SOMEONE once said "When all inspiration fails, retreat into the past."

I don't know quite what he or she meant specifically, but it describes perfectly my problem this week.

I did have a mind to write about the current professional situation within the League, but that has been talked to death recently, and so I decided to go back 25 years and resurrect some of the highlights and the odd lowlight of the 1976 season.

Bradshaw provided most of the former. Having demolished Westhoughton at Egerton in the Hamer Cup Final, they went on to complete the double in spite of their having won only nine league matches. (They were to go one better the following year, winning only eight games and still managing to retain their title).

It wouldn't happen under the present method of awarding points, of course, but Bradshaw played to their strengths, and a talented Tonge side finished two points adrift. The Hamer Cup success was largely due to the spin attack of Bernard Clossick (six for 27) and Dennis Hobson (four for 30), who bowled Westhoughton out for 99. Cole and Hardcastle put on 74 for the first wicket and that was that.

Brian Cole took the Player of the Year award and the League Batting Prize with 820 runs, his team-mate Brian Senior had 49 victims, and Horwich's Malc Warren won the Bowling Prize with 61 wickets. Keith Eccleshare's 106 wickets took Tonge to within a whisker of the championship, and guaranteed him the Professionals Prize.

He was just one of a clutch of fine English pro's in the League in 1976. Marner and Bissex, the two Cheshire players Sutton and Cowap, Laurence Moore, Geoff Greenop (who I bumped into at the Reebok last winter), Les McKnight and Alan Nelson were the others, along with the highly respected Cec Wright and the only overseas professional, Dilip Doshi.

It was during the 1976 season that Doshi had the much publicised on-the-field row with his skipper, the still very much-missed Kevan Tebay. I don't recall the argument involved, but I'd be very surprised if Kevan didn't win it!

Cec Wright was joined that season at Astley Bridge by Roy Gilchrist, who sadly passed away last month, and with the former Test player now bowling medium-paced seamers they made a formidable opening pair. It wasn't all beer and skittles at the Bridge, however.

The previous season, that of 1975, the wicket had been deemed unfit, and, as a result, the first team had played all their games away from Sharples Park. I well remember Farnworth's game at Astley Bridge in 1974, a match which had caused Mike Hardcastle, then Farnworth captain, to be quoted in the press. He said that it had been like "batting on a cobbled street", and, 25 years on, I can't improve on that! But they were back home in 1976 after Bert Flack, the Lancashire groundsman, had been brought in to give the square the go-ahead.

The inter-league season was short, and not particularly sweet. The Trinity Cup match was lost, largely due to an unbeaten century from Mudassar Nazar, then with Little Hulton, and even though Dave Seddon hit 67, still the highest score by a Bolton League amateur, and Fred Guest added 56 at a run a ball, the League still fell one run short of the Association's 197.

In the Inter-League KO, then sponsored by Watney-Mann Ltd, our progress ended in Round One at Heaton, where the League were bowled out for 82 and lost by five wickets to the Northern League. Jeff Todd hit 40, but when Guest was caught behind at 67 for two, the last eight wickets went down for only a further 15 runs, four of them to a bowler called Stafford, which, for me, eased the pain a little!

1976 was Tonge's Centenary Year, and they held a memorable celebratory evening at the club, which was attended by a real "who's who" of former and current players, including Eddie Paynter, Dick Pollard and the incomparable Fred Hartley.

Westhoughton's Steve Dixon completed what has to be a unique double, when he won the Third Team Batting Prize and also that at first-team level for the season's Highest Individual Score.

The Third Team Best Bowling Performance of 1976 belonged to a promising lad from Kearsley called Chris Lomax, who took an incredible nine for nine. Farnworth's David Ainsworth was the Junior Player of the Year, and a player with a big future ahead of him, Steve O'Shaughnessy, won the Under 14 Batting Prize.

Eagley's Greg Salt won the Second Team Batting Prize, while Frank Hinks swept the board on the bowling front with both the League Prize and the Best Bowling Performance. His batting, too, went a long way towards winning the Birtwistle Cup for Walkden. There isn't room here to describe exactly how, but if you should come across Frank and you have an hour or so to spare, I'm sure he'll fill in the details!

A glance through the 1976 scorecards reveals three names of players who are still performing 25 years later at the same clubs. Steve Entwistle at Astley Bridge, Derek White at Horwich, and, described in the BEN's season's prospects as "one of a number of Heaton youngsters", Warwick Milne!

At the AGM, in my League Secretary's Report, apparently I paid tribute to the League's umpires, saying that "the umpiring standard was as high as it is possible to get in league cricket."

I've checked my 1977 scrapbook, and while I suffered several different kinds of dismissal during that season, never once was I lbw! It's known as setting your stall out!