Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

-          Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

There’s not many people in the world I can call a fat bastard, but one of them is Wayne Shaw. In case Andy Warhol’s prophecy is running slightly slow and we’re all only famous for 15 seconds now, I’ll remind you Wayne Shaw is the 46 year old former Sutton United reserve goalkeeper whose celebrity waxed in the run up to the FA Cup fifth round tie at Gander Green Lane, reached its zenith when the portly chap was pictured eating a pie in the dugout during the game and plummeted to earth once the cat came out the bag that this was some scam involving The Sun’s betting operation. Total proof that Wayne’s world had waned came on Tuesday afternoon with the news Shaw had agreed to a termination of his contract by Sutton because of the potential contravention of FA rules caused by the flutter Wayne’s pals had on him scoffing a meat and potato comestible on TV. All rather pathetic really; naturally Piers Morgan leaped to Shaw’s defence. After all, it’s not as if anyone had done anything really immoral, like hacking a murdered teenager’s phone for instance…

Sutton lost the tie 2-0 to Arsenal, not that I saw it as Newcastle’s eventually easy win over the £77m worth of talent assembled by Aston Villa provided far more compelling viewing; I wasn’t there of course, as I’m allergic to flags.  Nice to see the meritocratic principle working in The Championship though; with the best footballing side returning to the top of the division, as well as plunging the biggest net spenders into even deeper relegation trouble. It’s good that Rafa Benitez has put the whole sorry Townsend episode behind him and is concentrating on earning his dough, by coaxing points-harvesting performances at Wolves and Norwich, as well as this latest one. Admittedly Villa had the upper hand for the opening 40 minutes, but once Newcastle went a goal up, Brewse’s boys collapsed like a rickety deckchair in a coastal breeze; it could have been many more in the end. Of course, unless Bristol City are put soundly in their place at the weekend, this result won’t matter a hill of beans. It’s crucial we go into the testing away triptych at Brighton, Huddersfield and Reading in fine fettle. Get the job done in the next 4 games and a season of anxiously striving to avoid relegation from the top flight is within reach…

To return to Sutton United; they may have gained a considerable amount of prize money for their cup heroics, all well-deserved, but in my eyes they’ve gained so much more in terms of self-respect and dignity by getting rid of Shaw. Of course he’s an obese bloke in his late 40s who wants to capitalise on his seemingly bankable notoriety and I’d imagine he’ll be a Soccer AM fixture for a season or two until he drifts off into obscurity again, but any footballer or football fan giving The Sun their attention needs a severe talking to.  Every banknote News International peel from their greasy wad of avaricious amorality is stained with the blood of the 96 innocents who died at Hillsborough; that will never change, so we must neither forgive nor forget.

Do not be mistaken; Sutton United aren’t a struggling gaggle of part-time misfits. In reality they’re a successful club from the affluent Surrey stockbroker exurbs. They are doing well in the National League and reaping the rewards of the astute business decision to lay a 4G pitch, which provides a constant source of revenue all year round.  Let’s be honest; they don’t need Rupert Murdoch’s minions hanging round the place. We should remember Sutton for the right reasons; Coventry in 89 and Leeds in round 4 this year. The only time I’ve ever seen them was when they pulverised Gateshead 9-0 in the late 80s; curiously, they went down that year while Gateshead stayed up…

Interestingly, the 4,308 who took in Wrexham v Aldershot in the National League were part of the only non-league crowd higher than the 3,161 who broke the ground record at Mariners Park as South Shields blasted Newport Pagnell Town 6-1 in the FA Vase quarter final on Saturday just gone. If ever there was evidence of a team on the up, it is South Shields, whose chairman and benefactor Geoff Thompson has ploughed a small fortune into his hometown club. Almost certainly, they will be promoted from the Northern League, though possibly not as champions as North Shields are still winning every game in sight to keep ahead at the top of the table. The Mariners do have games in hand of course, including one against Benfield on Wednesday night, which was moved back from Saturday on account of the Vase tie. I wonder if our modest ground record of 927, set against York in the FA Cup in 2006, will be beaten. I sincerely hope so, as a payday like that could keep Benfield in operation next season by itself.

