Ground 158: Silksworth Welfare, Silksworth

The further down the league pyramid you go, the less expendable people - players, managers, tea ladies and even the proverbial one man and his dog watching from the touchline - become to a football club. So while Newcastle United could afford to sack a manger whose team sat 11th in the table and had recently thrashed their local rivals 5-1, for Silksworth FC, a struggling team ten whole divisions below the Premier League, losing boss Steven Smith is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

Until the middle of the 19th century Silksworth was little more than an area of farmland three miles south of Sunderland. When the Marquis of Londonderry sank the village’s first coalmine in 1869 there were fewer than 600 people living in the neighbouring hamlets of Silksworth and Tunstall. Within a decade the population had risen tenfold and more than 2,000 men and boys – some from as far afield as Germany and the USA - were working shafts up to six hundred feet underground in what became Londonderry’s showpiece mine.

Among the tens of thousands of people who would eventually work the mine was a man called Joe Gurney and three of his four sons. The other, Bobby, played for Silksworth Boys, Hetton Juniors, Seaham Harbour and Northern League Bishop Auckland, where he was spotted by Sunderland manager Charles Buchan and signed for a fee of £10 in 1925. Gurney scored nine goals on his debut for Sunderland’s reserve side, and netted after just nineteen minutes of his first team debut against West Ham the following year. Over the next two decades – and despite suffering three broken legs – he played 388 times and scored 228 goals for his hometown club, including ten hat-tricks and the opening goal of the 3-1 1937 FA Cup Final win over Preston North End. In 1936 his goals helped Sunderland to the First Division title - the last time Sunderland (or indeed any team wearing stripes) have finished champions of England. Despite this, he managed only a single England cap, appearing in front of a crowd of 129,000 at Hampden Park in 1935. After retiring as a player at Sunderland, Gurney managed Peterborough United, Darlington and Hartlepool. He died in April 1994. A blue plaque outside the Silksworth Welfare ground commemorates his birthplace in nearby Stewart Street.

When Silksworth Colliery closed in the 1970s, the town – by now a suburb of Sunderland itself – was forced to reinvent itself. A sports complex was eventually constructed with floodlit football pitches and Europe’s largest dry ski slope, while parts of the old mine were turned into a boating lake and skateboard park. In summer 1998 a man called Steven Smith reformed the town’s football team, once known as Silksworth Colliery Welfare, as Thorndale FC. Chairman and manager, Smith wanted a make a club where local people could get together and play a game of football. Almost thirteen years on - and now known as Silksworth Community Football Club - his team has progressed through the Hetton and District, Tyne & Wear and Durham Alliance Leagues, raised over £12,000 for local charities and seen almost two hundred different people turn out in its colours. Next season would have been Silksworth’s fifth successive year in the Wearside League, but work commitments mean Smith can no longer devote Saturday afternoons to football. Without their manager, the club had little option but to fold. “It’s really disappointing we’ve had to take this decision but there was no other option,” Smith told the Sunderland Echo. “Only one player has left and we will fulfil our 14 fixtures, hopefully going out in a blaze of glory.

While results haven’t quite matched up to the optimism of Smith’s pledge, recent wins over Willington and basement-dwellers Prudhoe Town have propelled Silksworth out of the Wearside League’s bottom three, where they’d been stuck for much of the season. With nine games remaining, they’ve climbed to sixteenth in the table, five places and nineteen points behind this evening’s opponents Hartlepool FC.

Hemmed in on two sides by the flowerbeds, war memorial and Victorian bandstand in Silksworth Park, the Welfare Ground has a brick clubhouse in one corner and a pair of upright metal dugouts on halfway. When we arrive both are still locked and the players are waiting in the centre circle while a Silksworth official attempts to hunt down the key. “No luck?” asks the referee. “Tell you what, get your subs behind the fence and we’ll just crack on.”

