FORMER Premier League referee Ken Redfern, still actively whistling at 74, tells the column of his fears for grassroots football.

“It’s at crisis point in Northumberland, where I am. There are teams, players and referees walking away all the time,” he says.

Chiefly he blames ever-declining discipline. “At one time if a referee said jump, you asked how high Now you don’t need a black kit, you need a suit of armour.”

Earlier this season he was obliged to abandon a Sunday morning game in Newcastle’s west end when violence threatened to spiral out of control – and then watched as a player picked up a spade to use as a weapon.

“It convinced me that I’d made the right decision,” he says.

CHUFFED that Feversham Cricket League membership is up by 33 per cent – from three to four, last week’s column – league secretary Charles Allenby now has something else about which to smile.

Charles collects train tickets, a hobby horse which means that dealers send long lists of what’s on offer.

The other day – “to my complete astonishment” –the catalogue included a “Forces leave” single issued between Thirsk and Birmingham, via Pont(efract) and Shef(field) in July 1965.

The handwriting seemed familiar. For seven months in 1965 Charles was a booking clerk at Thirsk station and had himself issued the ticket.

The single had cost 22 shillings. He has now paid £3 for the return.

BEGINNING with West Allotment Celtic v Chester-le-Street, we’ve been talking about football jinxes. None may be more permanent than Stoke City’s visits to Liverpool. In 54 attempts, they’ve never won one.

SIX weeks after his passing, five weeks after Backtrack recorded it, The Times carries an obituary on Hubert Doggart – England cricketer and record breaker, schoolmaster, poet and scion of the great Bishop Auckland department store family.

“A Doggart innings,” the obit notes, “was rarely restful and seldom silent.”

Particularly he was remembered for his piercing call. Though the story may be apocryphal, The Times recalls an innings for Cambridge University at Fenner’s when he sent his batting partner back.

“The injunction was so resounding that eight batsmen were run out on nearby Parker’s Piece, where up to 20 games could be in progress at a time.”

Hubert Doggart was 92.

LIKE Hubert Doggart, though perhaps not possessed of five Blues as Doggart was, the late lamented Sid Waddell was a Cambridge history graduate. Northumberland lad, decorative darts man, Sid was recalled in the same day’s Times as part of an ongoing correspondence on great moments in sports commentary. It was the climax of the 1984 world championship. “When Alexander of Macedonia was 33 he cried salt tears because there were no worlds left to conquer,” quoth Sid. “Eric Bristow is only 27.”

THE North East Durham Cricket League, new home to safe-ashore Seaham Harbour – recent columns – has seen choppy waters of its own.

These days there are two divisions, from Coundon in the south to Stanhope in the west. Quite recently there were four.

In 1900, the six teams in the original league included Seaham Ernest and Lumley Thicks – not C-stream secondary modern, but an inexplicably named village near Chester-le-Street – while in 1960 the league was down to just four clubs after ten walked away.

The quartet included Bristol Aero – nowt to do with chocolate, an aviation parts factory in Sunderland – and Hazard Colliery, a frankly named pit at Fencehouses.

The Durham Mining Museum’s wonderful website records at least 22 fatalities there – hewers and keekers, putters and screeners and even a bargain man. Perhaps he negotiated Hazard’s danger money.

Casualties ranged from a boy of 12, run over by his own tubs, to a man of 68 crushed by a stone fall. The Hazard lived down to its name.

THE footpath between Brockley Whins station on the Tyne and Wear Metro and Jarrow Roofing’s football ground appears to cross a rubbish dump. My blog one day last week suggested that the Whins might have more discarded plastic than the South China Sea.

It was a mistake. Within half an hour of the blog’s posting, Bob Rogers had emailed.

Bob’s the grandson of Charles Samuel Craven, Darlington’s goalkeeper in the 1880s and founder of the Northern League, the world’s second oldest, in 1889. He lives in Hong Kong, can see the South China Sea from his window.

“I think the plastic island is actually in the Pacific,” he writes affably. “The South China Sea may have the odd plastic bag but it’s far from claiming top spot in the pollution stakes. You’re treading on dangerous ground.”

Walking on water, as ever.

… AND finally, the second longest serving manager of football’s “92” – last week’s column – is Paul Tisdale, in office at Exeter City for almost 12 years. After the blessed and immoveable Arsene, the Premier League’s next greatest survivor is Eddie Howe, five-and-a-half years at Bournemouth. Arnold Alton, again, was first up with that one.

Speaking of Bournemouth, Lewis Cook became the club’s first England player when coming on as a sub against Italy last week (and, incidentally, winning his grandfather £17,000 from a £50 bet struck four years ago.)

Readers are today invited to name Manchester United’s first England international, back in 1905 – very much a North-East lad.

Internationally cleared, the column returns in a fortnight.