Final Score

(First published in Percy Main v Wark programme 30/04/11)

Arsene Wenger; don’t you just love him? With his cheeky smile, wry sense of humour, selective myopia and pathological paranoia whenever decisions go against him, you can understand exactly why Kenny Dalglish exchanged such pleasant banter with Arsene after Liverpool’s 102^nd minute penalty equaliser at the Emirates the other week. Wenger, having seen his side meekly surrender the Carling Cup to Birmingham and tumble out of the FA Cup and Champions’ League with barely a whimper has now seen his Arsenal side show a streak of cowardice a mile wide in failing to be credible contenders for the Premier League title. Yes Arsene, it’s tough at the top.

However, it’s also tough at the bottom. The Northern Alliance Division 2 may not be the bottom rung of the football ladder, but it is an exacting place to run a team. This season, the Alliance was proud to have 17 teams in each of the 3 divisions, strength of numbers that demonstrates the beautiful game at our level in this region to be in decent health, or so we supposed. Since the campaign kicked off last August, we have seen 4 teams go by the wayside. First to disappear were Chopwell Officials Club from Division 1. We played them twice last season, shading it 2-1 at home because of a keeper error and drawing a highly competitive encounter 2-2 at their place last April. Despite this positive showing, they called it a day less than six months later. Like so many teams at this level, the management did everything from marking the pitch to washing the kit and after a while, even the most indefatigable of willing horses will rear up and throw its increasingly burdensome cart. Their geographical isolation did not help either I’d guess.

However, it is the second division where club resignations have been the most common. Firstly Amble, facing an enormous backlog of matches, a shrinking pool of players and questions over the availability of their pitch at Red Row, threw in the towel in the midst of the November and December freeze, citing the clear knowledge that they’d struggle to fulfil their fixtures as a reason to resign. They were followed by Newcastle BT, who played at the superbly appointed Willie John Sams Centre in Dudley, but simply didn’t have enough bodies to keep going, before Cullercoats Custom Planet exited stage left. Their former manager Tony Fawcett decided to go to University as a mature student (fabulous English teacher he had mind…) and stepped aside, citing work pressures; sadly there was nobody willing or able to sort out the administration and practical requirements of the team, so after a protracted series of postponements, they too withdrew. The word is that Whitley Bay Town will also disappear at the end of the season, meaning only 13 will make it through to 2011/2011, at best. Who knows which other teams will find the slog of Saturday Monday Wednesday games for 5 weeks, as well as Sunday Tuesday and Thursday for their pub sides, on pitches that are rock hard, rutted and bare of grass, too much to cope with?

Yes, is this a new phenomenon? Checking back over the last decade, it seems not to be the case. While Ryton and the Coach Lane triumvirate of Benfield, Team Northumbria and West Allotment have moved up to the Northern League, with Alnwick seemingly on their way to join them, as well as Easington who have achieved promotion via a sideways move to the Wearside League, there are many other sides who have disappeared. Up in the borders, Spittal Rovers and Highfields became Berwick United, while Winlaton Hallgarth, Bedlington Terriers A, Walker Fosse, Haydon Bridge, Newbiggin CW, Cowgate Sports, Stobhill, Otterburn, The Wincomblee, The Birds Nest, Eppleton CW, Alnmouth, Felling Willows, Prudhoe RTH, Swarland, Daisy Hill, Wallsend, Penrith United, Lowick, Sport Benfield, Jesmond, Felling Fox, Blaydon and Westerhope, have all left the league. I’ve counted 24 teams there; accepting I’ve probably missed a few, as well as ignoring the mergers apart from the Berwick United one, it’s the case that with the exceptions of Walker Fosse and Wallsend, none of these teams were forced out of the Alliance. It is simply the day to day hard slog of running a team that gets people down and caused them to leave of their own volition.

However, there are apparently six or seven sides who’ve expressed an interest in joining the Alliance for 2011/2012, which just goes to show clubs may go, but the game and the Northern Alliance go on. Thankfully.