As we didn’t have a game on Saturday, I took myself off to see Blyth Town hosting Alnwick in Northern League Division 2. Partly this was because it was a venue that had eluded me, since it was a playing field in the Northern Alliance and partly because with Michael Riley, Jack Errington, Gary Day and Dean Walker at South Newsham, it was almost like watching Benfield old boys.  In the event, Blyth won a less than compelling game 3-1, in front of about 120 people I’d estimate. It’s a neat and tidy set up, with room for expansion if needed. They’ll almost certainly break their attendance record against Blyth Spartans tomorrow night in the semi-final of the Northumberland Senior Cup. I know that at first, they were contemplating sticking the prices up to £8 entry for that game, on the somewhat specious grounds that it’s a tenner to get in to see Spartans, but the suggestion created a social media shit storm, so they may have rowed back on it to avoid bad publicity. I’m not sure either way. Their website and Twitter account are resolutely unhelpful on this matter.

If they have put the prices up, I can understand why, but it is a bit of a shady thing to do. Rather like South Shields not handing their abandoned Vase tie to Morpeth, I’d want my club to do the right thing if that we were the ones in that situation. Then again, the news from Percy Main that I mentioned last week and the noises coming out from Hebburn Town prove that there isn’t an inexhaustible fund of cash, time or goodwill to share around, so you can’t really condemn a club for making hay while the sun shines. Can you? On a positive note, I was delighted to see 283 there for Hebburn v Team Northumbria I must say. Let’s hope plenty of them stick around to help the Hornets out. With Norton and Stockton Ancients already gone, I would hate to think that the Northern League would be weakened by the loss of another club.

Money; it mightn’t make you happy or morally sound, but it certainly keeps non-league teams in business. Cash from almost anywhere, unlike a pie in the dugout, is not to be scoffed at…

Every night before I rest my head

See those dollar bills go swirling 'round my bed

I know they're stolen, but I don't feel bad

I take that money; buy you things you never had

-          Patti Smith, 1975

Percy Maintenance

Benfield are my team. I must admit I’ve not followed the Walkergate Brazilians from birth, mainly because we weren’t formed until 1988. In fact I first saw us in action at home to Newcastle Reserves in the NFA Senior Cup in February 1995; we lost 3-0 and I didn’t set foot in Sam Smith’s Park for another 8 years, until we joined the Northern League. However, the 4-1 win over Thornaby on 27^th September 2003 made an indelible impression on me and I was hooked on The Lions from then on. I love the club and I’m proud to say I am the programme editor, as I intend to follow Benfield for the rest of my life. On Saturday 11^th February 2017, on a filthy afternoon, I saw us go 2-0 up away to Bishop Auckland, concede 4 in 8 minutes, then grab a point with an outrageous fluke and an unfortunate own goal. It was a magical afternoon; Newcastle’s subsequent 1-0 win away to Wolves later on was a good result, but it didn’t have me punching the air the way the Benfield game did.

If you’re in any way romantically inclined, or believe in sport as a force for good in the community, you really should be following a non-league side. We all know the reasons why, but suffice to say the intangible emotional rewards you feel once a club gets under your skin make it all worthwhile. Certainly nothing in the sporting arena will ever compare to the joy I felt on Tuesday 5^th May 2009, when Stephen Young’s 86^th minute winner in the last ever game at Penrith’s old Southend Road ground put us top of the table for the first time that season as we clinched the Northern League title.  Mind I didn’t go for a pint to celebrate as Penrith used to go back to the local Conservative Club; you know what I’m saying, right? The double was achieved 10 days later on the ground of our old rivals West Allotment Celtic, when keeper Andy Grainger produced the finest performance I’ve ever seen by a Northern League keeper, to foil Penrith as we ran out 2-0 winners on another amazing night.

Somewhat ironically, that final was the last I saw of Benfield on a regular basis for around 4 years, though my plan had been somewhat different. In summer 2009, after Newcastle were relegated, my dad died of cancer the day after Bobby Robson. My son was then a devoted egg chaser, whose games would now be on Saturday afternoons rather than Sunday mornings. Consequently, the 3 season tickets I had maintained at SJP all seemed somewhat superfluous, so I decided not to renew. I haven’t had one since and I never will again, though I still go to the odd game (4 cup ties and 3 league games in 2016/2017 at the time of writing). The idea had been to follow Benfield home and away, but then fate intervened.

