AT much the same time as the mighty men of Arsenal took on Cardiff City in the FA Cup on Sunday, Arsenal Ladies played Middlesbrough Ladies at Billingham Synthonia.

This was the Women’s FA Cup, same sponsor. Arsenal have won the cup for the past three seasons, the FA Women’s Premier League for the past five, lifted the UEFA Women’s Cup in 2007, are again in Europe and have a 100 per cent record this season.

Middlesbrough are fourth in the Northern Women’s Combination alongside the likes of West Auckland, Peterlee Newtown, Morley Spurs and Leeds City Vixens.

Comparisons are difficult.

If not quite David against Goliath, then maybe Margaret Thatcher v (say) Harriet Harman. Or maybe Neil Kinnock.

Game plan? “I’m going to stick the entire reserve team in goal, play ten at the back and one up front,” says Boro manager Marrie Wieczorek, temporarily forgetting both her mathematics and the unisex laws of the game.

Marrie, 51, has been involved with Boro Ladies since they were formed, as Cleveland Spartans, in 1976 – 22 years as a player, the last six as player/manager before hanging up her boots. “They sussed me,” she says.

Marriee’s known universally as Maz. As a hatter? “I think I must be,”

she says.

Officially described as semi-professional, six or seven of the Arsenal squad are employed full-time by the club in the ladies’ centre of excellence. They’ve flown up the day before, stayed at a posh hotel near Durham, wholly eschewed whatever it is that young ladies usually get up to on a Saturday night.

The team bus, described on the side as a corporate hospitality vehicle, has followed them northward, empty save for the kit. The only problem is that neither the bus nor the Synthonia clubhouse has Setanta, on which the men’s game kicks off 75 minutes after the women’s.

“They can probably get it on their mobiles,” someone says.

The gate’s around 600, four or five times more than Synthonia get in the skilltrainingltd Northern league and about 30 times bigger than the girls’ home games usually attract on a synthetic pitch at Boro’s Hurworth training centre.

“We’ve about 125 regulars,” says club secretary Trevor Wing.

“Depending on the weather, there might be 20 or 30.”

The tea hut’s more a hole in the wall, a queue thirty yards long ensuring that the hole in the wall laughs all the way to the bank.

Maz, football daft, was 19 before she found a team. “I was working at Pontin’s,”

she recalls, “my sister saw a paragraph in the paper.

“I’d play with boys’ teams when they’d have me, but in those days when you got to secondary school, that was it.”

Now girls can attend centres of excellence at six or seven, though they must be 16 before joining the senior set-up.

Though the Boro provide kit, training and playing facilities and other support, Maz supposes it a “massive”

gap between them and the Arsenal beauty parade. They don’t even have a main sponsor, the white band bare across their corporate chests.

“The standard’s improved hugely,” says Maz. “It’s no longer just for girls who wanted to be like the boys – now they know all about positioning, spatial awareness, that sort of thing.

“When I was young, girls were told by their parents that playing football wasn’t a ladylike thing to do. Now the mums and dads come to watch.”

Sunday’s crowd includes Raye Wilkinson, a Plymouth Argyle scout – “we’re a bit short at Plymouth,”

he says – and Len Scott, president of North Riding FA.

The women’s game in the county is “steady”, he says, easy to get five-a-side teams, a bit harder to find 11. “It used to be a bit of a joke,”

says Len. “Now it’s being taken much more seriously.”

The first half proves something with which all Arsenal fans would be familiar – lovely passing, endless possession, more corners than a Rubik’s cube, resolute defending, fearfully missed chances, clattered woodwork, 45-minute frustration.

After 15 minutes, Jayne Ludlow’s 25-tarder bounces down from the bar in front of Helen Lander, two yards out.

She heads over. Even Adebayor might have put that one away.

Soon afterwards, a Boro player is injured, the first of several stoppages.

Almost to a woman, the players head for the dugouts for sustenance until referee Broadbent blows the whistle on the happy sorority.

“They say that drinking water is good for your complexion,”

says Len Scott, dryly.

There’s no question that Arsenal are far prettier.

One svelte lady in yellow and blue even bears a certain resemblance to the great Denis Bergkamp, than whom none in the world was more pretty. It is not, of course, to say that they’re better looking. As would be expected, Boro lasses win that one.

Arsenal Ladies were formed in 1987 by Vic Akers, then as now the club’s kit manager. Since he’s been bagged by the first team, coach Tony Gervaise patrols the technical area, occasionally igniting into little Wengerian apoplexies.

In the absence of a fourth official, Mr Gervaise berates the magic sponge bag instead. At half-time it’s 0-0, and always the chance of a breakaway.

Seven minutes into the second half, however, Helen Lander heads Arsenal’s first.

She’s one of few Gunners who isn’t an England international. She plays for Wales.

Kim Little, Karen Carney and Lander again quickly make it four, by which time a number of Boro fans are heading for the gate. Either they’ve been told the dinner’s in the dog or they still think the pubs close at two o’clock on a Sunday.

Middlesbrough have the limbs, it’s just that their legs have gone. The central defenders are magnificent, striker Nicky Duckling obvious class, the girls resolute but outclassed.

There are also several more injuries. “If they keep on like this,” says someone behind, “I’ll not just miss me dinner, I’ll miss me bloody tea.”

When England international Rachel Yankey is subbed, she’s besieged by dozens of autograph hunters, like they used to be in Roy of the Rovers.

At the end there are flowers for the visitors and a curious two-team huddle – perhaps to exchange gossip, what in later life might be called a mothers’ meeting – in the middle of the field.

The Gunners are still doing their post-match stretches when Boro – bonny, heroic Boro – are applauded to the dressing room.

As for Arsenal ladies, it’s just like watching the blokes.

AND FINALLY...

THE two Durham cricketers who played alongside future test match umpire David Shepherd for the Minor Counties against Australia in 1964 (Backtrack, January 23) were Russell Inglis and Stuart Young.

Among those who knew that was Norman Robinson in Annfield Plain who, in turn, invites readers to name four post-war Hartlepool United players with the same surname as a team that’s played in the Premiership.

For Hails of Hartlepool, and cohorts, the use of anything other than memory is strictly forbidden. For everyone else, an answer on Friday.