Unfortunately for Silksworth, it’s the visitors who do most of the early cracking, deservedly taking the lead when the home keeper blocks a shot only for the rebound to falls straight into a Hartlepool forward’s path, the Silksworth defence appealing in vain for offside. With the unhappy keeper still haranguing his defence – “There’s no talking, no movement, nothing” – a Hartlepool player advances through midfield and lobs the ball from thirty yards into the roof of the net. “Is anyone gonna put a foot in?” the keeper demands after picking himself off the floor. “Inept,” comes from the Silksworth bench in a semi-audible moan. “That was like Brazil!” a Hartlepool fan celebrates as the scorer is mobbed by his teammates.

Silksworth reduce the arrears with a samba strike of their own, a shot from the edge of the area lashed past the helpless keeper. They smash a shot off the crossbar and have a header beaten off the line. Somehow, Hartlepool miss a one-on-one, the forward lifting his shot over the keeper, the goal and very nearly the fence at the back of the pitch. Half-time comes with neither side quite able to add to their score.

Hartlepool emerge for the second half in the same mood they began the first but find themselves just a single goal ahead when their goalkeeper unwisely allows an angled cross to bounce twice in his area, the second clearing his head and finding its way into the far corner of the net. But the prospect of parity only spurs the visitors on. Two minutes later a free kick is parried away from goal and not one but two forwards are on hand for the resulting tap-in, and though a Silksworth substitute manages to pull a goal back, it’s too little, too late to save his side from defeat.

Eight games left in the life of Silksworth Community Football Club.

Admission: Free
Date: 30th March 2011

Northern League Haiku

To mark World Poetry Day, a few thoughts on the world's second oldest football league in seventeen syllables or fewer.



Turin. On the pitch
Eleven Durham miners
Run rings around the world.

The goalkick bounces.
“Mine!” he yells, his eyes alight.
He shoots at the moon.

Crook – Barcelona.
To Messi, Cruyff, Kubala:
Your boys lost 4-2.

Flooded goalmouth
The keeper dives
A fraction too soon.

The old pitch
They both fly in
Thwack!

Ground 157: Seaham Welfare

Put it down to the ineffable appeal of Northern League football, but while most of the nation’s fans are sitting at home in front of the fire, watching Manchester United battle Marseille for a place in the last eight of the European Champions League, I’m waiting in the mist for a delayed kick-off at Seaham.

First formed as a Sunday League team in 1973, Seaham Red Star progressed through the Houghton & District, Northern Alliance and Wearside Leagues after making the switch to Saturday afternoons. In 1979, with 62-goal Tommy Henderson and future Huddersfield, Derby County and Leeds forward Bobby Davison leading the line, they got as far as the fifth round of the FA Vase before losing 5-2 at home to eventual semi-finalists Whickham, then triumphed in the Philips Floodlit Trophy at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium, winning a set of floodlights for their Seaham Welfare ground. A year later Red Star defeated Boldon at Roker Park to lift the Durham Challenge Cup, after eliminating a Tow Law Town and a young winger called Chris Waddle at the semi-final stage. In 1982, helped by Nigel Gleghorn, a fireman who would go on to play for Ipswich, Manchester City and Birmingham, and eventual New Zealand international striker Paul Nixon, Red Star once more made it to the fifth round of the Vase and managed the Wearside League and Challenge Cup double.

Admitted to the second division of the Northern League two seasons later, Seaham were promoted behind Stockton in 1988 and finished fifth in 1993, when they won the Northern League Cup and sold their 17-year-old goalkeeper to Newcastle United. “I played a dozen games in the Northern League, a tough league with some good players but a learning experience for a young lad,” Steve Harper remembered in a recent interview with the Daily Mail. “I was spotted by Peter Kirtley and asked to play for Newcastle's youth team.” Third the following season, they finished as high as second behind Bedlington Terriers in 2000, but were relegated with just twenty points in 2002. It took another five seasons for Seaham to return to the top flight, and only two more before the plummeted once again after their main financial backer abruptly withdrew all funding weeks before the start of the 2008-2009 season.

