There Again: Lansdowne Road

I got into Dublin just after noon with a hangover to match the Irish economy. ‘Greed is the knife & the scars run deep’ someone had spray painted by the side of the road into the city, glass edifices and sleek, modernistic bridges lining the out-of-town end of the Liffey. 'Buddhism and the financial crisis,' said a sign on a lamppost outside Trinity College, 'Resist Minister Button's Attacks,' began a United Left Alliance flyer pushed into my hand outside the GPO. It took thirty minutes on the bus to the Spire of Dublin on O’Connell Street and a couple of hours longer to loop around the city’s tourist sights: Grafton Street, St Stephen’s Green, Merrion Square and the Aviva Stadium…well, it just happened to be on the way.

I’d been to the Aviva – or Lansdowne Road as it was called at the time – once before. Newcastle had pipped Sunderland to the summer signing of Jon Dahl Tomasson, bought to play off Alan Shearer in a new formation which left Les Ferdinand surplus to requirements after 41 goals and a pair of second-placed finishes in his two seasons at the club. The undisputed star of a four-team tournament featuring Celtic, PSV Eindhoven and Derry City, the Danish international’s purple patch would last for all of a week until Shearer’s ankle ligaments and Newcastle’s hopes for the season were simultaneously ruptured at Goodison Park, the team shorn of a centre forward as Ferdinand agreed to sign for Spurs the very same day. Pressed up front alongside Faustino Asprilla, Tomasson vomited in the tunnel before the opening game of the season, missed a one-on-one after ninety seconds and scored just three goals in twenty-three games, one of them mishit and another deflecting in off his arse while he looked the other way.

Newcastle being Newcastle, these things are always predictable. “Howay, let’s gan back to Temple Bar,” someone suggested as the final whistle blew. (We didn’t know then that Temple Bar’s pubs were only for wankers. Or maybe we did and were proving the point.) “Nah, hang on, this might be the only chance we get to see us lift a cup,” someone else replied with infinitely more logic than he’d shown in attempting to chat up a burger van girl in the half time break. “Are ye from ‘roond here, like?” he’d begun, liberally coating his burger in onions and sauce. “Yes,” she said, hesitantly, trying out an answer to a question she didn’t understand. “Whereboots?” he asked, aiming for a sauve expression as he lifted the bun in the general direction of his mouth, boiled onions splattering the concrete. She looked puzzled. “Erm, no, I’m wearing trainers.”

Opened in 1872 as an athletics stadium, the old ground later hosted Irish rugby and football internationals. James Joyce spent part of one summer living in a terraced house by what’s now Entrance Number One; Sammy Davis Junior and Frank Sinatra held concerts on a pitch graced by Brady and Stapleton, Johnny Giles and, erm, Eamonn Dunphy. But by the summer of 1997 Lansdowne Road was as hopelessly unfit for purpose as Newcastle’s front line a few weeks later. “An old grey building,” Ray Houghton once described it, “leaky and it wasn’t a great place to bring your family and friends.” When they knocked it down a decade later the only thing that remained was the DART station, the lines cutting directly behind the south stand. 410 million euros, 50,000 seats, 150 CCTV cameras and 69 bars, “a shimmering form of transparent 'shingles' rises in the east and west to position the majority of spectators in the desirable side locations of the pitch,” if you believe what architects tell you. It’s an infinitely more impressive structure than the old stadium, though to me it looked more like an avant-garde contemporary art museum than a football ground – a factor which might go some way towards explaining the size of those crowds at the Celtic Nations Cup.

1644: The first Tyne - Wear Derby?

It started with coal. In north-east England it always started with coal. Newcastle's merchants had been exporting the produce of the Northumbrian coalfield since the middle of the 13th century, around the time the city’s mayor, Nicholas Scott, was leading a group of armed merchants in setting fire to the rival port of North Shields (an historical re-enactment by residents of the Meadowell Estate would later go slightly awry). Although the Prior of Tynemouth took legal action, Newcastle’s traders effectively checkmated him by making King Edward I a financial offer he couldn’t refuse, leading to the sale and export of coal becoming the sole preserve of the Freemen of Newcastle.

