Just Not Cricket

On a wet, miserable night at the start of August, I visited Chester le Street United for their home game with Easington Colliery Welfare...

Well, the new season is underway and this dedicated groundhopper must face up to the challenges that lie ahead in the local game. The annual round of painting the Sistine Chapel Ceiling that is re-completing the Northern Alliance will require three ticks to finish the job in hand. It was to have been 4, but Alnwick Town Juniors and their Greenfield 4G school pitch, withdrew before a ball was kicked, as did Ponteland Reserves (surprisingly) and the semi-mythical i2i Soccer Academy. Hence, the three new venues are all new bottom division sides: Prudhoe YC Senior Reserves (Eastwood Fields), Walkergate (Fossway Recreation Ground) and Westerhope United (Lemington Football Centre). I’ll get to all of them soonish, and also to Hazelrigg when they go back home.

Meanwhile, the Northern League also has 3 new venues for me to visit. At the back end of September, Boro Rangers move into their purpose built Phoenix Park ground. I’m not a fan of Middlesbrough as a place, but Boro Rangers are almost certainly a Stockton Town from south of the Tees, heading straight through the league on an upward trajectory, so I need to get myself off there as a matter of urgency. Same goes for Hartlepool FC’s Grayfield Enclosure, though the current lack of floodlights means it can only be a Saturday visit, after the cricket season is over and I’ve done another Scottish trip on September 23^rd to either Bonnyrigg Rose or Kelty Hearts. The third club on the list were not newcomers Yarm and Eaglescliffe, who actually share with Billingham Town, but the sophomore soccer scholars of Chester le Street United. Formed in 2020 as a team for the Park View Academy football trainees, they blasted through the Wearside League and arrived in the Northern League last season. Unfortunately, their ground by the Riverside didn’t pass muster, because of a lack of lights. This made it necessary for them to share with Sunderland West End at the frankly depressing Keelmans Way complex in Pennywell. Anything would be better than that sterile 4G cage and the Riverside is marginally that, but no more.

I took in their second game of the season on August 2^nd, when they followed up an opening day 3-1 loss at home to Boldon CA with a 3-0 defeat to an uncompromising Easington Colliery Welfare. It was a horrible day, but the free bus ticket Go North East provided me with to apologise for the non-appearance of the 07.50 307 last Sunday, acted as motivation for me to head through to CLS on the X21. To reach the ground, I took a familiar walk down Ropery Lane, past Chester le Street cricket club to reach the home of Durham cricket. Through the car park and off right to the indoor nets where I’ve watched TCC several times in the northern finals of the national indoor 6-a-side competition, then through a turnstile and into the very functional ground. A pitch side rail on the far side of a 4-lane running track or a couple of shallow steps in front of the building offer the most obvious viewing places, though a closer look shows the existence of a 50-seat slab of concrete next to one of the impossibly bright floodlight columns behind the goal. Having weighed up the situation, I opt to head back indoors and watch from the café balcony, out of the elements and warming my hands with a decent cup of coffee.

There’s a DJ with a sense of irony, playing Walking on Sunshine at deafening volume, which is more entertaining than the match day magazine, as we must call them, that costs £2 and is possibly the worst of its kind I’ve ever seen. A contender for the worst strip of all time is Easington’s away kit of pink and white stripes, pink shorts and pink socks, while CLS United are in a mustard yellow affair, redolent of the Mackems’ 1998 number. Quite amazingly, former Blyth manager and Hartlepool legend Michael Nelson turns out for the home team as he is now a football tutor at Park View and looks like Franz Beckenbauer at this level, even at rising 43. In a sterile first half, his long cross field passes are the only thing worth watching. Thankfully, the second half improves, partly because the home side fold like a badly constructed deck chair. Easington bang in 3 quality long range strikes, that leave the majority of the 163 crowd disappointed by another defeat.

A quick walk back to the Market Place sees me safely on the 21.44 21, then the 22.35 307 and I’m in the house, slightly damp, quite cold and very tired, just past 11. Another one off the list sends me to sleep with a sense of achievement.