Anchors away….the travelling Stockton fans (see below) Picture: Bill Wheatcroft
Watching Tow Law Town v Bishop Auckland this afternoon is a bit like accepting a dare – even a double dare, as they used to suppose at Timothy Hackworth Juniors – or even a double dog dare.
Bishops are Ebac Northern League first division champions, need a win to be the first NL club since Bedlington Terriers in 1998-99 to reach 100 points, need two goals to have a three-figure goal difference and have already scored 130, 12 of them in the reverse fixture against the Lawyers.
Bishop Auckland are the old enemy; I’m a Shildon lad. It’s like an inverse schadenfreude, freudenschade or some such.
Blog reader Andy Lister, Bishops and Spurs supporter, consoles that it’s the first time the Two Blues have won the title for 38 years and that Tottenham haven’t for 63 years (“and counting”.)
The crowd’s 359, the Lawyers’ highest for ages, 56 of them on a 57-seat coach laid on free by the visitors and plenty more on the good old No 1. The afternoon’s festive, that it’s goalless at half-time due in no small part to the home side’s 16-year-old debutant goalkeeper James Brown, signed from Horden. The name’s not lost on club secretary Steve Moralee. “I feel good” he says.
Resistance is ended by Aaron Brown, a second added by J J Bartliff and a third from the spot by Craig Gott after coming on as an 85th minute sub in what’s reckoned his last game before retirement.
The club thereafter is taking the entire first team squad, wives and what have you to a celebratory steakhouse in Bishop. “After that” says chairman Steve Coulthard, “we’re going down the town.”
Though the league championship trophy had been presented after the midweek game at Redcar Athletic, it’s re-presented after the final whistle together with tankards for the players.
Steve Coulthard suggests that I should do the honours – “it’s the only way a Shildon fan’s going to get his hands on silverware.”
See what they’re like, these Bishops?
*Though none should doubt the FA’s capacity for moving goalposts, Sunderland RCA’s home defeat to Seaham today should mean that RCA will occupy the only relegation spot and that the Lawyers are safe.
Blog reader Neil McKay fully understands that two will be promoted from the ENL first divison – after the play-offs – and that one, as things stand, will be relegated. So that, says Neil, means there’d be three vacancies and only two are to be promoted from the second division.
Might that clear the way for Marske United to return to step 5? I asked Kevin Hewitt, the ENL’s ever-patient secretary – here’s his reply:
“It’s best explained by saying that there’s no such thing as promotion between divisions of the Northern League or indeed to the Northern Premier League East as clubs are promoted from steps 6 to step 5 or step 5 to step 4 and there’s a massive pot or a map on the wall from which clubs are then allocated by the FA to the most appropriate geographical league.
“You then add in compulsory relegations, reprieves or the dreaded points-per-game formula and lateral movements and leagues end up with between 16 and 24 clubs in each division by the middle of May.
“Your attempts to simplify things by having automatic promotion or relegation to a known league or division will never catch on….”
Friends of the earth – Hebburn fans celebrate
*Promotion issues are a little clearer in the NPL East, where Hebburn – managed by former Shildon boss Bobby Moore – are champions.
I knew them when they had nowt, or next to nowt, and have watched a remarkable transformation of club and ground. Warm congratulations to them.
Nicked from the club’s social media, the image above will be understood by Belinda Carlisle fans.
Hebburn’s win today means that Stockton and Dunston UTS – despite playing only 11 of their games on home soil and 27 elsewhere – are in the play-off semi-finals. They avoid one another.
Bill Wheatcroft, among the 867 who watched Stockton’s 4-0 win at Belper, sends the splendid image atop today’s blog of travelling fans in end-of-season fancy dress mode, following a practice long followed by Hartlepool United supporters. Have they now abandoned it?
Save for the young lady on the left, have they followed Pools along the Smurf road?
The funniest bit, says Bill, came when a chap dressed as Robin – Batman’s mate – was asked where Del Boy was. “You have to be a fan of Only Fools and Horses to understand that one.”
*Back to Tow Law where kind folk snap up all six copies of No-brainer shoved into my rucksack. Among them, and with an additional donation to the Head SaFe Football charity, is David Bayles – well remembered across the Northern League but especially at Bishop Auckland and Shildon.
No-brainer, of course, addresses both the compelling life story of former Middlesbrough defender Bill Gates and the Head Safe charity’s campaign to raise awareness of the proven mortal danger of repeatedly heading a football.
It may little apply to David Bayles, known only once to have headed a ball – Shildon’s “golden goal” winner in the 2003 Northern League Challenge Cup final, the last competitive game to be played on Darlington’s Feethams ground.
Top man, Bayler.
*Recording a first-ever visit to Wooler, in Glendale in north Northumberland, Thursday’s blog wondered if it were the setting for the Postman Pat stories.
It wasn’t, not least because Postman Pat and his back and white cat did their rounds in Greendale, not Glendale, and that Greendale is supposedly based on somewhere near Kendal, in Cumbria.
Sacked off, once again.
Grass Routes 