The city’s trading dominance was every bit as entrenched at the beginning of the 17th century, Elizabeth I  reaffirming Newcastle’s monopoly in exchange for a one-shilling tax on every wagonload of coal exported from the Tyne. After two failed attempts to annexe the Bishop of Durham's holdings in Gateshead, Newcastle’s coal magnates turned their attention towards shutting off the nascent trade from the River Wear. In 1609 11,648 tons were shipped out of Sunderland, a tiny fraction of the 239,000 which left the Tyne. Nonetheless, King James I was persuaded to issue a decree compelling a percentage of Wear coal revenues to be paid to Newcastle’s merchants.  The economic preeminence of Newcastle’s Company of Merchant Adventurers - which had already resulted in the development of the world's first railway to transport coal from Whickham to the Tyne at Dunston - was given its final seal in 1637 when Charles I doubled the tax the Crown levied on coal shipments, allowing the Company to set production rates and raise prices in return.

Sunderland's Stadium of Light from Boldon Hills.

Newcastle’s prosperity – in 1635 a traveller described it as "the fairest and richest town in England inferior for wealth and building to no city save London and Bristol" – and strategic importance made it an attractive target for the Scottish Covenanters. In 1640 a poorly-trained English force was soundly defeated at the Battle of Newburn and hastily withdrew from the garrison at Newcastle, which, together with the counties of Durham and Northumberland, was ceded to the Scots in the subsequent Treaty of Ripon. Charles agreed to pay £850 a day towards the maintenance of Scottish troops in Newcastle and was forced to recall Parliament after an eleven-year gap to negotiate a financial settlement before the Scottish would agree to withdraw. Parliament re-opened on November 3rd 1640. By the middle of 1642 the country was at war.

Returning from South Shields, the Scottish troops took up positions across the valley on Cleadon Hill, seriously disrupting bus traffic and several games of golf

After failing to capture Hull, William Cavendish, a Nottinghamshire landowner who Charles had ennobled as the First Earl of Newcastle, was hurriedly sent north to secure the coalfields of Durham and Northumberland. Although the blockade of the Tyne by Parliament's ships had seen coal exports plummet to 3,000 tons in 1642, Charles’ control over north-east England wasn’t seriously threatened until January 1644 when a Scottish army of just over 20,000 re-entered Northumberland, crossed the Tyne at Ovingham and took Sunderland unopposed. After initial skirmishes around Penshaw Hill, the Scottish besieged and captured the Royalist fort at South Shields in the third week of March, manoeuvering south to face Cavendish, who had brought up troops from the garrisons at Newcastle and Durham City.

West Boldon and the Tyne

Who, if anyone, triumphed in the engagement which resulted is unclear, though popular myth – perpetuated by this Guardian article – asserts that the Battle of Boldon Hill was fought between the armies of Newcastle and Sunderland (who presumably arrived dressed in Stone Island chain mail and Burberry helmets and then spent the battle threatening to "do" each other while waving their arms and gradually retreating) and resulted in the red and whites’ first Tyne-Wear derby win - “bolstered by the anti-Royals from Scotland,” as Sunderland’s Wikipedia entry puts it. What is known is that the two sides exchanged cannon fire across what is now East Boldon and Cleadon and that Cavendish was unable to force an entry into Sunderland itself. The two sides met again, indecisively, at Hylton Castle at the end of the month, but the Scottish made no attempt to capture Newcastle until Charles suffered a calamitous defeat at the Battle of Marston Moor on July 2nd and consequently abandoned much of the north of England. Cavendish sailed for Germany the following day, remaining in exile until after the 1660 Restoration.

Besieged by a Scottish army of 40,000 troops, and with scant hopes of relief, the city of Newcastle refused to surrender for three months until its defensive walls were finally breached. The garrison of 1,500 made a last-stand at the Castle Keep, Sir John Marley – the Royalist mayor whose statue is one of four on the façade of 45 Northumberland Street – eventually handing over the city on October 20th. Charles followed suit within months, surrendering to the Scottish army at Newark and spending the best part of a year as their prisoner in Newcastle.