Last year Red Star managed midtable. This season things are much worse: after conceding 88 goals in just 29 games, the weekend’s 3-0 home defeat by Hebburn Town has left them just two points above Horden Colliery Welfare in the third and final relegation place. “We’ve got to get out of the blocks quickly tonight and see what Whitehaven are made of,” manager Kevin Turns tells the Sunderland Echo before the game.

Seaham’s young side, with two players out suspended and three unable to get time off work, are faster around the pitch but fall behind to an early Whitehaven goal from a corner – a near identical effort to the one the visitors scored at the weekend, when I saw them battle to a 1-0 win over promotion chasing North Shields. The Cumbrians double their lead when a swift passing move dissects the Red Star defence and Craig Robson rolls the ball low into the corner. “Start again, start again,” is the advice from the home bench. “Closer, man!” comes a less-forgiving shout from the back row of the stand. “Weak as piss, that.”

But start again they do. They have a goal disallowed, then score from a free kick that Richard Goodman chests down, stumbles over and strikes past Brian Miller in the Whitehaven goal. Not half an hour gone and we’ve already had three goals. “See how easy it is? See how easy it is?” asks Turns. He gets his answer within a minute, Goodman replicating the game’s opening goal with a header into the roof of the net. Whitehaven see a shot clang back against the metal post, but then a gentle lob from Johnny Monaghan somehow squirms through Miller’s arms and ends up in the net. He looks straight down the pitch, utterly aghast. Nobody quite has the heart to celebrate.

It takes twenty minutes of the second half for Whitehaven to get back on level terms. A player skips past a challenge on the right and the Seaham defence leave Kevin Connelly unmarked to turn in the cross at the far post. With just three minutes left, and Red Star having just gone close to a winner of their own, the visitors break upfield and Connelly scores a fourth. Beaten, there’s still enough time for Seaham’s Paul McSween to save a penalty and Gregg Qually to score from the rebound. “Plenty of goals, like,” a Seaham fan says as he heads for the exit. “Aye,” his friend replies, ruefully shaking his head, “but at the wrong end.” They miss Connelly completing his hat-trick in scoring Whitehaven’s sixth goal. Not that it matters much by then.


Admission: £4
Date: 15th March 2011

My First Game

Newcastle United 0 Coventry City 1
St. James’ Park
April 17th 1985
Attendance: 19,577

I had just turned nine years old, it was a sunny, end-of-season Wednesday evening, and Newcastle United were playing at home to Coventry City. It was the day that Manchester United beat Liverpool to reach the final of the FA Cup, exactly a week before Everton made the Cup Winners Cup Final, and just under a month until Heysel and the Bradford Fire. Not that I knew any of this at the time. Besides, I had enough to think about just trying to stay upright on a concrete crash-barrier.

We arrived before kick-off, climbing the zig-zag steps up from outside The Strawberry pub, the doors of which men would famously topple out of five minutes before the game began. There was the smell of cooking hops and barley from the brewery next door, mixed in with open-air urinals, cigarette smoke, watery onions, eggy farts and beer breath. We found a place under the Gallowgate scoreboard, halfway up the open terrace, a little to the left of the goal.

My dad lifted me up on to the barrier, grabbing under my arms as the people in front shifted slightly to accommodate my dangling legs. I perched, precariously, reading the programme from cover to cover. “You’re here to watch the match, not read that,” he said, as my younger brother tried to peer round my elbow. Just then the crowd surged forward from the back and I clung on to the concrete, fearfully eyeing the edge of a stone step that was strewn with cigarette ends, gripping so tightly that for the whole of the first half my fingers were spotted with pebbledash marks.

