Living Heritage: Bishop Auckland FC
Two-blue eyes, not least those of Bishop Auckland FC chairman Steve Coulthard, will eagerly be watching today’s blog.
So let’s at once begin by offering warm congratulations – from a lifelong Shildon supporter – to all at Heritage Park on clinching the Ebac Northern League first division title, and promotion, with tonight’s emphatic win at Newcastle Benfield.
Similar messages crowd social media – the most poignant from Willington, adrift at the foot of the Wearside League top division: “Hard to believe that on this day in 1950 we beat you 4-0 at Wembley in the FA Amateur Cup final.”
Manager Chris Hardy and his team have done hugely well, but much credit should also go to the visionaries who conceived and built the splendid Heritage Park ground and who almost every day maximise its income potential with all manner of activities, not all football-related.
Last week they even had a fairground in part of the car park, underlining the old adage that the shows must go on.
On and off the field, with the current management they’ll enjoy further success – and Shildon, it’s much to be hoped, will join them yet.
*Newcastle Benfield v Bishop Auckland wasn’t tonight’s only big match action, of course. At the New Bank Top pub in Darlington the semi-finals and final of the 5s and 3 League took place. In the semis the Brainless Britannia B beat the team widely regarded as the league’s best, in the final we lost 4-3 to the recently reopened Cross Keys from Gainford. Long serving former Northern League referee and Football League linesman Martin “Speedy” Robinson was declared man of the match – by us lot, anyway.
*Yesterday’s blog recalled a fourth division match between Watford and Gateshead, April 1960, one of Gareshead’s last in the Football League. That their hopes of returning seem wretchedly to have been ruined by “rules” is a sore with no sign of healing. Solihull Moors aren’t best pleased, either, but that’s another story.
Listing the team from that game at Vicarage Road, we’d supposed that only Bobby Lumley – twice with Hartlepool, subsequently landlord of the Red Lion in Darlington – rang a bell. Keith Bell, Stuart Fitzgerald and John Maughan all recall others.
What of eight times capped Scottish international George Aitken, 267 apearances (three goals) for Sunderland after signing for a hefty £19,500 from Third Lanark? He made 58 Gateshead appearances after joining in 1959, retired when Football League life was ended and worked in the motor trade on Wearside.
What of George Lackenby, 19 games for Newcastle or Bill Redhead, who on December 29 1956 made his only first team appearance in five years with the Magpies? Heed lads, all of them.
Where draughts cannot….Lionel Messi
*The Vicarage Road programme back in 1960 carried an ad for Stanley Matthews football boots, 24/11d from Watford Co-op. As yesterday’s blog noted, Shildon Co-op sold the same thing – probably five bob cheaper – though they still couldn’t make me a footballer. John Maughan sympathises.
“Let’s just say I wasn’t the first pick for any school football team, either, but now I’ve found a position we could both play.”
He means Lionel Messi’s “draught excluder” stance (above). “Mind” adds John, “I’d still need a hand getting up again.”
*For many years I wrote columns, these days a blog though a great many readers still call it a column. Searching for something else this morning in Darlington library’s local studies centre – what wonderfully helpful folk they are – I come across a 1975 column which ended with a quote from retiring Observer columnist John Crosby.
“Being a columnist is the laziest, most self-indulgent way of earning a living since holding up stagecoaches was pronounced unlawful.”
Don’t believe a word of it.
Grass Routes 