The Tyne – Wear rivalry didn’t end with the Civil War. Although Sunderland had closed the gap on its wealthier neighbour, the town’s trade was again restricted by Royal Charter after the Restoration. This allowed Newcastle to dominate coal exports until the end of the 19th century, by which time the mutual antagonism had begun to extend to the football pitch.  After the teams first competitive meeting in 1898, an estimated 50-70,000 spectators packed in to St James' Park on Good Friday 1901, overwhelming the 25 police officers present, swamping the pitch and causing the game to be abandoned when the players were unable to make their way out of the tunnel. The mood quickly turned violent, punches and missiles were exchanged and “three or four thousand persons, mostly young fellows with caps, formed themselves into one compact body and went on an expedition of wreckage,” the Athletic News later reported.

Nicholas Scott would have enjoyed that one.

Ground 173: Amberley Park, Killingworth

First contested in 1989, when Blyth Kitty Brewster saw off the challenge of Heaton Corner House, the Northern Football Alliance League Cup has since been won by the likes of West Allotment Celtic, Team Northumbria, Shankhouse, Percy Main Amateurs and Morpeth Town. Amberley Park, home of Killingworth Sporting and located near the site where, in 1814, a 33-year-old colliery engineer by the name of George Stephenson trialled his first working locomotive, is the venue for tonight’s 23rd final between Ashington Colliers – the reserve eleven of the Northern League side – and Heaton Stannington, whose 2-1 weekend win over Alnwick Town had helped Ponteland United to their first ever Premier Division title.

Renamed in honour of George Dobbins – the long-serving Northern Alliance committee member who was League Chairman at the time of his death in March 2010 – this season’s League Cup saw Alnwick Town put twenty unanswered goals past Chopwell Officials, Red House Farm and Heddon in the opening three rounds before falling 8-7 on penalties to Whitley Bay A in the fourth. Bay went out in the semi-final, Heaton Stannington – who’d previously beaten Newcastle East End, Murton and Percy Main – coming back from two goals down in the first eight minutes to eventually win 4-2 on penalty kicks.

A 6-3 win at four-time winners Carlisle City set Ashington on their way to Amberley Park. After Amble and Newcastle University were dispensed with in the second and third rounds, Wark – who’d previously knocked out holders Hebburn Reyrolle - were beaten 7-4 in the fourth. There were four goals shared in the semi at Blyth Town, the Colliers scoring the final three to make up for the disappointment of their lowly 10th place in the league.

It’s the final game of the Northern Football Alliance season and the great, the good and the groundhoppers have all turned out. Jarrod Suddick, Ponteland United manager and son of ex-Newcastle and Blackpool midfielder Alan, watches from a corner flag, Mick Jeffels, who recently swapped Walker Central for Seaton Delaval Amateurs, does a circuit of the pitch, while Percy Main coach Mick Ritchie walks his dog behind the goal the Colliers are defending. The game begins at a thunderous pace. Heaton are denied a penalty in the first fifteen minutes when a shot is blocked simultaneously by a foul and a handball, and have a headed goal flagged correctly offside. The frame of the goal is rattled as often as Alex Ferguson at a press conference and Shaun Backhouse, the Heaton goalkeeper, goes full-length to claw a shot away. “How’s this still goalless?” asks Ian Cusack, Percy Main’s assistant secretary, at half-time.

Backhouse saves Van der Sar style with his feet, Heaton hit the crossbar from a corner and Ashington’s Craig Towart makes a brilliant one-handed stop as both sides edge closer to scoring the winning goal. The clock ticks by, a few people mutter about having to leave early if it goes to extra time – “I said I’d be back in the bar by quarter past nine” – and then, with just a minute left to play, the ball rolls right to left across the face of the goal and Lawrence McKenna – the league’s second highest scorer behind Shankhouse’s David Dormand - slides in past Towart at the back post. The touchline erupts. All over the pitch, Ashington players drop to their haunches and stare off into space.

The trophy is carried out on a table and the victorious manager jogs back to get a camera from his car. “McKenna is magic!” reads the headline in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle.

The new season starts on August 14th.

Amission: £2
Date: 25th May 2011

Ground 172: Hall Lane, Willington AFC

Willington are possibly the most famous club you’ve never heard of.

There’s been a football team in the tiny ex-mining village of around 7,000 people since 1890, when Willington Rovers – later Rangers, Wednesday and finally Brancepeth Colliery Rangers – were established. The club reached the final of the 1899 Durham Amateur Cup, losing 4-1 to Consett Swifts, before folding in 1906. After a brief hiatus caused by Rangers’ demise, Willington Temperance AFC entered the ranks of the Auckland and District League later that same year, shortening their name to Willington sometime before they filled the Northern League place vacated by Knaresborough in the summer of 1911.