Newcastle, safely charting their first top-flight season since 1978, had Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley, Glenn Roeder and Gary Megson in their starting line-up. A young kid called Paul Gascoigne, FA Youth Cup winning skipper, had made his debut as a substitute four days earlier against QPR. But Coventry, scrapping for their First Division lives, took a second minute lead which they never looked like relinquishing (they would go into their final three games eight points behind Norwich and win them all to send the Canaries down instead alongside Sunderland and Stoke).  A young Stuart Pearce played  in defence for the Sky Blues and David Bennett, man-of-the-match in the 1987 FA Cup Final win over Spurs, scored the game's only goal.

“Howay, let’s go,” my Dad said out of nowhere. I looked around, confused because the scoreboard clock said there were still nine minutes to play. “Why?” I asked. “Beat the traffic,” he replied, not for the last time (I never saw the end of a game until I was old enough to go to one by myself). The next day at school I kicked a battered caser around the playground, mimicking Waddle’s shoulder feints, the Roeder Shuffle and Peter Beardsley’s hunched, slalom-like runs towards goal. The Liverpool supporters looked on, unimpressed and impatient, waiting for the ball like they were Ian Rush.

This post originally appeared on The Ball is Round.

Ground 156: UTS Stadium, Dunston

The year is 1975. By the banks of the Tyne in Dunston, newly absorbed into the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead, an 8-year-old boy by the name of Paul Gascoigne dreams of emulating fellow local lad and future Gol TV commentator Ray Hudson, then a 20-year-old midfielder for Newcastle United. Brian Johnson, born in Dunston in 1947 and better known nowadays as the lead singer of AC/DC, is touring with the band Geordie and the Masters of Rock album they released the previous year. The Dunston staithes, first constructed in 1893 and the largest wooden structure to be found anywhere in Europe, are still being used to load coal from nearby coalfields into ships on the River Tyne, and workers at the Her Majesty's Stationery Office have just entered their own team, called Whickham Sports FC, in the Newcastle City Amateur League.

Initial success - including the Gateshead Charity Cup in 1978 and '81 and the Northern Amateur League Shield in '79 and '80 - eventually led to several name changes, a lease on a ground of their own (named, like the club at the time, after the local Federation Brewery), and a move to the Wearside League, which they won twice before leaving to join the Northern League in 1991. Promoted as Division Two champions at only their second attempt, Dunston, have maintained their top flight place ever since, winning back to back Northern League titles in 2004 and 2005, and finishing no lower than seventh in every season since 1997. One of the Northern League's most ambitious sides, along with Whitley Bay and Bishop Auckland The Fed have once again applied to join the Evostik North next season.

Tonight it's Northern League champions Spennymoor Town who provide the opposition in the semi-final of the Durham Challenge Cup, previously won by Sunderland, Darlington, Hartlepools United and, for the last two seasons, by Brian Clough's old team Billingham Synthonia. It's Dunston's third game - and indeed third cup game after Saturday's 2-1 FA Vase quarter final defeat to Whitley Bay and Monday night's 1-0 League Cup win over Team Northumbria - in just five days but a sizeable crowd has turned up nonetheless. Two covered stands square up to each other across the halfway line, bare poplar trees shield one touchline, and a telephone mast rises up from the other side of the pitch. Spennymoor's travelling fans congregate behind the dugouts and next to the goal nearest the tea hut. A lone supporter shivers in a bus stop; another shelters under the branches of a tree.

Spennymoor make the brightest start with the pacy Stephen Capper (Republic of Ireland skipper in the 2003 FIFA World Youth Championships) and Anthony Peacock (an FA Youth Cup winner with Middlesbrough) posing several problems down the left. A mistimed sliding tackle gets the visiting bench racing out on to the edge of the pitch. "Shocking tackle, that," "You bottled it" and "Absolute disgrace, ref" they complain, their voices carrying all the way to where I'm standing by the corner flag. "Off, off, off," chant the Spennymoor fans clustered behind the Dunston goal.


