It wouldn’t
be strictly accurate to say that non-league football in the North East is
undergoing something of a renaissance, as the profile of the grassroots game in
this area has never been higher in recent memory. Admittedly if one were to go
back to the immediate post-WWII period, crowds at amateur games, especially in the
Northern League’s west Durham heartlands, were higher, but that had as much to
do with the social fabric, work patterns and the scarcity of private vehicle
ownership at the time, as it did with any presumed community spirit or devotion
to the amateur game.
The facts
are, since Whitley Bay claimed the FA Vase in 2009, their second triumph and
the first of a glorious hat-trick of consecutive Wembley wins, there has been a
compelling wave of positivity at a local level on both sides of the Tyne, that
has given impetus to non-league clubs including Dunston UTS and North Shields,
both of whom also won the Vase at Wembley, as well as Gateshead, who have
secured a regular top-half berth in the Conference (despite the bizarre
interregnum of the Malcolm Crosby administration at the start of 2015/2016). In
addition, moving slightly away from the banks of the Tyne, the NE Evo Stik
triumvirate of legendary cup fighters Blyth Spartans, and the reborn pairing of
Spennymoor United and Darlington 1883 are doing the region proud. Spennymoor
have adjusted well to life in the Evo Stik first division after their promotion
from the Northern League, while in the division above Spartans, on the back of
two recent trips to the FA Cup third round and Darlington 1883, still
groundsharing at Bishop Auckland but looking to go home, are battling it out at the summit. Indeed, on December 28th,
the Quakers took 3 points away from Croft Park after an impressive 1-0 win, in
front of an eye-catching crowd of 1,862.
The feelgood
factor continues to get spread around. For 2015/2016, the club basking in the
limelight is South Shields who won 20 successive games in cup and league,
allowing them to sit 9 points clear at the top of NL Division 2. Ostensibly,
this is not such an impressive achievement as those of the teams already
mentioned, considering the fairly modest level they currently operate at. Well,
think again; you need to consider their starting position. Chairman Geoff
Thompson’s takeover of the club at the end of last season effectively ensured
the short, medium and, hopefully, long-term future of South Tyneside’s senior
football club, whose affairs had been in a parlous state. Two years before
that, South Shields were made homeless when the owner of their Filtrona Park
ground, local double glazing magnate and former publicity-hungry chairman John
Rundle, who had once proclaimed his desire to see South Shields playing in the
Conference, or even the Football League, terminated the club’s lease and put
the place up for sale for a rumoured £350,000. With the chance of volunteers
and supporters raising such an imposing figure being utterly unrealistic, The
Mariners’ only hope for their continued existence was to strike a ground share
agreement.
A lack of viable
temporary options on their doorstep meant South Shields were forced to move to
Eden Lane, the former home of the sadly defunct NL side Peterlee Newtown. While
Eden Lane is a lovely and sadly underused ground, with a great pitch and good
facilities, the fact was South Shields were consequently forced into a round
trip of over 50 miles for each home game. Unsurprisingly, the team bumped along
in lower mid-table with crowds dwindling to a paltry average of 70, far below
the break-even figure. By necessity, the focus of the committee had shifted
away from the playing side to the pressing, vexed question of trying to find a
sustainable option for a ground back in their home town. This was easier said
than done; Harton and Westoe of the Wearside League have a lovely ground that
is blessed with floodlights, but doesn’t have any seats or enough covered
standing. The Gypsies’ Green athletic stadium, where the Great North Run ends
each September, was investigated, but the sheer amount of work required to
bring it up to the required standard in the time span available, made the
project unfeasible. The truth was Filtrona, despite being just over the border
into neighbouring Jarrow, was the only neighbourhood location fit for purpose. Having
repeatedly drawn a blank, the future looked bleak until Thompson rode into
town. With a minimum of publicity, the wealthy businessman purchased Filtrona
from Rundle, changing its name to Mariners Park and brought the club back home.
In the heady
days of summer 2015 after the homecoming was announced, Thompson made seemingly
giddy public proclamations about wanting South Shields to rival Gateshead.