It was a year in which Willington changed grounds too, buying the land that now makes up Hall Lane from the 9th Viscount Boyne. The first ever game at what remains the club’s home a century later took place on September 2nd. A crowd of 5,000 turned up for the Christmas derby with neighbouring Crook Town, who ended the season in third, two places ahead of newcomers Willington and the same number behind Bishop Auckland, Northern League champions for the sixth time.

Runners-up to Esh Winning the following year, Willington took the first of their Northern League titles in 1914. They were champions on two more occasions in the 1920s, a decade in which they also lifted the first three of their eight Northern League Cups.

Some of Willington’s former players enjoyed contemporary success of their own. Jimmy Banks, an inside forward who’d transferred to Tottenham Hotspur in 1913, won an FA Cup winners’ medal against Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1921, scoring the only goal against holders Aston Villa as Spurs made the final. Billy Ashurst, a title winner in the Willington side of 1914, made 200 appearances in defence for Notts County in the mid-1920s, winning five England caps and turning out in the colours of Lincoln and West Bromwich Albion. His younger brother, Eli Ashurst, played 66 times for Birmingham City but died before his 26th birthday. Walter Holmes went on to Middlesbrough; Teddy Maguire reached an FA Cup final with Wolves in 1939. George Tweedy made almost 350 appearances in goal for Grimsby Town, helping the Mariners to two FA Cup semi-finals, the Second Division title and their highest-ever placing of fifth in the old Division One. He retired, aged 40, in 1953, seventeen years after earning his only England cap in a 6-2 win over Hungary.

1953 was also the year of Hall Lane’s record crowd, 10,000 squeezing in for an FA Amateur Cup tie with Bromley. It was the competition that brought the club its greatest moment of glory in a 4-0 win over Bishop Auckland in front of 88,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. Captain Eddie Taylor – a Sunderland shipyard worker whose younger brother, Ernie, would go on to play in FA Cup finals for Newcastle United, Blackpool and Manchester United – headed the opening goal, with Rutherford and Larmouth adding two more before the half hour. Auckland dominated but couldn’t find a way past Jack Snowdon in the Willington goal. Matt Armstrong, whose two goals in a minute had seen off Wimbledon in the third round, scored a fourth. “Soccer amateurs thrill Wembley thousands,” the newspapers reported the game. For Willington it was ample revenge for 1939, when they’d lost in the final to three extra-time goals from Bishop Auckland’s Laurie Wensley, watched by 20,000 at Sunderland’s Roker Park. Wensley had spent the morning of the game delivering sacks of coal. Also among the winning side that day was a young wing-half called Bob Paisley.

A new stand – Willington AFC emblazoned across the front – was built with the Wembley proceeds. Two Durham Benevolent Bowls and a seventh Northern League Cup soon followed, but they would prove to be club’s last honours until the mid-1970s, a 2-1 League Cup win over Bishop Auckland – who else? – giving Willington their first trophy in almost two decades. In 1973, 4,500 turned out in a gale to see the goalless FA Cup first round game with Blackburn Rovers, Tommy Holden missing a late chance for the Durham side. Rovers, with Derek Fazackerley and Danish international Preben Arentoft – a Fairs Cup winner with Newcastle United – in their team, triumphed 6-1 in the replay and donated Hall Lane’s first set of floodlights in return.

Out of the light came some of Willington’s darkest ever days. In the three seasons between 1981 and 1984 they won a total of seven league games, including a winless run that stretched for 53 matches from October 1982. Alan Durban, a First Division title winner at Brian Clough’s Derby County, briefly managed the club after being sacked by Sunderland at the start of the 1984-85 season. Durban left for Cardiff – and two successive relegations – a month later and was replaced by Malcolm Allison, recently fired by Middlesbrough. Allison’s first game in charge was a 1-0 home defeat to Hartlepool Reserves. He left soon after to coach in the Middle East – between them Durban and Allison won 10 out of 22 games.