Although the home side have a couple of late chances, it's Spennymoor who have the better of the half, with only some smart saves and last-ditch defending - notably from skipper Ben Catternach - keeping the visitors at bay. Spennymoor are quick footed, lively and imaginative in possession of the ball. Dunston's more physical, direct approach is increasingly effective, though, as the rain starts to fall and the second half wears on. "Up the tempo here. Up the tempo!" Spennymoor manager Jason Ainsley urges his team. Possession ebbs and flows on the muddy Dunston pitch and the game gets scrappier and scrappier as both sides understandably begin to tire. With seventy-three minutes gone and Ainsley calling a substitute back to the dugout a forward pass catches his defence unaware and Andrew Bulford dinks a shot over ex-Sunderland keeper Craig Turns into the corner of the net. "Switched off again," comes the shout from the visiting bench. It looks likely to be the winner until Michael Rae leaps in a crowded box and nods in off the side of his head. "Ah man," complains a Dunston fan, "I can't stop for extra time, me feet are frozen as it is."

Another thirty minutes and the first three penalties of the subsequent shoot out - one scored apiece, the next two missed - can do nothing to separate the two teams. But then Dunston score twice, and when O'Connell pulls off another save it's the home team who go through to the Good Friday final against Gateshead Reserves at Eppleton Colliery Welfare. More disappointment for Spennymoor, FA Vase favourites before they fell at Poole Town in the fifth round. For Dunston, it's a massive achievement and the chance of their first major trophy since their league and cup double of 2005. "Phenomenal," says manager Billy Irwin of his team's effort after the game.



Admission: £4.50
Date: 10th March 2011

Northern League Day

With Newcastle United away at Aston Villa in a televised match on April 10th, the first ever Northern League Day takes place the day before, coinciding with a Socrates Football Bloggers Meet scheduled in advance of the 3 o'clock kick off at Ryton versus Billingham Synthonia. So far, the campaign's attracted the backing of BBC Radio, the FSF, Non-League Day, Newcastle United, Middlesbrough and Sunderland fanzines and blogs, Ryton Football Club and Mike Amos, chairman of the Northern League.

It should be a great day of football. Come along and see for yourself.

Ground 155: Croft Park, Blyth

Blame it on a corner flag.

The Racecourse Ground, Wrexham, the very last minute of the eleventh game of Blyth Spartans’ 1978 FA Cup run. Shildon, Consett, Crook Town, Bishop Auckland, Burscough, Third Division Chesterfield and non-league Enfield have all been disposed of. In the fourth round, Stoke City, with a side including Howard Kendall and a young Garth Crooks, are beaten 3-2, the Northern League team scoring two goals in the final ten minutes at the Victoria Ground. The game is twice postponed and the fifth round draw has already been made: Newcastle United or Wrexham at home to Stoke City or Blyth Spartans. But the Welsh side spoil the dream script with an upset of their own, cantering to a 4-1 win in the replay which follows a 2-2 draw at St James’ Park. They end the season Third Division champions, while Newcastle are relegated from the First with only six wins from their forty-two games.

February 18th 1978; the prize a home tie with Arsenal in the last eight of the FA Cup. The pitch is bone-hard, Alan Hill’s backpass underhit, and Terry Johnson, scorer of one goal at Shildon and two against Stoke, jabs his foot at the ball and slides it through the goalkeeper’s legs. Only seconds remain when Blyth’s skipper John Waterson tackles Bobby Shinton, the ball deflects off the Wrexham forward’s shin and dribbles harmlessly out of play. Waterson slips, Shinton raises his arm in hopeful appeal, and Alf Grey, who would referee the final in 1983, points erroneously for a corner. Lee Cartwright takes the kick, Dave Clark, Willie McFaul’s understudy in Newcastle United’s 1969 UEFA Fairs Cup winning team, punches away off the top of Shinton’s head. Cartwright tries again, Clark gathers the ball to his chest unopposed, but Grey signals for the kick to be retaken as the corner flag has fallen to the ground. At the third and final attempt Cartwright clears everyone except Dixie McNeill, who clatters in a headed equaliser at the far post. “And it’s gone in!” Barry Davies exclaims. “And the crowd go absolutely mad.” They weren’t the only ones. “It wasn’t a corner,” Shinton admits to Waterson immediately after the game.

