The local team, Bishop’s Stortford FC - not even top-table non-Leaguers - had drawn Second Division Middlesbrough away in the Third Round of the 1982-1983 FA Cup.

It was a mileage bonanza for Jeff, of course, given that Stortford’s farthest flung opponents in the Isthmian Premier League were the likes of Bromley, Barking and Billericay.

But it was more than that. It was a piece of FA Cup history.

And it was even more than that - a piece of personal history for Stortford’s Richie Bradford, whose death aged 69 was recently announced.

Bradford, a slender but deceptively strong central defender, had joined the club five years earlier and his career there would coincide with its headiest moments.

I first saw him play in the 1980-1981 season when I began reporting on Stortford after joining the local paper - the Herts and Essex Observer. A special season...

Never mind about the FA Cup - when it came to the non-League version of that competition, the FA Trophy, Stortford were so far down the pecking order that they had to start, not in the first round, nor even in the first qualifying round, but in the preliminary round.

What began with a humdrum 3-1 home win over Spalding United at the rambling Rhodes Avenue ground, watched by 219 interested souls, ended 12 matches later at….Wembley Stadium, with blue and white-scarved Stortford fans making up the bulk of a 22,500 crowd for the final against the favourites, Sutton United.

I glance now at the pre-match supplement that appeared in my paper. "Good luck at Wembley", said the garden centre, vouchsafing: "We are open seven days of the week for all your gardening needs."

"Congratulations – PLEASE do it again!" said the tobacconists, a reference to the fact that, seven years earlier, Stortford had been at Wembley to win the last FA Amateur Cup.

The bookies gave the odds - 6/4 Sutton United, 15/8 The Blues. Meanwhile the team’s keenest supporters - their wives! - posed obediently with scarves and banners.

With no goals scored after 89 minutes it seemed certain that England and Manchester United’s darling Bobby Charlton would have to wait at least half an hour longer before handing over the silverware.

But then one more Stortford cross came over to be challenged for by their former England forward John Radford, who 10 years earlier had helped Arsenal complete the League and Cup Double in the same stadium.

Radford's final, leggy effort was enough to cause the Sutton centre half, John Rains, to mishead his clearance and the ball fell to Stortford’s shuffling genius of a winger, Terry Sullivan. One touch took him past the full back, and after a moment’s hesitation he arrowed the ball across the keeper into the far corner.

And so Bishop’s Stortford became the first club to win the FA Amateur Cup and the FA Trophy - and Charlton was able to hand over his responsibility with blue and white ribbons attached.

As the final whistle went Bradford, who had been one of the key players on the epic run, was struggling to deal with cramp brought on by last-gasp defensive action shortly before the decisive goal. He soon perked up.

From May 16, 1981, we fast-forward to January 8, 1983.

The side originally chosen for the match at Ayresome Park contained only five who had played in the Trophy final - and Bradford, whose Stortford career would end later that year, wasn’t one of them.

Having guided Stortford to the FA Trophy, manager Trevor Harvey had projected his team into their best ever FA Cup run.

In the fourth qualifying round they had drawn Harlow Town, 15 minutes up the M11, who had been FA Cup Trojans themselves in 1979 when they beat First Division Leicester City - who included a young Gary Lineker - 1-0 in a third round replay and then lost 4-3 to Graham Taylor’s up-and-coming Watford.

Stortford progressed after drawing 1-1 at the Sportscentre and winning 4-0 at home, earning an away first round tie against a Third Division Reading side which included the future Chelsea and England forward Kerry Dixon.

A goal two minutes from time at Elm Park by their chirpy taxi driver/goalscorer Dave Worrell gave them a 2-1 win – and a second round away draw at fellow Isthmian leaguers Slough Town.

Stortford won 4-1 on a mudheap before a crowd that included insidethegames' editor Duncan Mackay, then a young teenager. And there was a hat-trick from Lyndon Lynch, whose shaven head made him - to the tabloids - virtually identical to the similarly unhirsute world middleweight boxing champion Marvin Hagler, and thus worthy of a shared nickname: Bald Eagle.

Lynch, then 30 and working as a PE teacher, would later guide Britain’s men’s cerebral palsy football team to seventh place at the London 2012 Paralympics.

Speaking shortly before the Games got underway, he wryly recalled his Bald Eagle nickname - "nobody ever called me that before, and nobody ever called me that after!"

It was just something the tabloids did. Such as calling Stortford "The Bishops" during their 1982-1983 Cup run. Which no one also ever did before or after.

But we digress.

Next up, on Teesside. was a meeting with the team managed by the charismatic, fedora-wearing, cigar-puffing, champagne-quaffing, Miss UK-dating Malcolm Allison, familiar in every household as a TV pundit, or perhaps, as the co-occupant of the team bath at Crystal Palace with nude model Fiona Richmond, pictures of which mysteriously found their way into the newspapers…

On the morning of the match, Stortford’s skipper Ian Smith failed a fitness test. And the man to get the last-minute call up was Richie Bradford. Fate was clearly dealing him a big hand that day.

As history records, Middlesbrough scored two first-half goals in the space of two minutes through their frail, flaxen-haired 17-year-old England Youth midfielder Steve Bell.

Three minutes into the second half, with Allison already toking contentedly on a cheroot and the home crowd baying for a third, something unexpected happened. A cross from the right was back-headed down under pressure by Mr Taxi Driver, and fell, unaccountably, to Bradford.

The club stats say that by the time he left Bradford had scored 11 goals for Stortford in 243 appearances. All I can say is, I don’t recall him doing so in the three years I covered the club - until, of course, this day of days.

After what seemed an age to prepare himself for this opportunity, Bradford scooped the ball in ungainly fashion past the Northern Ireland international keeper Jim Platt.

It was hard to credit. But Bradford - a teacher in his fully professional life - had another harsh lesson to deliver to a suddenly unsteady Boro defence.

Almost immediately he did it again - and this time with feeling, as he connected solidly with a cross from the right by Sullivan.

Save for a crazy knot of blue and white, silence engulfed the ground. You could almost hear Allison choking on his cheroot.

And so it stayed. A 2-2 draw, and all back to Rhodes Avenue on Tuesday for the replay …

The comments garnered by my late friend and colleague Sarosh Daruvala amply demonstrated the measure of surprise generated by Bradford’s uncharacteristic form in front of goal.

"When we were two down I still thought we could come back, but Richie was the last one I expected to score," said Sullivan.

Meanwhile, Radford, who was already moving towards a coaching role, added: "Richie scoring two was an eight million-to-one shot - but he stuck them away well."

The man himself reflected: "I can’t remember the time I last scored two goals in senior football. The first goal was all a bit slow motion. After that I was on a cloud and I had a feeling I might get a second one."

And the replay? Well, a packed crowd of 6,000 fans saw Stortford go ahead on the stroke of half-time thanks to Lynch. That was the high-water mark alongside the River Stort, however, as Middlesbrough won through two late goals from Dave Shearer.

The Cup runneth over; the Cup run is over...

But there will always be that wondrous contribution from Richie Bradford to the rich history of the oldest national football competition in the world.