Next to take charge were Eddie Kyle, once of St Mirren, and Alan Murray, an ex-Middlesbrough midfielder who turned out 68 times in Willington’s blue and white stripes. The managerial duo departed for Hartlepool United, masterminding the 1993 FA Cup win over Premier League Crystal Palace. By the time Harry Pearson visited Hall Lane in 1994 he found “a heavily vandalised clubhouse with steel shutters across the windows” and the words “One Win” chalked on the concrete steps. As the graffiti implied, it was something that Willington rarely ever managed to do. Alan Shoulder, an FA Cup hero with Blyth Spartans three decades earlier, spent a couple of seasons in the dugout, turning out twice in three days at the age of 49, his team losing 9-1 and 8-0. In 2002-03 Willington used 78 different players and slumped to a 13-0 loss at Sunderland Nissan. Stan Cummins, an extravagantly-skilled midfielder with Sunderland and Middlesbrough, was the last of Hall Lane’s big name managers. Aged 45, he played 11 times before resigning in the midst of the club’s worst ever season, which ended in their relegation from the Northern League after an unbroken stay of 94 years.

Rock bottom of the Wearside League in the previous two seasons, Willington – now managed by ex-Wolves schoolboy Robert Lee, who moved up from coaching one of the club’s thriving youth teams in the wake of a 10-0 hammering at New Marske – have improved to 14th this year, reaching their first cup final since the game against Bishop Auckland in 1976. It’s the final day of the Wearside League season, and Ryhope Colliery Welfare – already winners of the league title, Sunderland Shipowners’ and Monkwearmouth Cups – are on the brink of only the third clean sweep of all four trophies since the league was formed in 1892.

The cinder terraces Pearson wrote about are gone, replaced by grass banks and a small flatpack stand, with children kicking a ball around on the rise behind. The covered main stand is still there, with holes in the side of its roof and a players’ tunnel which leads to a wooden fence and an overgrown patch of waste ground. The crowd of 489 is Hall Lane’s biggest for years and a welcome boost to a club that requires £8,000 a season just to cover basic running costs.

The two teams are playing as much against end-of-season fatigue and the blustery wind as they are against each other. The players work hard but struggle to create many chances to score. Willington, their defence marshalled by Mikey Weston and John Richardson, cede possession and territory, pinning their hopes on exactly the kind of breakaway goal Danny Lee almost provides with half an hour played, but Paul Thorns heads the ball wide of the unguarded goal.

Although Ryhope have the better of the game – John Butler, their 28-goal top scorer going close on at least four occasions – it takes a brilliant save from Lenny French to keep the scores level in extra time. “Who are ya? Who are ya?” scream a couple of dozen kids in Willington tops as Ryhope scramble the ball away. When Nathan O’Neill puts a late header wide, his team’s quadruple hopes come down to ten penalty kicks. Andrew Stocks, just 17, can’t do anything to stop the first four attempts, and when Thorns follows Turner in missing with his shot at goal, Willington’s players slump to the floor while Ryhope’s pile on top of the prostrate Lenny French.

Champagne and the League Cup trophy are carried on to the pitch. Those in blue and white look on disconsolately as Ryhope unfurl a ‘Quadruple Winners’ banner. “Willington made it very hard for us,” says triumphant manager Martin Swales. It's a magnificent achievement by Ryhope's finest side since the mid-1960s. For Willington, you can only hope it’s the start of the long road back.

Admission: £2
Date: 21st May 2011

Football Art: Sir Bobby Robson

"There was never another club for me when I was growing up. My father was a Newcastle supporter all his life. I grew up watching men like Jackie Milburn and Len Shackleton. They were my heroes…If my dad had known I was going to be manager one day, he wouldn't have believed it. He'd have been so proud. He would have somersaulted all the way to the games.”

“Very fitting,” said Lady Elsie Robson, unveiling the Sir Bobby Robson Memorial Garden on the day Newcastle United played another of his former sides, West Bromwich Albion. Between the remnants of the town’s medieval defensive walls and the cantilevered back of the Gallowgate End, the garden stands on the old site of the Carnegie Electric building, opposite the Tyneside Irish Centre and Newcastle’s Chinese arch, with four trees backing on to a billboard and sandstone walls pointing back towards the corner of St Andrew’s Street and Gallowgate Road.

