Newcastle United are perhaps the best-supported underachievers in world football. The Magpies were last champions of England so long ago that Thomas Hardy and Wyatt Earp were still breathing when Hughie Gallacher lifted the old First Division trophy in 1927. When Ruud Gullit was manager in the late 90s he assumed the club was cursed, and sought advice on exorcism from a local priest, even asking the kitman to sprinkle salt in the St James’ Park changing room to ward off evil spirits.
Sadly I was saddled with the Magpies as a child, and although they’ve been spoiling my weekends for several decades now, I still hold a season ticket in the Gallowgate End. But with fans locked out of the Premier League, I’m scratching the football itch elsewhere.
On top of this recent move by Premier League clubs to charge £14.95 to watch their games on a pay-per-view basis might be the final straw for many football supporters. It’s not so much the cost that irritates me, but the relentless grasping venality of professional football — so it was great to see Newcastle United supporters respond by raising over £20,000 for a local foodbank rather than giving more money to the Premier League.
Instead I’ve found joy with the Ebac Northern League, the second oldest football league in the world (founded in 1889), and the stage for some of the great names of amateur football: Bishop Auckland in their light and dark blue halved shirts (started by theological students from Oxbridge exiled in the north); “the Lawyers” from Tow Law FC, whose Ironworks Road ground, perched on the freezing slopes of the North Pennines, is reputedly the coldest in English football; and the famous West Auckland, “World Cup” winners in 1909 and 1911 when a team of Durham pitmen somehow inveigled their way into an international tournament against professional European sides and won, twice (including a famous victory against Juventus).
The first non-league side I ever supported was West Allotment Celtic, a North Tyneside pit village team who played in the Northern Alliance. The father of a school pal was their club secretary so we got to hang out with the “committee men” in their matching V-neck sweaters, raid the post-match “buffy” (buffet) for plate pie and pease pudding, and travel to away fixtures against exotic opposition like Carlisle Gillford Park or Spittal Rovers (the most northerly team in England).
But I’d grown up with stories of the most famous non-league team of them all: Blyth Spartans. My great-grandfather, despite being wounded at Arras and Passchendaele, had been the Pep Guardiola of the coalfields, as a combative halfback and then manager at Croft Park — the Nou Camp of North East amateur football. Blyth might not look much like ancient Sparta, but the locals shared a similar devotion to hard work and athleticism, and there can’t be many football grounds where Plutarch is quoted above the grandstand: “Spartans do not ask ‘how many are the enemy, but where are they.’”
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