While such hyperbole could have been adrenalin-suffused babbling from a man cut
down from the scaffold, there is an element of truth to his aim. South Shields have only been a Northern
League club for 20 years; the labyrinthine history of predecessor clubs bearing
the town’s name, tells of outfits that have operated at a considerably higher
level than present outfit find themselves. The first club of that name, formed
in 1889, were accepted into Football League Division 2 in 1919, before being
relegated to the Third Division (North) in
1928. Sadly the club folded two years later, quitting their Horsley Hill
ground and moving 8 miles west to Redheugh Park, where they reconvened as
Gateshead FC, playing in the Football League until 1960 and the Northern
Premier League until 1974, when they called it a day. Meanwhile, back in the
land of the Sand Dancers, a new South Shields FC emerged in 1936, playing at
the impressive Simonside Hall ground and plying their trade in the North
Eastern League and its successor, the Northern Premier League. Unfortunately,
Simonside Hall was sold for housing in 1974 and another move to Gateshead, this
time to the International Stadium, as Redheugh Park had disappeared under the
tarmac of the Gateshead Western By-pass, resulted in the destruction of the
second South Shields FC in the mid-70s.
Those who
declined to make the move inland constituted a third, and current, South
Shields FC, who spent the first 17 years of their existence looking for a
permanent home (sounds familiar eh?). In 1992, the Rundle family developed
Filtrona (now Mariners) Park and the club shot up through the Wearside League
and took the Northern League by storm. The sons and grandsons of those who had
seen clubs twice decamp to Gateshead had a team to be proud of and, despite
Rundle’s machinations (he threatened to liquidate the club in 2000 and again in
2006 on account relegation from Northern League divisions 1 to 2), South
Shields survived. However, the schism between Rundle and the rest of the
committee became unbridgeable in 2007, when he was removed from the board but
kept ownership of the ground, sowing the seed for the eventual move to
Peterlee. The remarkable thing is, the 2 year exile excepted, South Shields’ crowds
have always been among the highest in the Northern League, regardless of the
fortunes of the club on the field. The history may tend towards a fractured
rather than dislocated narrative, but South Shields is a big town with a lot of
football fans, split roughly 60:40 in favour of Newcastle rather than
Sunderland, but professional affiliations have always meant nothing when
support for The Mariners is required.
Whitley
Bay’s temporary success (a tragic lost opportunity for The Seahorses, whose
glamour ship has seemingly sailed) in attracting between 300 and 1,000 extra
bodies during the good times, depending on the fixture, comprised mainly of
pissed-off black and whiters, shows there is a ready-made audience out there of
disenchanted football fans, nauseated by decades of paying through the nose to
watch uninterested, millionaire mercenaries. These people are desperately
looking for an excuse to nail their colours to a non-league mast. This is where
South Shields (and to an extent their cross Tyne neighbours North Shields) have
benefitted, simply by being in the right place at the right time as contempt
for both Magpies and Black Cats has never been more entrenched.
The city of
Sunderland boasts 3 Northern League clubs; Washington who play in front of 50
or so at the virtually inaccessible Nissan Sports Complex (going there makes
you feel like the celebrity team in Porridge,
especially if you used to read the weather on Anglia), while the Ryhope pair of CA and CW are well run and pull
in over 100 each, but compete for crowds in grounds barely 200 yards apart. Not
one of the 3 has sought to mine the seam of increasing supporter contempt with
the professional game on their own doorstep. Alright so close on 100k deluded,
north eastern souls continue to throw good money after bad down the sewer of Premier
League fiscal excess each fortnight, but a higher than average proportion of
them are evidently sickened by it and look upon themselves more as viewers,
obliged by historical emotional ties to show up, rather than participants
worshipping in their sporting cathedral. For Newcastle fans, Whitley Bay, North
Shields and Heaton Stannington, in fact just about everyone other than my team
Benfield (average crowd 90; the lowest in the NL top flight), have benefitted
from an exponential rise in new followers, seeking to fall back in love with
the game. Finally, it seems Sunderland supporters have a place they can now
call home, among the ranks of the semi-professional game.
