The Shining Path

 We've been locked down again haven't we? Well, this is the last football I got to see before the curfew -:

It had to happen, didn’t it? Just as we were feeling our way gingerly back into the glorious world of competitive grassroots football, Johnson, Hancock and all those fucktards admitted that, once again, they’d failed to confront the pandemic properly and predictably decided to punish the rest of us, by slinging the whole country into Tier 4. Of course, this isn’t a lockdown, a circuit breaker or any other minimally comprehensible lexical aberration, it’s just another necessary step on the journey to normality that maintains its default position just beyond the far side of the horizon, however quickly or slowly we approach it.

Of minimal concern to the population as a whole, especially the #NUFC Department of Twitter Sofology who were still drunk on indignant arrogance after Broooth’s Front Foot Mags phoned in a JPEG flag of surrender long before the Boxing Day bollocking at the Etihad kicked off, was the fact I was denied the chance to see live football of any standard on St Stephen’s Day. No Northern League games at all and no entry to elite games which, for the purpose of the tiers of repression, included Blyth Spartans 2 Gateshead 2. Imagine how 2,000 half-drunk punters in Croft Park, throwing oath edged talk back and forth across the Plessey Road DMX, would have created the perfect antithesis to the supposed true meaning of Christmas. Well, we can dream.

In contrast to the accepted practise of the last couple of dozen years at least, the Northern Alliance, instead of embracing its usual pragmatic 2-week shutdown occasioned by local authorities closing their facilities for the holidays, offered clubs the chance to play games on either or both of Monday 28 December and Saturday 2 January. The Massacre of the Innocents was the preferred option of 24 clubs, though frost and floodwaters reduced the actual number of fixtures played to 5. A degree of staggered kick-offs allowed double headers, with a packed gathering at Scotswood seeing the stalemate between Newcastle Blue Star and Burradon New Fordley, with fewer onlookers taking in FC United 0 Prudhoe 1 at the Langdale Centre, while Morpeth FC kept up their 100% win record with a 2-1 victory in a home game switched to Newbiggin.

My unaffected choice was for two games at the same venue on reliable 4G. Druids Park, latterly home to West Allotment Celtic who, as yet, haven’t debuted at their new facility at East Palmersville Pavilion, now the official home of Ponteland United Reserves, hosted the first team, as their muddy pitch at the old High School was frozen solid in a reversed fixture against Blyth Town, whose South Newsham home was similarly adamantine underfoot. The deciding factor for me was the promised appearance of my mate Graham, who I’ve not properly seen in a few years, accompanied by his younger son Tom, respectively a former Ponteland United youth coach and player, at the old Wheatsheaf Ground.  In the circumstances, paying £2 entry was a perfectly sensible requirement. I’d guess the game pulled in about 150 spectators, with a good smattering of actual Blyth fans, Ponteland types and a rake of groundhoppers.

In the end, the only people who may have regretted turning out were the two goalies, who failed to cover themselves in glory for the first four goals, with the Blyth lad fumbling two shots for tap ins and the Pont keeper twice setting up his wall like a crystal meth addled bricklayer. Running the line was the godlike genius of Keith Scoffham, whose raised eyebrows and wistful chuckle told how the septuagenarian superstar viewed the efforts of both custodians as the ball whistled past them. Blyth took the lead for the first time from the penalty spot on 65 minutes and held on for the win in a tough and tight tussle. It was a good game and great to see Graham again, though I fully understood why he and about 130 others pushed off for the warmth afforded by a seat at their own firesides, rather than hanging about for the undercard of Newcastle East End Reserves against Whitley Bay Sports Club A.

The onlookers had thinned out to a couple of dozen mates and hoppers, including me of course. Being a connoisseur of the Northern Alliance Third Division, I was delighted to be joined by Chemfica Amateurs’ senior netminder, Tyrone native Pete Holland; a good keeper, a sound man, a skilled raconteur and one of our lot. Best of all, he was good for a lift home afterwards. He, like me, reacted negatively to the arrival of a van full of the Peelers, though it turned out they were there for benign purposes, supporting one of their number who was featuring for the Coastal club. I’d not had the pleasure of seeing NEER this campaign, though I had seen Chemfica Amateurs dismantle WBSCA 7-2 at Churchill Playing Fields back in September.

The standard of play wasn’t expected to be particularly easy on the eye, and it wasn’t. Despite the 4G surface, the players seemed to believe they were ankle deep in clarts and struggled to move the ball effectively, though Whitley’s Mario Carangelo finished a smart move to put the visitors ahead. After that, NEER came back into the game and, as we thought, equalised via a scramble. Being honest, it wasn’t the best of games and I was more concerned with giving my attention to Pete’s magnificent recounting of Loyalist clown Jeffrey Donaldson’s vituperative reaction to the latest Spider-Man Playstation game that features a pixelated CGI of the Leinster flag, representing Ireland, on the outside of a mythical United Nations building. Donaldson, who’s a fucking lunatic incidentally, issued a strongly worded complaint to the game’s designers that he also opined in Hillsborough Castle, for no apparent reason anyone other than Arlene Forster and Edwin Poots could begin to comprehend, responded with characteristic banal fury; Northern Ireland's future within the UK won't be determined by what's in a Playstation game.

So engrossing was this story, we somehow missed NEER taking the lead. Consequently, the bizarre own goal that we thought put WBSCA ahead was actually an equaliser. Thus, when NEER were given a stonewall penalty in injury time, I found it baffling that NEER reacted wistfully and philosophically rather than with agonised howls when the spot kick was blazed over the bar and into the car park of the deserted Wheatsheaf hotel, that once gave this ground its former name but, in Covid-19 times, resembles a budget version of the Overlook. I suppose it is fitting, as the Northern Alliance has been the shining light of my year. Even if it took until I got home to find out the proper score… goodness only know when I'll be able to do that again.