I'm in with the quality at Carlisle United, the Man U of the Conference league

Last weekend, I went to see Manchester United - sitting in the directors' box, of course, I'm in with all the quality - the Manchester United of the Conference league: the one and only Carlisle United. I watch them in the first couple of months of every season, while we are still in Lakeland, but now, for the first time since 1928, they are not in the Football League.

But a surprising thing has happened. They have sold 1,500 season tickets - compared with 1,400 for the previous season. The gate for their first home game, against, hold on, I've got their name somewhere, didn't even know they had a team, I thought it was a mudflat in the Thames, yes, it was Canvey Island - and yet 7,234 people turned up. Amazing. Better than most clubs in the Second and First Divisions. For their second home game, against Farnborough, the gate was 5,505. They won that game 7-0. The last time they did that was more than 50 years ago, against Rochdale in 1953.

After that, CUFC had a brief spell in the very top division, blink and you missed it. Exactly 30 years ago, Carlisle were leading the First Division, having beaten Chelsea, Boro and Spurs. Their fall has been mighty, but their fame endures, hence their new status as the Man Utd of the Conf.

You must get some antagonism, I said to Lord Clark (formerly David Clark, MP and cabinet minister), one of Carlisle's directors.

All the other Conference clubs will hate you, muttering here comes the moneybags, the toffs, let's duff them up.

"Oh no, they love us," he said. "We bring enormous numbers of supporters with us, so all their gates are going up."

Away to Halifax, 1,400 of the 2,696 crowd were from Carlisle, while at Forest Green, wherever that is, half of the 1,074 home gate were Carlisle supporters.

"On the other hand, they do all raise their game, as if they really were meeting Manchester United."

For their new life in the Conference, Carlisle have acquired a new owner, Fred Storey, a very big local builder. So big that, when I shook his hand, I still couldn't see his head. Must be 6ft 7ins. He's a local, born and bred, as is the manager, Paul Simpson. I'm trying to think, now that Bobby Robson has had the push at Newcastle, of other clubs where both the owner and manager are locals. Hmm, can't.

One problem for Carlisle is that they still have some players on Football League salaries, up to £1,500 a week, whereas in the Conference, where many are part-time anyway, the norm is nearer £400 a week. And by dropping down, they have lost the £230,000-a-year share-out they got as a Football League club. This season, it's been halved and next season, if they are still in the Conference, it will disappear.

Last Saturday, they got picked by Sky for their live game. How exciting, you might think, for a little rural club, to be on national TV. Ah, but Sky insisted the game should be at midday, not three o'clock, as nature and the fixture list had intended. It was a last-minute change, thus mucking up arrangements for far-flung fans, such as me, 30 miles away, out in the country, and also for those who were working on Saturday morning. The fee from Sky was only £5,000 - so a drop in the gate could well make the presence of the TV cameras a nonsense.

It looked a pretty decent crowd at kick-off, though I was busy admiring two innovations since I had last been at Brunton Park. There's now an electronic scoreboard - my! the wonders of science. I do hope those blokes who used to carry boards with the half-time scores around the ground are being well cared for. And there were drum majorettes who waved their blue-and-white whisks and screamed lustily.

Alas, the game was a scoreless draw - pretty boring, apart from the fun of watching Nigel Clough, Burton Albion's player-manager, send a pass on to the roof of the main stand. We all enjoyed that.

The crowd turned out to be 4,582 in total, about 1,000 fewer than the average home gate. So Sky's money did not make up for the lost gate revenue. It doesn't always pay to be the glam club . . .

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