Nine days later, 42,000 people turn up for the replay at St James’ Park, with an estimated 10-15,000 locked outside the ground. “We were stuck in traffic and a police officer pulled up beside the front of the bus,” remembers Clark. “Jackie Marks wound the window down and asked him if there had been an accident. The lads were anxiously waiting to hear what the situation was because we’d been stuck for quite a while. Jackie turned around and told us that it was just the traffic heading for the ground and we were going to have to be escorted. Nobody would believe him until the blue lights started flashing.” Perhaps affected by nerves, Blyth make the worst start possible, falling two goals behind in the first twenty minutes of the game. Grey awards a contentious penalty which Graham Whittle slams in at the Leazes End, before Dixie McNeill places a rising half-volley into the opposite corner of the same net. Though Johnson pulls one back with eight minutes remaining, Blyth Spartans’ fairytale has finally reached an end. A bedroom furniture supplier rewards each player with £350 worth of vouchers. Steve Carney, an electrician signed from North Shields at the start of the season, moves to Newcastle United for a £1,000 fee. Midfielder Keith Houghton eventually leaves the police force to sign for Carlisle. And, most famously of all, Alan Shoulder goes from the night shift at Hetton Colliery to playing centre-forward for Newcastle, scoring 38 goals in 117 games. “I was working down the pit on Sunday night, signed for Newcastle on Monday and made my debut against Stoke on the Saturday. It changed my life,” he later said.


It changed Blyth too. “The most famous non-league club in the world,” FA secretary Ted Croker said at the time, although their success was by no means confined to a few short months in 1977-78. Semi-finalists in the FA Amateur Cup six years earlier, in the decade and a half between 1972 and 1988 they never once finished lower than fifth in any league they played in, lifted the Northern League title on no fewer than ten occasions, were seven-time Northumberland Senior Cup winners, twice FA Trophy quarter finalists, and champions of the Northern Premier League First Division at their very first attempt.

It was off the pitch that problems were beginning to mount. By 2001 Spartans had amassed a debt of almost £300,000, with £56,000 owed to the Inland Revenue alone. “We were 10 minutes away from a winding-up order being issued,' says chairman Tony Platten, who was instrumental in saving the club from extinction. “The Inland Revenue said the cheque had to be at the Morpeth tax office by 4pm. I managed to twist some people's arms in local business on the basis that they would lend us some money and they might be paid back one day. We got the cheque to Morpeth at 3.50pm.”

With the Spartans back on a more secure financial footing, and promoted as Unibond Premier Champions in 2005, the cash from 2009’s televised third round home tie with Premier League Blackburn Rovers was used to help develop Croft Park, Blyth’s home since 1907 and now with cover on all four sides. "Spartans is a famous club because of the FA Cup,” Platten told The Telegraph. “Football supporters across the world over the age of about 40 will always associate Blyth with upsetting the odds.”

Sixth in the Blue Square Conference North following Tuesday’s 2-0 win over Redditch, Blyth nonetheless start as underdogs against Gateshead, up to tenth in the Conference Premier on the back of six straight wins and eleven goals in their last two games. The Tynesiders have brought a dozen of their own stewards, a pair of uniformed bouncers are patrolling outside the Masons Arms and families in green and white scarves are already making their way into the ground with an hour and a half to go until the game begins.