Five white limestone blocks capture parts of a career which began at Langley Park pit and later took in honours at home and abroad, the freedom of three cities and the establishment of the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, which to date has raised more than £3.3 million towards developing treatments for cancer patients. Sculpted by Graeme Mitcheson, the blocks are placed along a wide gravel pathway. One lists the club sides he played for and managed, another his achievements with England: four goals in twenty appearances, “the World Cup quarter finals in Mexico ’86 and the semi finals at Italia ’90”.

“I just think my father would have been amazed that a memorial garden has been set up in the centre of Newcastle, particularly in the shadow of St James’ Park,” said Andrew Robson, the second of Sir Bobby's three sons. Like his hero Jackie Milburn, whose statue now stands in St James' Boulevard, the stories of the miner's son from Sacriston, County Durham will endure for generations of Newcastle fans to come.

Ground 171: Palmersville Community Centre, Forest Hall

Although I’ve been using the Tyne & Wear Metro system since it first opened in 1981, I don’t think I’ve ever got off at Palmersville (a fact which might owe something to a late-night documentary I once saw on Tyne Tees in which a group of middle-aged country & western obsessives in cowboy hats and snakeskin belts travelled between Shiremoor and Monkseaton massacring songs by Willie Nelson. Believe me, you don’t risk hearing that twice).

There’s no arguing against the lure of Forest Hall versus Berwick United Ultras at the bottom of the Northern Football Alliance Division One, though. At 2.30pm, as the forecast rain began tipping down, Berwick kicked off to a non-playing audience composed of me, four substitutes, two club officials who keep up a constant stream of instructions – “Stay there. Use your eyes. Hold it, hold it. That’s the ball. Why did you do that? Hold. Use your common sense.” - while running the line, and a pair of kids who wander in with an old ball and leave before half time.

Forest Hall, founded in 1996 and now with 23 separate teams, spent four years raising a £25,000 contribution towards the brand spanking new £1.2 million East Palmersville Sports Pavilion, funded by North Tyneside Council and a Football Foundation grant of almost £500,000. The facilities are a big improvement on their old wooden clubhouse, but it’s on the pitch where the club has struggled this season, losing fourteen of their first fifteen games before six wins in their next seven moved them briefly off the bottom and three successive losses dumped them straight back. The visitors, formed in 2006 through the merger of Berwick’s two oldest amateur sides, Spittal Rovers and Highfield United, haven’t managed to pick up three points since a 7-4 romp at Stobswood Welfare on the last weekend in March, and are third bottom on 25 points, three ahead of Forest Hall and one in front of North Shields Athletic.

In a scrappy, error strewn start on the now slippery pitch, it takes fifteen minutes for either side to threaten a goal, Berwick’s keeper allowing the ball to dribble through his legs and having to scurry back to retrieve it from the line. With both teams equally uncompromising in their tackles, the referee is the busiest man on the pitch. A Forest Hall midfielder skips round two challenges but is felled by the third. “You dived, you cock,” the defender says. “Eh? I slipped, aye, after you hoofed us in the air.” They’re soon at it again, the Berwick defender sliding in as his opponent attempts a turn to the right. “You shouldn’t be diving in like that,” the Berwick centre-forward shouts back from halfway. “I didn’t dive in,” turning to face the Forest Hall player, “I didn’t foul you at all.”

The rain falls, Berwick shank a couple of shots wide and Forest Hall put a free kick over the bar and have a flick on chested off the line. Then, right on the stroke of half time, the twice-fouled Forest Hall midfielder picks up the ball and, without breaking stride, hits it right-footed into the bottom corner of the net.

Berwick have the ball but Forest Hall the chances when play restarts after the break. A forward shoots just wide, another misses with only the keeper to beat. The Forest Hall linesman flags a couple of dubious offsides before the home team score a second, a forward latching on to a backpass and sliding the ball through the goalkeeper’s legs. Forest Hall stretch their lead, a substitute squeezing through a gap on the edge of the area and celebrating with a double somersault, before Berwick manage a shot on goal, Jamie Punton rolling the ball into the net as the entire home defence appeal for handball. “Aw ref, man. He might as well have caught it. That’s ridiculous,” the goalkeeper moans. The referee loses control, showing five yellow cards before, with arguments still raging over a disallowed Berwick goal, three goals in the last five minutes give Forest Hall a flattering 6-1 win. “Let’s just get this game ower with,” says a Berwick defender as his clearance smacks a teammate in the face and the fifth goal slides into the net.