As well as Benfield, I’d developed a soft spot for Percy Main Amateurs of the Northern Alliance. As they played, effectively, 3 divisions down from Benfield, there was little if any chance of divided loyalties, so when Benfield were away somewhere inaccessible, I used to take myself down to Purvis Park. The first time I’d been to see Percy Main was in May 2005; Benfield’s season had ended the week before and Newcastle weren’t playing until the Sunday, so a little bit of groundhopping was in order. Living in High Heaton, one of the closest teams to my house was Heaton Stannington. I’ve never really supported them, though I’d been to Grounsell Park to see them a few times; this was my first away trip. On a pleasant, sunny afternoon, they won 3-2 in a decent game, played in a relaxed, end of season way. The next encounter between the two teams was very different in every imaginable way.

On Saturday 11^th February, while Benfield were losing 2-1 away to Squires Gate in the FA Vase and Newcastle were winning 2-1 at Aston Villa, there was little in the shape of live, local football to keep me entertained. In those, heady pre-internet days, fixtures below Northern League level were almost impossible to source, so it was only walking past Grounsell Park and seeing the corner flags in place that told me there was a game on. The visitors? Percy Main. The attendance? About a couple of dozen. The score? 0-0.

However, that doesn’t tell the full story; on 86 minutes Percy Main’s legendary hard man Alan Ryder became involved in a pitch side altercation that soon developed into the kind of scrapping you’d normally see in a taxi rank on Christmas Eve at chucking out time. When the 21 man brawl had been underway for the best part of quarter of an hour, as the sound of fist on face mingled in the frozen air with oath-edged talk and grunts of anger and endeavour, the referee abandoned the game. Being a lifelong coward and pacifist, I watched in disbelief as what has become known as the Battle of Grounsell Park unfolded; utterly unbelievable. A bloke near me looked on in even more wide-eyed astonishment, shaking his head in horror at the raging torment in front of us. He was Norman de Bruin; one of the finest men I’ve met in my life, not to mention the long-time secretary of Percy Main Amateurs FC and the bloke who got me involved with the Villagers.

When I became chair of the Tyneside Amateur League in 2014, I maintain it is because fixture secretary Paul Mosley couldn’t think of anyone else who’d do the job. Similarly, when I was asked to become Assistant Secretary at Percy Main in summer 2009, I have no doubt it was because I was stood around doing nowt, rather than because of my fantastic administrative and interpersonal skills.  The reason I took on the job was because it was nice to be asked, though Benfield vice Chair Dave Robson immediately tried to poach me as soon as he’d heard, but I refused as I’d given Percy Main my word. It is a decision I’m glad I made, but I’m delighted that I could finally come home to Benfield.

I had 4 seasons with Percy Main Amateurs which, on the whole, I fully enjoyed. Almost immediately I learned that to cope as a non-league club volunteer, you need to develop a thick skin and never expect any thanks for what you do. You have to be prepared to muck in and do your best; sometimes that’s good enough, but sometimes it isn’t. As time went on, I realised my skillset, such as it is, was not what was required by the Villagers.  During my first season, 2009/2010, a revitalised Percy Main team won promotion to the Alliance top division, finishing just behind champions Rutherford, lost in the final of the Northumberland FA Minor Cup to Morpeth Sporting Club and, in the last game of the season on 28^th May, won the Combination Cup. All of those events are included in a book I wrote about Percy Main, Village Voice, which I had vainly hoped would raise enough funds to help pay for the redevelopment of the pavilion at Purvis Park. Sadly, I barely broke even and still have about 200 copies of Village Voice left in the spare bedroom. Drop me an email if you’d like a copy, free, gratis and for nowt.

