The Times obituary on Burnley legend Jimmy McIlroy, an Irishman among a team of North-East lads, recalled an encounter with the formidable Jimmy Scoular – more indelibly remembered at Newcastle United but then at Portsmouth.

Perhaps euphemistically, Magpies historian Paul Joannou describes Scoular’s tackle as “jarring,” his presence as “daunting.”

“I was going down the wing when Jimmy hit me,” McIlroy once wrote. “I went onto the grass verge and over a little fence into the crowd.

“Jimmy sidled up to me and said ‘Look, you little Irish Fenian b*****d, that’s nothing to what I’ll do to you next time.”

Poor McIlroy insisted – protested? – that he was a Protestant. “Oh God, son, Have I hurt you,” said Scoular and for the rest of Jimmy Mac’s career never tackled him once.

The granite Scoular may not have been as black as he was painted. More black and white.

Recalling his debut for Arsenal – a 5-0 Highbury win over Newcastle on September 17 1960 – the late and lovely Geoff Strong once told the column that Scoular had been waiting for him after the final whistle photographers had finished.

“He put his arm around me and said I was going to be a really good footballer. We’d stuffed five past them – what a fabulous gesture.”

Signed from Stanley United for a bag of washers, Geoff had waited two-and-a-half years for his first team chance – it coming when Tommy Docherty was dropped. “I still remember the awful language,” he said.,

David Herd scored three, Strong and Danny Clapton the others. The Magpies team that fateful day was Harvey, Keith, Heslop, McMichael, Neale, Scoular, Tuohy, Hughes. White, Allchurch, McGuigan.

September 17, 1960? Two goals from Brian Clough and others from Ray Henderson and Derek McLean gave Boro a 4-4 draw at Leeds, Ian Lawther’s goal couldn’t save Sunderland from 2-1 defeat at home to Huddersfield Town, Durham City had conceded 40 goals in their first eight Northern League games without so much as a point and 4,437 saw Darlington’s 1-0 over Rochdale. Tw nights later, 6.168 crowded in for the switch-on of the Feethams floodlights and a 5-21 victory over Millwall.

A Sunday lunchtime quick one at Darlington Cricket Club, now going it alone at Feethams, finds Malcolm Dunstone also in attendance and clad head-to-toe in Hornet yellow and black.

LibDem and Camra activist, Malcolm’s also Watford FC’s No 1 supporter in the North-East. He’s there for a pre-lunch livener before returning to watch the 4pm big screen kick-off against Spurs – both teams with hitherto unblemished Premier League records.

The rest’s history. And our man in the insect outfit? “Absolutely ecstatic,” he reports.

At the Stockton Town v Bishop Auckland match the other night, we bump into former Premier League referee Jeff Winter – now 63, still working out at the gym but getting a bit hard of hearing.

“It’s all that whistling,” he says. “My wife reckons that if I’m watching telly they can hear it at the other end of the street.”

It was his 33rd match of the season, the seventh in as many days – the sequence starting with a Europa League match at Rangers, for whom he’s an ambassador while still living on Teesside.

The following day Rangers were in Russia for the return leg, Jeff obliged to fork out £7.49 to watch it on television. The neighbours got the commentary free.

Angela Walls, the funeral celebrant about whom we wrote at the end of May, has had to abandon her attempt daily to increase the number of lengths of Chester-le-Street baths from one to 84.

She’d reached 43, raised more than £700. “A long story about muscles, ligaments, clunking vertebrae and osteopaths,” says the 62-year-old former police officer.

The aim was 84 because that’s how many men aged under 45 take their own lives each week. Angela – “a bit of a couch potato” – had been moved to action after officiating the funeral of 30-year-old Sam Gordon, Consett rugby player and former Tow Law Town mascot and goalkeeper.

Now – “I fessed up on Facebook, the spirit willing but the flesh weak” – she plans to buy a laminating machine to make 41 “motivational” signs to display in places where people have been known to commit suicide. They’ll carry contact details for the Campaign Against Living Miserably, which seeks to address the issue.

Having already had a PS to the column on the joys of village green cricket at Thornton Watlass, near Bedale, this must be considered a PPS.

Local resident Sue Day reports that the small group of men who regularly circumnavigate the field – “tutting at this and that” – have become known to team members as the Vultures because of their constant circling.

Carrion regardless, the club recently held a Vultures dinner as a token of their appreciation of their support. They didn’t leave a picking.

….and finally, the double winning footballer whose middle name is Primrose – last week’s column – is former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson. Eric Smallwood in Acklam, Middlesbrough, first with the answer.

Nigel Brierley, whose quizzes on Railroad to Wembley trips provide constant entertainment, today invites readers to name the four clubs which at various times topped the Premier League in 2017-18.

Top or thereabouts, the column returns next week.