ONE of those rare occasions – when this road becomes a little easier to walk down – has come from the Wolves Foundation.

Several months ago this column bemoaned the state of the overgrown St Paul’s cemetery site, off Bewsey Road, which had definitely seen better days.

As every proud Warringtonian knows the town has plenty to be grateful to St Paul’s and their Sunday School stalwarts, who formed the Zingari club, which morphed into today’s Super League side.

Heritage manager Steve Phillips and colleagues took up the challenge and have now, after much careful consideration, announced their plan of action.

Supported by Birchwood-based International Nuclear Services (INS), starting tomorrow (Fri), volunteers will begin to strip back the weeds surrounding the graves of at least one former Warrington mayor and a Canon Emeritus of Liverpool Diocese at St Paul’s.

Staff at INS take part in regular community days and have agreed to allocate no fewer than six of these to the regeneration project, between now and June 30. The crews will assemble at The Halliwell Jones for a briefing before heading down Tanners Lane to the old graveyard.

Perhaps affairs on the field, like any sporting endeavour, might not always be plain sailing, as Super League XXII has already taught us.

But this piece of industry reinforces the fact that the club – and I couldn’t always say this hand on heart in times past – now has much more solid roots off it.

In the spirit of The Wire’s founding fathers, William Henry Wallington, Thomas Wallington, GJ Browne, GW Edwards, Earnest Early, Thomas Rathbone and Ebeneezer England, I’ll wish everyone involved the best of luck.

  •  Like the perfect open return ticket, some ideas are free to make a comeback whenever they like, especially in the world of our railways.

Word reaches Podium that consideration is once again being given to reopening Kenyon Junction station, near Culcheth.

Those boffins at Transport for Greater Manchester (reliably forgetting the Wilton Lane site isn’t even within their domain) have been browbeaten by the good burghers of Lowton and Leigh into giving the scheme house room.

In the distant past the merits of reopening the halt, finally abandoned in 1963, have been outlined to your correspondent by a landowner.

And between 1999 and 2001, the project became an oft-discussed link to Leigh’s proposed Xanadu snow dome, before the deal was scotched at a public inquiry.

Our younger audience did indeed scan that last paragraph correctly – before the Sports Village officially came into being the Leythers had genuine hopes of bringing Val d’Isere to South Lancashire.

Councillors in Lowton and surrounding hamlets are adamant this proposed terminus could bring untold benefits to the area.

For the sake of villagers in Culcheth, Glazebury and Croft, I hope they’re right.

  •  Few people in this borough can have seen more defendants jailed, landed with community service or placed on probation by our criminal justice system than me.

Which is why, to my surprise, I was rather taken with my colleague Lauren Hirst’s account of cocaine dealer John Large’s rehabilitation.

His frank account of how he became involved in the drugs trade, and the helping hand offered by the retail chain Timpson, struck a chord.

The years he spent behind bars, as well as missing out on his children’s formative years, also saw his mother die. That’s a heavy punishment and if his dedication to steering his way along the road to redemption is sincere, then good luck to him.