Being selfish, I am delighted that I have had a book published, though I do recognise that the kudos associated with this event is greater for me than for Percy Main Amateurs.  As my time with the Villagers drew on, there was an unspoken realisation on both my part and the rest of the committee, that I wasn’t really much help or much use. Percy Main didn’t need a wordsmith or scribe and, though I was happy to write the programme and do the match reports, it became clear my activities were of minimal relevance to the club in the grand scheme of things. I was, frankly, more of a hindrance than a help and when I moved on, to take on the role of Benfield programme editor, it was of benefit to all 3 parties involved.  What PMA needed was either a skilled craftsman, preferably a roofer, tiler or electrician, to keep the ground in decent nick, or a proper administrator, who understood the labyrinthine rules relating to applications for funding from outside agencies. They still do. If such a person is you, please read on.

You see, there is an essential difference between Northern League clubs and almost all of the Alliance sides; in the Northern League, there are established clubs with grounds, some historic, some pristine new, all with seats and covered sheds, with floodlights, clubhouses and supporters. Not only that; many clubs have substantial numbers of volunteers on their committee, who do an array of tasks, from the practical to the prosaic. Everyone has their part to play and does it in a way that plays to their skills. When you’re getting a few hundred through the gate, you need a social media contact and press officer. In the Alliance it is different; with a few notable exceptions, the participants are sides and teams not clubs. By this I mean that often a team will hire a pitch and name themselves after sponsors, or the first team will be the product of a junior side that has grown up; all well and good in both instances, but there isn’t a great deal of history there. Rutherford may well be the oldest club in the north east, but they are also the pivotal point in a network of youth and community sides, all of whom are maintained by a combination of subscriptions and grants. Frankly, it’s more about participants than spectators at this level, as almost all of those volunteering have had some family or other long term connection with the club.

Without being controversial, I look at the Alliance and see 3 clubs that stand out from the rest, because they have their own, wonderful, grounds and exist purely as  first XI football teams, not the apex of a community development project. The three clubs are; Seaton Delaval Amateurs, Wallington and Percy Main Amateurs. You could do a lot worse than taking in games at Wheatridge, Oakford or Purvis Parks; three of the most atmospheric, scenic and historic grounds in our region.  Hopefully, they’ll all still be in use this time next year, but the signs aren’t good.

On Saturday 11^th February, 11 years to the day since the Battle of Grounsell Park, Percy Main’s home game against Rutherford was called off because of a waterlogged pitch. Later that evening, without warning, the club posted an alarming statement on their website warning that almost 100 years of tradition and memories, having been formed in 1919, could be consigned to the dustbin of history. If new blood wasn’t forthcoming to help behind the scenes, either as a match day volunteer, or as the kind of bureaucratic whiz kid who can open the lid of the money pot that’s so closely guarded by the FA and other outside funding agencies, then the club would cease to exist at the end of the current campaign. See for yourself; http://www.pitchero.com/clubs/percymainamateursfc/news/percy-main-amateurs-fc-face-possible-imminent-clos-1753081.html

This is quite alarming as Percy Main are a club utterly without enemies; everyone has a good word to say about the Villagers. However, it is action that is needed. The irony being that the club isn’t skint; it could continue along in the current fashion for a while yet, but to secure the long-term future of the club, the ground and specifically the pavilion, needs a major injection of cash to take it to the next level. The club have arranged an open meeting in the clubhouse on Sunday 26^th February at 6.00pm and all interested parties are asked to attend. Encouragingly, the first few days have seen a flood of offers of help, some more practical than others. If you have a practical skill or a practical mind-set, please consider giving a bit of your time over to one of the best football clubs in our area; you won’t regret it and your efforts will be appreciated, just don’t expect to have your ego massaged and prepare yourself for some incredibly bad language on a regular basis.

Rewriting History

Issue #15 of the uniformly excellent The Football Pink is out now; I urge you to buy it, not just because I'm in it either. However, this is my piece, inspired by a review copy of the loathsome Norman Bettison's selective memoir Hillsborough Untold that seeks to paint his as an injured innocent. He isn't -:

History, as the cliché goes, is written by the winners. While such a statement may be more of a simple lie than the complicated truth, it is a good starting point for debate. Grammatically it is interesting to note that while “truth” is an uncountable mass noun, “lies” are countable, common nouns; leading to the suggestion that, ontologically at least, humans recognise honestly to be more prevalent than deceit.

