The Lord of the Flies

Apparently, down in The Smoke there's a new phenomenon; the non-league hipster. Most often seen by the appearance of Ultras at Clapton and Dulwich Hamlet, they're bringing pointy shoes and beards into the grassroots game. Next Saturday sees North Shields take on Phoenix Sports in the last 16 of the FA Vase. Shields have a squad of Ultras, but I think they're slightly at variance from the ones at Champion Hill and the Spotted Dog, for cultural and economic reasons, as I tried to explain in this piece from issue 7 of "The Football Pink" -:

I’ve got this mate down in the Smoke, well more of an acquaintance really; Irish bloke by the name of Sean. He’s into left wing politics and a community activist, working as a research fellow in the Department of International Relations at Queen Mary College out on the Mile End Road.  Despite completing his doctorate in the quiet of Galway, Sean quickly made himself at home in the intense East End a decade or so back. He’s no intentions of ever moving back, having accumulated the accoutrements of modern life in the shape of a good job, a significant other, an affordable mortgage, not to mention a grand social life boasting a dazzling array of craft ale bars, obscure bands and DJs, a plethora of restaurants and even a football team to support. Sean will admit to having grown up with more of an interest in My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive than sport, though his dad and brothers are still part of the County Wicklow branch of the Arsenal Supporters Club; he’s been to the Gunners with them in the past, but Leyton Orient are his team, or at least that’s how it stands at the present.

Less than 15 minutes’ walk from Sean’s house is the fabulously named Old Spotted Dog Ground, which has been the home of Essex Senior League outfit Clapton FC since 1888. Attending at the prompting of friends, colleague and comrades, and having seen the Ton win consecutive home games over Sawbridgeworth Town and Hullbridge Sports, Sean has fallen in love with the amateur game, to the extent that his season ticket at Brisbane Road is under threat. However, it’s not so much the football as the ambience that has turned his head, as Clapton along with their south London comrades Dulwich Hamlet, about who Martin Cloake wrote so eloquently in The Football Pink, are at the forefront of a loose amalgam of dilettante hipsters attending grassroots games in the capital, whose motto is utterly irreproachable:  Football for all. Good times, good songs and Polish lager. Always antifascist. Watching Clapton and, to a lesser extent Dulwich Hamlet, is to involve yourself in a rapidly-evolving fan culture, that is the UK prototype of the FC Sankt Pauli supporter model that only the estimable FC United of Manchester have come anywhere near emulating in the past. Or that’s how Sean explains it. I have to say that I am massively excited to hear about these developments in London and have put them, along with a trip to Broadhurst Park in Moston when it finally opens, at the top of my agenda for future fraternal visits.

If you expect me, a north east non-league devotee, with more than quarter of a century’s service on the wind-ravaged terraces of the Northern League and the mud-encrusted fronds of the Northern Alliance, to look down my nose at the pointy-shoed, bearded, bourgeois arrivistes at Clapton, then you’re wrong. From my years of being involved with clubs like Percy Main Amateurs and Newcastle Benfield, and the Tyneside Amateur League at an administrative level, I know that pragmatism not purity will always win the day; clubs don’t care who wanders up to the turnstile, they just desperately need money to help keep them afloat, despite any potential drawbacks that may accompany an exponential growth in support. While I have only a vague inkling of what is taking place at Clapton and Dulwich, it is my belief that the social conditions and the culture surrounding non-league football in the north east make it unlikely that such phenomena will be repeated in my neck of the woods. Demographics play their part as well; there aren’t huge numbers of post-modern ironists educated to higher degree level beating a path to the door of the Northern League, though there are always the odd gang of thirsty nutters on the lookout for a new hobby.

Take for instance Ashington; in 1994 the club was struggling at the foot of Northern League Division 2 and were on the verge of closure. A desperate call for support among the local community saw crowds, boosted by many who were either locked out of Keegan era St James’ Park or inspired by the rise in popularity of the game in general; grow from less than 20 to almost 200. Cups were won and promotion achieved, while the bandwagon rolled ominously onwards, downhill without any brakes, when the club decided to move from their historic, former Football League ground Portland Park, to a purpose built flat pack amenity on the edge of town. Their support, revelling in ostentatious drunkenness, often attired in face-paint, curly nylon wigs, foam hands and replica strips, weren’t bad lads, but they often behaved badly; boorishness during the presentation when they lost a League Cup final in 2004 and disorder at the last night at Portland Park in 2008 (crowd 1,945) were particularly unpleasant incidents. However, circumstances dictated the move from Portland Park was their last hurrah; the new, antiseptic Hirst Welfare ground saw a haemorrhaging of support. Currently they draw crowds of 150 or so, with their away support’s conduct similar to almost every other team in the league; a couple of car loads of shivering middle aged blokes in winter coats, drinking Bovril and taking the mickey out of proceedings. The daft lads and lasses of a decade back are nowhere to be seen.

To a large extent, the evolution of a club’s support at a non-league level can be as much to do with chance as anything else; witness how mid-table Northern League Division 2 side Heaton Stannington, alongside the usual collection of locals and former players, have about a dozen newly-converted, zealous fans, none of whom will see their 50^th birthday again, who knew each other previously through the informal networks of the 1977-influenced, anarcho-punk revivalist scene. Their appreciation of bands from The Addicts to Zoundz gives a sense of cohesion and shared purpose vital for maintaining both enthusiasm and motivation when things aren’t going too well on the pitch, not to mention a club programme that includes adverts for gigs and records that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Sniffin’ Glue. While The Stan may not have huge potential for supporter growth, two other clubs, Marske United and North Shields, have seen an astonishing growth in their fan base over the past season or two, which while ostensibly being a cause for celebration, is also a potential reason for alarm.