It’s a long journey home for Berwick, who slip to second bottom of the league. On Monday they play at South Shields United and have it all to do again.

Admission: Free
Date: May 7th 2011

Ground 170: Derwent Park, Annfield Plain

This is Annfield Plain. Twelve miles south-west of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, overlooked by the Pontop Pike TV mast and hometown of ex-cruiserweight champion of the world ‘Gentleman’ Glenn McCrory; “most of Annfield Plain is made up of housing, a few run down shops and several pubs,” its Wikipedia entry promisingly states.

The town’s had a football team of its own since 1890, when Annfield Celtic first came into being. Northern Football Alliance champions in 1920 and 1923 and runners-up, as Celtic, in 1904, Annfield Plain AFC later had a mostly unremarkable 40-year spell in the now-defunct North Eastern League before switching to the Wearside in 1964.

Three times – in 1926, 1928 and 1964 – Plain reached the First Round proper of the FA Cup. York legend Norman Wilkinson – “one of the most loyal and outstanding players ever to appear for City,” in the words of the club’s official history, and a man who knew about FA Cup success himself, having played up front in the York side which famously took Newcastle United to a semi-final replay – finished his playing days with the club in the Wearside League. Wilkinson worked as a cobbler while turning out for York, commuting from north-west Durham – where he lived at home and looked after his elderly father – by public transport for matches. After retiring as a player, he worked the Annfield Plain turnstile, helping to sell raffle tickets, take down the nets and retrieve stray balls.

Norman Wilkinson wasn’t the only famous striker to run out at Derwent Park. Ralph Allen, who scored 47 goals in just 52 games as a Charlton Athletic player in 1934-35, ended his career here too. Andy Graver, Lincoln City’s record goalscorer, left Plain to sign for Newcastle United in 1949. Reg Keating also ended up at St James’ Park, later scoring 35 goals in two and a half seasons with Cardiff City. In August 1993, Kevin Keegan and a Newcastle United side made the opposite journey in a pre-season friendly arranged to mark Plain’s centenary and raise funds for the West Stanley Colliery Disaster Memorial Fund (on 16 February 1909 an explosion in a pit shaft killed 168 men and boys. Frank Keegan grandfather of the future England captain, was one of the 30 or so who got out alive). Cypriot international Costas Costa, once of FC Utrecht and Olympiakos Nicosia, scored his only goal in a black and white shirt with a shot from inside his own half. Back then, it still wasn’t enough to earn him a contract.

Plain, Wearside League champions once previously in 1985, had a managerial messiah of their own in the late 1990s, Kenny Lindoe – now at Consett – leading the club to a second title in 1998. Lindoe left for Brandon United - Derwent Park not meeting the Northern League ground criteria – taking the Durham club from third-bottom to Division Two champions in two seasons and, even more improbably, holding off Bedlington Terriers – title winners five years in a row – to finish top of Division One three years later.

Without Lindoe, Brandon slipped back into Division Two and Annfield Plain have never finished higher than last season’s sixth place, one behind today’s opponents Cleator Moor Celtic, who’ve travelled from the Cumbrian birthplace of Kangol hats and one-time England keeper Scott Carson. Plain take the lead after 25 minutes when the current Celtic custodian (Carson came through the youth ranks at Cleator before moving on to Workington and Leeds) taps a free kick back out onto Paul Henderson’s head, the on-loan Consett forward heading in at the post. “Come on boys, it’s only one goal,” a Celtic player shouts, but neither he nor any of his teammates can threaten the Annfield Plain goal. The pitch, lovingly cared for, is bordered by grassy banks on three sides and a rusty corrugated fence, propped up with metal posts and bent inwards at the top. A crumbling stand provides rudimentary cover, with several steps of terracing and some plastic chairs along the back row. At half-time the players disappear down a whitewashed tunnel, vandalised by ‘John, Tom and Deano 2009’.

“Same again, lads,” the Annfield Plain keeper says at the start of the second half. With the wind at their backs the home side have a shot hacked off the line and hit the crossbar twice before Jonathan Kemp heads in direct from a corner to finally kill the game. “What a bastard surprise,” says the Cleator number 10.

Admission: £2
Date: May 2nd 2011