And yet, what do we understand of the troublesome, persistent and pervasive presence of folk-devil mythologies in the narrative of our existence? As football fans, we united to condemn and defeat the evil establishment lie that football fans were to blame for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Against all the odds, the massed forces of the mainstream media, the Government and several police forces were challenged and ideologically defeated; meaning the gross distortions and mendacious falsehoods they sought to proselytise lost all credibility outside the nether world of ranting right wing stuffed shirts. The argument had been won and truth established among football fans and throughout the sections of society, who still subscribed, however tangentially, to the last vestiges of the post-war social democratic consensus, long before the law caught up with this reality. Indeed, justice was not served, in terms of official recognition, until the publication of the Hillsborough Inquest report in April 2016, which concluded what had long been recognised; the 96 who died had been unlawfully killed.

While the denials, delays and denigrations that left the families of those who suffered wholly innocent, preventable and tragic deaths that April afternoon in 1989 waiting for almost 3 decades to be vindicated, will serve as an indelible stain on the soul of the unfeeling and self-aggrandising establishment, full justice will not be served until those individuals responsible for the disaster itself and the subsequent cover-up are brought to book. At the time of writing, the Crown Prosecution Service is still considering the possibility of criminal proceedings against numerous former high-ranking police officers who served in the South Yorkshire constabulary. Without seeking to influence the outcome of due process, I hope the conclusion is that prosecutions are in the public interest. Only then will we finally have justice for the 96 and, hopefully, the city of Liverpool will be able to rest easy at last.

Perhaps one of the most surprising of the prevalent false mythologies about Liverpool is the seemingly unchallenged assertion that it has historically been a citadel of radical, Socialist politics. Such an erroneous narrative permeates social commentary about the city, from academic analysis of the causes of the Toxteth riots to the dignified diligence of the Hillsborough campaigners; the assumption is that Liverpool’s collective DNA is deepest red, politically at least. Such a fantasy has been relentlessly propagated and parroted as a justification for the self-destructive Leninist posturing by the wholly discredited Militant cult that still clings to the city’s body politic in the shape of the miniscule Socialist Party / TUSC axis, whose confrontational idiocy brought the city to its knees in the mid-80s.  

The truth, surprising as it may seem, is that Merseyside was an unyielding, steadfast bastion of Conservative and Unionist ideology well into the 1950s. “We must understand that Liverpool is rotten,” remarked Ramsey McDonald when asked to explain the failure of the Labour Party to gain any traction on the banks of the Mersey. The local Tories, bulked out by the presence of the (scarcely credible in the current era) Liverpool Protestant Party, enjoyed decades of municipal control that were marked by cautious social conservatism and ruthless, demagogic and unapologetically sectarian policies in housing and education; all designed to avoid the scourge of “Rome on the Rates” and to reduce the Catholic population to the status of second class citizens. The existence of a huge Irish population in Liverpool is not to be denied, but what is often forgotten is that as many were from the Loyalist tradition, including a sizeable minority of displaced Dublin and Wicklow based supporters of the Crown who left the newly established Irish Free State after 1922, as were from the poverty stricken Catholic sector. Indeed, it took the combined efforts of the Luftwaffe’s bombs and the 1945 Labour Government’s social housing policies, to clear the teeming dockside slums that bred and nurtured the hostility and conflict which lit the July 11^th Bootle bonfires for almost a century.  Even then, in the midst of a notable shift away from authoritarian dogmatism on a city-wide basis, the political beneficiaries were the Liverpool Liberal Party, who controlled the city until the 1970s, when Derek Hatton and the rest of the Tuebrook Trots turned up to bankrupt the place.

