ON the wondrous night that Arsenal reached the Champions League final, Brandon United held a crisis meeting to determine if they could even start next season in the Arngrove Northern League second division.

The league chairman, lifelong and blood red Gooner, took himself off to Brandon.

Three years ago, both had been league champions. Then the glory roads diverged.

Arsenal hadn't conceded a European goal in more than 15 hours play. Brandon had leaked 142 in league games alone, and are relegated.

The chairman, secretary and treasurer - nearly 80 years service between them - are all leaving. The club faces extinction, the clubhouse yawned, indifferently.

"The really sad thing, " said Neil Scott, the club chairman, "is that no one will really miss us until we're gone."

Salvation may yet come in the form of B J Heijmans, a charismatic Dutchman with hands like a Rotterdam dredger, a chestful of coaching qualifications and Ruud Gullit English. He became team manager in November.

BJ brought in kids and introduced discipline, impressed everyone, lost most of the games - though they beat Bedlington Terriers on Wednesday - and may still win the Fair Play league.

"My record's horrible, " he said. "I've asked them to sack me three times and they won't.

They won't accept it, there must be someone worse than I am. I have sleepless nights over this."

Maybe 20-odd turned out; Spurs fans, probably. Just two volunteered for the committee.

John Dixon will become chairman, but still they can't survive if they haven't a secretary.

Experience isn't important; common sense and enthusiasm is. There's now another meeting next Wednesday at which a final decision, sink or swim, will be made.

Prospective secretaries, male or female, needn't even put pen to paper, simply ring Bill Fisher on 01388 816750.

HALF a mile up the road, Cantonese restaurant owner Nick Wool was chewing his fingers nails to the wick, though the king prawns in coconut sauce are probably much more tasty.

Nick - born in Hong Kong, latterly in Essex - runs the Wok Inn at Brandon with his wife Carrie and reckons himself the North-East's number one Arsenal fan. Dyed in the Wool, as it were.

Now the self-styled Wok Gooner wants to organise a big screen get-together on May 17, the night of the Champions League final, for all the region's red and white army.

"I'll try to get tickets but will be almost impossible, so the next best thing will be to bring everyone together in a pub and try to recreate some of the atmosphere, " he says.

For Highbury read High Shincliffe, or somewhere, for North Bank read North Bitchburn. For Paris in the spring, perhaps read Houghton-le-Spring.

Married in 1998, Nick and Carrie have run the Wok Inn - formerly the Black Diamond pub - for two years. In the former Durham coalfield, he accepts, being an avowed Arsenal fan is very much a minority interest.

"It's quite hard because everyone around here is either a Mackem are a Barcode, as the Newcastle fans call themselves, " says Nick, accent more Hornchurch than Hong Kong.

"All Carrie knew about football when we married was that she quite liked the look of David Beckham, now she's nearly as passionate about Arsenal as I am. Maybe I can convert a few up here, too."

He concedes, however, that they'll have to play a lot better to beat Barcelona. "I never thought we could play so poorly and win the tie, but the goalkeeper had a lot to do with it. Jens was immense."

Interested Arsenal supporters are urged to contact him on 0191-378-3111 or e-mail on chaoticred@yahoo. com The e-mail address, says the Wok Gooner, was because he was reading a book about chaos at the time. "I read a lot but I get bored very easily, a legacy of all those George Graham teams of the 1980s.

"Arsene's changed all that.

Even in Brandon, there's never been a better time to be a Gunner."

MORE final straws, Brooks Mileson looks in with the 110 £30 tickets which the Arngrove Northern League has bagged for the Scottish Cup final.

Between running the Gretna ticket office and feeding the media's insatiable maw, he's also been in for a brain scan.

"They said they could see where it had been, but it appeared to have vanished, " the Durham based businessman insists.

Among numerous television appearances is a forthcoming BBC2 documentary on the Gretna fairy tale to be shown in two hour-long segments on May 9 and 16.

"It started off as a half-hour slot but they seem to think we have a story to tell, " says Brooks. "I've seen the first one; it's enthralling."

Yesterday he was filming something for children's television and another programme in which, for reasons unexplained, he was required to play the part of a priest marrying a runaway couple at Gretna.

"It meant wearing all the clerical vestments, I looked just the part, " he says. "I begin to wonder if I may have missed my vocation."

SADLY for former Middlesbrough stalwart and Dundee manager Alan Kernaghan, his team's semifinal defeat to Gretna has presaged his departure.

"He has been given the black spot, " reports Davie Munday, Dundee via Darlington, perhaps having overdosed on Treasure Island.

