Brian Viner: I turn into a plastic mac in roomful of anoraks

As it turned out, we did pretty creditably for a team more depleted than Sheffield United against West Brom'

Last Thursday I attended the Barnardo's Football Quiz, held in a function suite at White Hart Lane, having been humbled in last year's event at Stamford Bridge by men who, as I might have observed at the time, left me feeling like a mere kagoule, or even a mildewed plastic mac, in a roomful of heavy-duty anoraks.

The following day I had the pleasure of lunch with Alan Hansen (and if you think that's shameless name-dropping then stick with me, it gets worse) who told me that he is positively aghast at the depth of knowledge displayed by participants in sports quizzes.

At one he attended, he settled down for the golf round with something approaching smugness, for he is not only a two-handicap player but also a two-handicap student of the game and its history. "And I can still remember the first question. It was: 'Who won the South African Open in 1959'?" he told me, with that incredulous voice he normally reserves for a defensive howler by Laurent Blanc. "The answer was Tommy Horton. And everyone else in the room knew!"

On Thursday, mercifully, we only had football to worry about. I was part of a team formed by Hunter Davies, celebrated author of about a million books, none better than The Glory Game, his year (1971-72) in the life of Tottenham Hotspur FC.

Now, I don't want to suck up to my captain, but, for anyone wistfully nostalgic for more innocent times – when television companies did not make £315m deals with the Football League, let alone threaten to renege upon them – The Glory Game remains a must read ("When I get married, I just want my wife to be a woman, you know, bring up the kids. I'd be the boss, but I'd ask her opinions'' – Spurs full-back Joe Kinnear).

Our team, then, went by the evocative name The Glory Game Players. We comprised, as well as Hunter and me, the distinguished sportswriter Jim White, and the even more distinguished film director Ken Loach, who has made at least three of my 10 favourite films, yet to whom I will irreverently refer, since we are now officially teammates, as Loachy.

Unfortunately, Hunter's star signing, Pat Jennings, did a George Best and failed to show. That was a shame, as the great man would have complemented our strengths. Loachy knows all there is to know about Bath City FC, but that wasn't likely to get us through the round devoted to football coverage on television (at the end of this column, by the way, you will find 10 questions, of which The Glory Game Players got five right. Send me your answers, and if you beat our 50 per-cent success rate then you'll enter a draw for a battered copy of The Glory Game).

As it turned out, we did pretty creditably for a team more depleted than Sheffield United against West Brom. Loachy, I think, was a little unnerved by the severity of some of the questions, yet reached magnificently into his own anorak pocket in the "Who am I?" round.

Five clues of decreasing difficulty were offered to the identity of a mystery person, with five points if you got it right after the first clue, four points after the second, and so on. The first clue was: "I was born in Sacriston in 1933 and my first club was Langley Park Juniors." Loachy leant forward conspiratorially. "It's Bobby Robson," he said, adding that in 1973 he made a film in Langley Park called Days of Hope, and Bobby Robson's dad was one of his extras.

By the end of the evening we had secured mid-table respectability, each of us rising sporadically to the occasion. Indeed, Whitey (having embarrassed himself early doors by muttering "what's Vieri's Christian name?") played an absolute blinder by answering the poser: Steve Hodge keeps it in a bank vault and it is rumoured to be worth £100,000. What is it? And so to the questions:

1. Steve Hodge keeps it in a bank vault and it is rumoured to be worth £100,000. What is it?

2. Name the only player to score a hat-trick in this season's Premiership yet still finish on the losing side.

3. Against which team, in the 1998 World Cup, was Zidane sent off?

4. Who made his international debut for Scotland in 1967, aged 36?

5. What is Emile Heskey's middle name? Lazarus, Calamity or Ivanhoe?

6. The Football Writers' Players of the Year, in 1978 and 1979, shared the same first name. What is it?

7. Who scored this season's first Premiership hat-trick?

8. Who scored six hat-tricks for England?

9. Which player, whose surname is something you can either eat or drink, played in five English FA Cup finals for the same club? (One team last Thursday answered David Seaman, and were rightly denounced for vulgarity).

10. Which was London's most goal-shy team last season, with 45 goals?

Answers next week.

b.viner@independent.co.uk