The biggest Northern League club on Tyneside should be Whitley Bay on account of: 4 FA Vase wins, including 3 in a row from 2009, a superb ground at Hillheads, a squad of talented players and two other crucial factors; the club is located in the most affluent part of North Tyneside and the anti-Ashley sentiment among many Newcastle fans that saw average crowds pushing 500 only a few years back. However, the Bay failed to harness this potential and it seems the ship of opportunity has sailed. Their team languishes in lower mid-table, two managers have left, the support is in open revolt over the gloomy hanging over the club and this season has seen dreadful home defeats; 0-5 to Shildon, 0-7 to Marske and 2-4 (0-4 at half time) to North Shields. For the latter game, the crowd was 859, of which perhaps 500 were visiting fans, many of whom had earlier “taken over” the nearby Foxhunters pub, as if this was a professional fixture, which was reinforced by the minor pitch invasion after the opening goal, the incessant chanting and the massive array of flags. Despite the second half recovery, this game (rather than the Marske massacre) was the most shameful of all defeats for the Bay and marked a seismic shift in the balance of non-league power north of the Tyne. Consequently, Shields versus Marske on January 3^rd was shaping up to be a beguiling encounter, on and off the pitch.

Marske United come from the relatively isolated border of Teesside and North Yorkshire, where Middlesbrough are the nearest league team whose mundane travails (prior to Karanka’s arrival) saw apathy rule. As a result, Mount Pleasant has seen the organic growth of the Chicken Run Ultras, a gang of teenage lads whose idea of fun is to attend Northern League games and sing Soccer Am style ditties in support of their team. Against my side, Benfield, about 30 of them made the trip, where they sang a few songs and lustily celebrated a late equaliser in a 3-3, but didn’t upset anyone. When North Shields came to Benfield, there were 300 of them and they marched up from The Railway in Walkergate like something from Green Street.  At Whitley Bay, the Saturday before Christmas, 60 Marske lads congregated under the tin shed and went ballistic from start to finish, banging on the roof and exploiting the echo as their team rattled in the goals. Whitley’s middle-class and middle-aged support grimaced and tolerated the noise, in a way they’d indulge a teenage son learning to play the drums. You see, Marske aren’t North Shields.

The day Benfield played Marske I popped into town for a pint at full time with friends who’d been to Newcastle v Leicester. Taking the Metro home about 9, I noticed the presence of a dozen or so absolutely bladdered radgies about my age, attired in immaculate Stone Island and Burberry casual threads. They sang an array of Loyalist numbers, including the whole of “The Sash” the entire way home. They hadn’t been to Ibrox, where the NE29 UVF flag that was waved up and down the carriage would have fitted right in, they’d been to Penrith, to watch a Northern League game; supporting North Shields.

If you want the yin to Clapton’s yang, meet the North Shields Ultras. Shields is a crazy town; a former fishing port with an endemic culture of heavy drinking, soft and hard drug use and every single indicator of social deprivation you can imagine turned up to 11. This is a town of hard men who hate authority with a passion; they literally do what they want. There may be anarchists at Clapton and Heaton Stan, but they can’t hold a candle to the Shields lot, certainly in terms of terrace attire. Blokes who turned their back on the professional game when either the sold out signs went up at SJP in the early 90s or when Northumbria Police served them with banning orders, preferring instead to drink and brood, burst back on the scene when their club (which underwent almost 25 years in the wilderness after selling their former Appleby Park home) emerged from the wilderness to win Northern League Division 2 in 2014, attracting 1,312 to the title winning game against West Allotment Celtic. Cycling to Shields v Marske, I went past the Spring Gardens pub and saw upwards of 100 casuals in the car park singing songs about their love of Shields. In the Northern League, where the noise of players arguing with officials generally drowns out the sound of spectators moaning about the game, such atmosphere is a rare occurrence.

With Ashington previously and with Marske and Shields now, the sheer novelty of the size of their support allows the self-styled Ultras to assume the importance of their existence is far out of proportion to their numbers. As they don’t meet any other sets of fans who want to fight or argue with them, they believe they can do what they want. It’s almost like Lord of the Flies, where the absence of a defined external set of absolute moral values causes those at the centre to create their own parameters, which may be unacceptable to others. However, in many cases, these others aren’t the majority when Marske or Shields turn up; helping to perpetuate the mythologies the Ultras create about themselves. Personally, I’m not offended by swearing or drunkenness at a non-league game, though some may be; I’m offended by a UVF flag at a Northern League game, but I’m not going to ask the assembled Shields Ultras to take it down, as a nuanced debate on politics in the north of Ireland is probably unlikely in the context of non-league football.

Of course, I may be unduly pessimistic; Marske walloped Shields 4-0 in front of 452 and there wasn’t a cross word exchanged between the two sets of fans. Perhaps the Whitley away game, like Ashington’s last match at Portland Park, was the pinnacle of North Shields Ultra culture. Perhaps normality will soon be restored. Only time will tell. Similarly, only time will tell whether Sean stays with Orient or throws in his lot with the Clapton Ultras, until they supernova.

When that happens, he can join me at Sam Smith’s Park, drinking Bovril and moaning about the linesman; it’s what supporting a non-league team, whether it be Benfield or Dulwich Hamlet, is generally about.