We'd been up to see Kerny, who took over last summer, at the back end of March.

"The history of this club in the past five years is crazy, " he'd said.

"If we don't get promotion next season, I think I'm on dodgy ground, undoubtedly."

With 13 months left on his contract, he reckons to be owed around £50,000 and has refused Dundee's offer, believed to be £5,000.

Scotland's lawyers rub their hands in anticipation.

Munday's child, meanwhile, points out that the view from sections of Hampden Park is rubbish, that the pies ("cholesterol filled comestibles") are worse and that the 52,000 capacity is barely two-thirds that of Murrayfield.

"Apart from that, " he says.

"Enjoy the 13th of May."

BACKTRACK BRIEFS . . .

ON the eve of one of their biggest ever matches - the FA Sunday Cup final, at Anfield - Hetton Lyons Cricket Club seeks someone to chronicle 140 years of sporting and social history.

The writer might first be intrigued by the club's address: Lilywhite Terrace, Hetton-le-Hole. Could it have any connection to James Lillywhite, who captained England in the first ever tests against Australia in 1876-77 and whose uncle William was known simply as the "Nonpareil?"

The club was formed in 1865, when Hetton Colliery miners merged with Easington Lane Lilywhites. Them again.

Hetton Lyons pit, thick seams far beneath the cricket ground, was reckoned the world's first deep coal mine and toiled for 160 years.

These days the club has 1,300 members, 85 playing members aged from nine to 55, 17 on the general committee, nine coaches and handsome facilities. Last season they won the Durham Senior league and are promoted to the North-East Premier.

"There are many stories to be told and photographs to back them up, " says fixtures secretary Michael Young, perhaps unsurprisingly, though few may be more improbable than Sunday's football final.

Officially they are Hetton Lyons Cricket Club Football Club, the players all listed among the 1,300 membership.

For the cricket club, however, it's a whole new ball game.

Much of this emerged over a couple of early evening beers in the White Swan at Gilling West - that most agreeable of village pubs, near Richmond - with Michael Gauntlett, who runs a cricket books business down there.

Prospective authors are invited to call him on 01748 822786.

Football, it may be said, isn't Michael's sphere, either. It may have been the second pint, perhaps the third, before he believed the story. Now convinced, he's sending details of CC FC to the blessed Matthew Engel. "Wisden, " says Michael, "will love it."

TWENTY years after he won five colour TV sets in a season - offered by a local dealer to any Shildon player hitting a hat-trick - deadly Duggie Grant will again be honoured at the Over 40s League do in June.

His 16 second goal is the league's fastest of the season.

Paul Rowntree, another familiar Northern League name - though he answered more often to Jellies - will be named player of the year, with divisional awards to Barry Hookaway of Croft WMC, Boxer Brown of Langley Park and John Osbaldeston Of Thornley Celtic.

Mark Hedley of Barnard Castle and Gordon Richardson of Doxford, Sunderland - goalkeepers who scored from their own area - will also pick up mementoes.

Memory suggests that the last professional player to do it was Pat Jennings, when with Spurs. Someone doubtless knows better.

SPEAKING of goal scorers, Colin Foster in Hartlepool reckons that Fulham's goal against Wigan on Monday was the 499,651st in all four divisions of the Football League (or whatever) since it kicked off ob September 8 1888.

Just over 300 to reach the half millionth but it would take almost two per club per game to do it this season. Who, Colin wonders, will score it?

LAST Friday's piece on veteran manager Colin Richardson, now at Gateshead, reminded Arnold Alton of their time together at Willington in the early 1960s.

"I still have a cutting of a match at Penrith when the referee in desperation called on our skipper, Boxer Taylor, to try to calm him down."

Tommy Richardson, Colin's father, subsequently took over running the team - "he did an excellent job, " says Arnold - though Colin's own performances appeared to diminish.

Arnold blames a red haired lass who looked a bit like her - you know, Fizz - on Coronation Street.

"I would say he wasn't training too well by then."

. . . and finally

THE footballer who in 1999 became the third man to follow his father into the England team (Backtrack, April 25) was Frank Lampard - though the failure to suggest who the first two were had Brian Dixon in Darlington thumbing through the reference books.

"An insomniac's delight, " says Brian, before confirming that it was the Easthams and the Cloughs.

Keith Bond in Brompton-onSwale not only knew that one but - back where we began, to the Champions League final - points out that only five clubs from their nation's capital city have (so far) won the European Cup or Champions League.

Readers are invited to name them: a tale of five cities when the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 28/04/2006