I head inside at half past two. “One student,” I say, showing my card. The turnstile operator looks at me blankly. “Nee students today,” he says. A tenner it is, then. Heavy morning rain gives way to weak, cold sunlight by 3 o’clock. Blyth line up with six former Gateshead players in their starting eleven, including Stephen Turnbull, whose elder twin Phil, an ex-Spartan loanee himself, starts in midfield (Gateshead name two more Blyth old boys, Paul Farmer and Josh Gillies, among their substitutes). The crowd is 2,719, including 967 who’ve made the short journey north. “Tynesiders, Tynesiders” and “When the Heed go marching in” start off the Gateshead fans. “Spartans! Spartans!” comes the reply, accompanied by a drum. “We are Northumbria,” from the Kingsway, “You’re just a town full of smackheads,” retorts the Plessey Road, alluding to the coastal town’s unfortunate reputation as the heroin capital of the North. The teams come out, smoke bombs and toilet rolls hit the pitch and a flag is passed along the length of one stand. “Welcome to Sparta” says a banner behind the Kingsway goal.

After a fairly even first fifteen minutes Gateshead open the scoring when a seemingly harmless cross from on-loan Sunderland left-back Michael Liddle hits the luckless Chris Swailes on the boot and spins past Dan Lowson in the Spartans goal, a mirror of the own goal Swailes scored on his Premier League debut for Ipswich Town. With their next attack, the Tynesiders make it two; skipper Ben Clark breaking through a challenge and squaring the ball for James Curtis, Gateshead’s longest serving player, to roll into the net. There’s delirium behind the opposite goal. “Press them, press them,” mutters the man to my left, who’s wearing a blue snorkel parka and smoking a cigar. With Phil Turnbull and Kris Gate utterly dominant in midfield, Gateshead cruise the remainder of the half.

Blyth, with 20-goal top scorer Paul Brayson now playing wider on the left and beginning to pose some problems for the previously immaculate James Tavernier, improve markedly after the break. Tim Deasy palms away a Brayson effort from just inside his post and Turnbull has a goalbound shot blocked, but Blyth just can’t exert enough pressure on the Gateshead defence. With ten minutes left the visitors’ Nathan Fisher (signed for £3,000 after scoring 44 goals in just 49 games for Chester-le-Street Town last season) puts a volley wide and the Spartans fans begin to drift away. “We’re going to Wemberlee,” the Gateshead fans sing in the Plessey Road end. Not even Brayson - who strikes the bar inside the final minute - can do anything to alter that.

“We got a great result and we’re delighted to be in the semi-finals,” says victorious manager Ian Bogie. “In the second half we got a bit complacent and gave Blyth a bit of a head of steam, letting them in on a couple of occasions. Credit to them, they kept going right to the end.” “We gave a good account of ourselves,” Blyth boss Mick Tait tells The Sunday Sun, “but I’m very disappointed to have lost. We did our best in the end but we didn’t give ourselves a chance because of the goals we gave away.”


Admission: £10
Date: 26th February 2011

Three more facts about Blyth:

More than 100 players have gone on to Football League clubs from the Spartans, though none is more notorious than the Senegalese student Ali Dia, who made one brief Premier League appearance after someone purporting to be George Weah recommended him to then Southampton boss Graeme Souness. He later played for Gateshead. “His performance was almost comical,” recalled Matt Le Tissier. “He kind of took my place, but he didn't really have a position. He was just wondering everywhere. I don't think he realised what position he was supposed to be in.”

As well as 1978, the redoubtable cup fighters have reached the FA Cup first round proper 31 times, the second round on 14 occasions and the third round three times.

Their most famous current fan is England cricketer Graeme Swann, whose father Ray made his debut for Blyth CC as a 16-year-old, later playing for Northumberland and Northants.

Blyth links: Blog Spartans and Blyth Fans’ Forum.

Pre-match: Along with the Masons Arms, there are several pubs – Olivers, Oddfellows, The Steamboat and The Post Office - clustered together on Bridge Street, a 5-10 minute walk along Plessey Road towards the Quay and Ridley Park. Nearby, @Ivy does breakfast specials until 11.30am.



Getting there: Arriva’s X11 service from Newcastle stops outside the ground on Plessey Road. Day return tickets cost £4.80 from Haymarket Bus Station.

A version of this post also appeared on The Real FA Cup.