Every picture ...

Town play at Earls Orchard, beneath that magnificent riverside castle but further overshadowed because the panorama means they’d never get planning permission for floodlights and other ground development necessary for promotion.

RA secretary Alan Hamilton also observed that it was one of the few castles built with the ramparts facing south. “Usually they faced north to keep out the Scots, not that it did them much good, mind.”

The programme paid tribute to Darren Poole – “the best goalkeeper Richmond Town ever had” – who’d died, aged 52. Previously he’d been named Northern League player of the year when with Northallerton Town.

Darren, who lived in Richmond, had been a window cleaner who jocularly styled himself a vision enhancement technician. From the touchline at Earls Orchard the vision could hardly be bettered – if only I could get a picture with the ball on.

A PS to last week’s note on record breaking Middleham trainer Mark Johnston. Having ridden the former vet’s 4,194th winner, Frankie Dettori hoped for improbable recognition. “Perhaps I’ll now make it into the Johnstons’ downstairs loo – a picture with the most successful trainer in British racing.”

The train drivers perhaps not as stricken on the York-Harrogate line as elsewhere, we headed last Saturday for the FA Cup game between Knaresborough Town and Blyth FC.

The match was sponsored by Abbott’s Memorials, they of Cemetery Road, though it was the Ebac Northern League club who appeared to have one foot in the grave. Lose, said the speculators, and they’d fold.

Knaresborough’s fans had problems of their own. Three days earlier they’d not just 1-0 at Bridlington but been victim of an audacious theft.

“Blooming seagull took me fish and chips, took’t tray, took’t blessed lot,” one grumbled. The only surprise, he added, was that the crittur didn’t come back and ask for a bit more vinegar on the chips.

Blyth were 3-0 down by the 12th minute, had a man sent off for death-wish disputing the third. It ended 5-1.

“Come on, there’s plenty of football still to be played,” urged joint manager Ian Skinner in the second half. Sadly, we now know that he was wrong. Blyth folded three days later.

Elsewhere in the Cup last Saturday, Sunderland RCA recorded a remarkable 6-6 draw at Clitheroe – only the eighth time in the old pot’s history, says the FA website, that 12 goals have been shared.

The website further notes that Sunderland Ryhope Colliery Welfare, RCA’s near-neighbours, were the only club in this year’s competition with all the letters of “FA Cup” in their name. Sadly, they lost in the extra-preliminary round – to Sunderland RCA.

Acknowledging Barningham batsman Stuart Laundy’s bat-carrying 115, last week’s column noted that Stuart had now hit a century in five different decades of his life and wondered if any might top it. “What of the great Jack Watson?” asks Don Clarke, but it seems unlikely. Later in a 60-year cricket career, Jack was chiefly a bowler – bagging a hat-trick on his debut for Bearpark in 1991, when 70, but supposing he might have done better. “I was a bit rusty,” he said.

The blog has been recalling, as once or twice has the column, the infamous attempt while standing behind him in the cornflakes queue at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh to gain an interview with Daley Thompson.

“Get lost,” he said, exclusively.

It stirred memories for Clem O’Donovan, man about Weardale and chairman of Stanhope Town FC, who’d won a VIP stay at the Games – chauffeur-driven Daimler, the lot – in a competition run by Eddie Shah’s short-lived Today newspaper.

He’d had a similar reaction when seeking the great decathlete’s autograph, found himself a little later standing next to a tall athlete whose name badge identified him as Linford Christie. “I’d never heard of him, so I passed on that one. I often wonder what happened to him.”

Even more vividly, however, Clem recalls spotting the column – “I recognised you from your picture in the paper” – standing, notebook in hand, outside Meadowbank Stadium.

“We were headed back to our five-star hotel. I regret to this day not asking my man the chauffeur to wind down the window and ask if we could give you a lift back to the YMCA.”

….and finally, last week’s column noted that in 2009 Bournemouth, unbeaten in the Premier, had been 91st in the English football league system and sought the identity of the four clubs then above them who now play in the sixth tier.

They are Chester, Darlington, Hereford and Stockport County – my colleague Craig Stoddart also pointing out that when Darlington beat Bournemouth 2-1 at the Arena in January 2009 it was Eddie Howe’s first game as the Cherries’ caretaker manager. “Bournemouth,” adds Craig, “haven’t done badly since.”

Brian Dixon points out that 2008-09 was the season in which five clubs, including Darlington, were deducted 84 points between them. “It’s a bit like losing weight,” he muses. “Where do they go?”

Readers are today invited to name the double winning footballer whose middle name was Primrose. Flower power, the column returns next week.