South
Shields currently average 670 for home games, with a seasonal high of 1,412 for
the 9-1 demolition of Tow Law Town. Hence, I think it is clear where
disenchanted red and whiters are now going for their football fix, which has
been further boosted by the signing of former Premier League star and Argentine
international, Julio Arca. As Harry Pearson observed, “not many Under 20 World
Cup captains have scored the winner away to Brandon.” In all seriousness, Arca
is a tremendously popular figure in the area, having settled in the north east
and even turned out for the Willow Pond in the Sunderland Sunday League after
his distinguished professional career ended. However, be content, they’re not
operating some kind of bargain basement FTM experience at the pitch by Bede
Metro. For those of a Magpie persuasion, their needs were catered for with the
reopening of the clubhouse being performed by Alan Shearer. Persistent rumours
of the imminent signing of a former NUFC player for The Mariners are rife on
the local football grapevine as well.
There is a
joyous vibe about the place, which is far more Soccer AM than the apparently
alternative AMF experience of being surrounded by shaven-headed, scowling
Grandfathers in Stone Island, on a tumbledown terrace in a former pit village
in the wilds of Wannee. South Shields is all about the fun of winning games
after years of mediocrity. In many ways it reminds me, albeit at a modest
level, of NUFC’s promotion under Keegan in 92-93, when the realisation hit the
supporters just how good the team could be. Things are definitely looking up for South
Shields; indeed, the only cloud on their horizon is the great big, black cumulonimbus
that has been disgorging countless oceans of rainwater for the past 3 months,
resulting in the almost complete devastation of the Northern League fixture
programme since the clocks went back. However, that sense of excited awe is tangible
in the South Tyneside air.
So great was
the interest in South Shields’ Boxing Day derby with Hebburn Town that the game
was made all-ticket; 1,400 advance sales showed the veracity of this decision,
though a Christmas Eve deluge put paid to that game. Even more disappointing, four
times their FA Vase tie with Morpeth Town was postponed. Despite the fact that
the incessant rain showed no sign of abating, anticipation for this game stood
at fever pitch as the winners were to host North Shields. In the end, it was
not the time for South Shields to start counting their chickens. Morpeth Town
are a fine side, near the top of NL Division 1 and have the best midfield
pairing (Keith Graydon and Ben Sayers) in the league, not to mention the
goalscoring feats of Michael Chilton and newly arrived centre back Chris Reid.
They were no pushovers; the game with South Shields eventually took place on
the 4G pitch at Consett’s Belle View Park. It was an astonishing game; 3-3
after 120 minutes, followed by a 10-9 shoot-out victory for Morpeth, who
defeated North Shields 2-0 at Ralph Gardener Park, despite being reduced to 10
men early on. It is fair to say, The Highwaymen are now one of the 3 favourites
for the Vase, alongside the renascent duo of Hereford and Salisbury.
However, the
concept of a cross Tyne tie that gripped the imagination, despite the fact that
the two clubs rarely, if ever, played each other in the past, having had
different histories, constituencies and trajectories, will become a reality, as
the slightly less prestigious Northern League Cup has thrown up a South v North
quarter final. This will inevitably be a midweek game and it will be intriguing
to see just what sort of crowd, in terms of numbers and demographic, are
attracted to it. After the Blyth v
Darlington game, The Masons Arms down
the road from Croft Park was attacked by some of the Quaker agro (do these
clowns not do irony?), resulting in broken windows, one hospitalisation and six
arrests of known “risk” followers of Darlo.
South
Shields, like Blyth, is certainly not a genteel town, but among their
football-supporting fraternity, there is absolutely no history or culture of violence.
Rather like Whitley Bay, when their crowds exploded following Ashley’s last
relegation campaign for Newcastle United, people came along for a good time,
even if not for a long time. I suspect South Shields’ augmented following are
hewn from the same stick of seaside rock; it’s all about fun not fighting,
selfies not Stone Island and peeve not posturing. The Mariners are already
enduring the weasel words of hard-hearted detractors, many from within the
ranks of Sunderland’s support amazingly enough. Of course it is borne of the
kind of jealousy that the uninformed do so well. From my perspective, as well
as that of all those who love the grassroots game, the reaction to the rebirth
of South Shields is considerably more positive; same as it was for Dunston UTS,
West Auckland, Whitley Bay and North Shields, we all wish South Shields all the
very best in their fascinating voyage of discovery. After all, it isn’t often you
hear anything positive about football in this area…
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