.

Warwickshire's oldest ex-player, incidentally, is 89-year-old Tom Collin - born in South Moor, near Stanley, and still living in Durham.

Two names to add to the Terrific Ten (Backtrack, January 12) of footballers who've played for Sunderland, Newcastle and England.

One - per Bill Bambrough in Boldon - is Sunderland-born Tom Urwin, who not only completed the set at Middlesbrough but learned all he knew at Shildon in 1913-14 before turning out for any of them.

One of Urwin's four international appearances (against Sweden in Stockholm, 1923) was alongside Harry Bedford - "the dashing Harry Bedford" writes Keith Dobell from Billingham - who joined Sunderland from Newcastle in 1931.

Harry scored 300 goals in 486 League appearances, represented England just once more and in the summer months was Derbyshire Cricket Club's masseur, an' all.

Among those we did include was goalkeeper Albert McInroy. Arnold Alton in Heighington points out that McInroy's lad - Albert junior - was a free-scoring centre forward for Durham City in the early 1950s.

Friday's column also featured Ken Furphy, the former Darlington legend and New York Cosmos manager whose spell as Exeter City's "technical consultant" ended last week after just five days.

As several sharp-eyed readers have pointed out, alas, the accompanying photograph wasn't of Ken Furphy but of ex-Quakers manager Lol Morgan.

"Last I heard of Lol he was an executive with Stones Brewery and a former captain of Rotherham Golf Club," says David Watson in Leeds.

Both Furphy and Morgan will be 70 in May. By that time we might even have tracked him down.

the former Sunderland FC apprentice who appeared on the sleeve of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP (Backtrack, Friday) was Albert Stubbins (who achieved rather greater fame at St James' Park.)

Still on Wearside, Gavin Ledwith in East Rainton today seeks the identity of five men who've played for Sunderland and also in a European Cup final.

More five star when the column returns in three days.