If we are still searching for an English city to laud for immaculate left-wing credentials, then Sheffield must be in with a shout as the focal point of the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire. This phrase, coined in the early 80s, was instantly understood and worn as a badge of honour by those in the local Labour Party. Ironically, it had been invented by the sole Tory MP in the whole area; Irvine Patnick, who was on the extreme right wing of the Conservative Party. He was against sanctions on apartheid South Africa, voted to reintroduce the death penalty, strongly supported Section 28 and, in a similar vein, opposed reducing the age of consent for gays. All fairly predictable touchstones of populist Telegraph Toryism, except that his cartoon reactionary beliefs take on an altogether darker hue when it is a matter of public record that Patnick was one of the most vocal sources for The Sun's shameful coverage of Hillsborough.  For over 20 years Patnick avoided censure for his appalling falsehoods, until September 2012, when the publication of the report by the independent panel investigating Hillsborough confirmed that "the source for these despicable untruths was a Sheffield news agency reporting conversations with South Yorkshire Police and Irvine Patnick, the then MP for Sheffield Hallam.” The Daily Express, predictably, had also carried the story, under the headline Police Accuse Drunken Fans and disseminated Patnick's lies, saying he had told Margaret Thatcher, whilst escorting her on a tour of the grounds after the tragedy, of the "mayhem caused by drunks" and that policemen had told him that they were "hampered, harassed, punched and kicked". Lies; all lies…

Following the publication of the report, Patnick was heavily criticised by the families of the dead, with the Hillsborough Justice Campaign stating that "It needs to be remembered that this man vilified Liverpool and was part of a lying machine which shamefully damaged the reputation of those fans.” In a statement issued through the Conservative Party on 13 September 2012, Patnick accepted "responsibility for passing such information on without asking further questions. So, many years after this tragic event, I am deeply and sincerely sorry for the part I played in adding to the pain and suffering of the victims' families.” He died on 30 December 2012, unmourned by all who knew him.

I mention Patnick in such detail, as his presence is surprisingly absent from former Chief Constable of both South Yorkshire and Merseyside, Norman Bettison’s recently published memoir, Hillsborough Untold. With the Crown Prosecution Service taking particular interest in the police’s conduct from April 15^th 1989 onwards, Bettison is clearly feeling the heat and has belatedly sought to put forward his version of events. Unmistakeably, this scurrilous rag-bag of rumours, half-truths and lies serves not as an apology for his role in events, but a deliberate and relentless attempt at downplaying his involvement in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Presumably, the 353 pages of cant, drivel and mealy-mouthed self-justification will form the basis of most of what Bettison will repeat under caution at a police station soon.

While trying to save his own neck is despicable enough, Bettison really puts in the hard yards by attempting to have his humble pie and eat it. He takes great pains to remind us he never joined the Freemasons, loved his time on Merseyside and attended Hillsborough in a personal capacity as a Liverpool supporter, while relentlessly failing to discredit any notion of the existence of a concerted black-ops policy post-Hillsborough, despite his best efforts. Though he issues repeated denials of the presence any blood on his hands, Bettison comes across as a shifty, vain, megalomaniac, obsessed with self-preservation and seemingly hell-bent on passing the buck to the hapless, incompetent match day supervisor David Duckinfield; the only policeman to have admitted his complicity in the deaths of 96 innocent people.

Meanwhile Bettison, with a stunning lack of empathy and insight, affects a pouting, childish sulk over his forced resignation from the position of Chief Constable of South Yorkshire. He claims that this event, triggered by Bettison’s excoriation in the 2012 Independent Review Panel’s findings, was caused by an orchestrated social media campaign against him that he likens to the Salem Witch Trials. The biter bit or what? It’s enough to make you sick.

The contempt felt by all who value democracy, freedom of speech and civil liberties for South Yorkshire police cannot be calculated. Not only is there the final denouement of the force’s conduct post Hillsborough to be considered, if we rewind the clock 5 years before Hillsborough to June 1984, the looming spectre of the Battle of Orgreave must also be investigated.  Regardless of the Tory government’s Pontius Pilate stance, combined with a “let bygones be bygones” message, the strength of public opinion will undoubtedly see a full public inquiry into the conduct of SYP on that boiling hot midsummer Monday.  The indisputable truth is that those of us who lived through the 80s intuitively knew we were in the midst of a repressive Police State; Norman Bettison’s book confirms this, as he condemns himself in his own weasel, ghostwritten words. Justice, in full, must come.