Glory Days : The Golden Age of Bishop Auckland

Not many ten-year-olds could have been as fortunate as the author, who had been to Wembley three times in successive years to see his favourite football team win the Amateur Cup.

Bishop Auckland were the most successful amateur club ever in the history of English football.

They appeared in the Amateur Cup Final a record eighteen times, winning the trophy a record ten times.

They appeared in six of the first nine finals held at Wembley Stadium and won three years in succession.

They had amateur internationals in their squad, including the legendary Bobby Hardisty, who captained the 1948 Great Britain Olympic team and also played in the 1952 and 1956 Olympic football teams.

They were even awarded a place in the Subbuteo football game, the only amateur club to be included.

This work is not an encyclopaedia of Bishop Auckland Football Club - although it does include a historical background of achievements - but concentrates on the halcyon period 1949 to 1957, when, because of amazing cup runs in both the FA Cup and the Amateur Cup competition, the club was a household name and Wembley became almost a second home.Ex-players have been interviewed to help provide an insight as to how the game was played in those days and the book is interspersed with anecdotes and player profiles.

The book is written with a degree of humour but also interweaves the background of the author's childhood, born into a mining family and brought up in the harsh reality of the coalfields of Durham and then, from the age of seven, Stoke-on-Trent.