MINING A RICH TRADITION

Once upon a time the football leagues of County Durham were heavily populated by CWs. For the uninitiated, it means Colliery Welfare and was the football club attached to the local colliery, often financed by a subscription from those toiling underground or on the surface.

We still have two CWs in the Northern League. Easington are sure to figure in the blog soon as they play on Thursday nights and are descended on by groundhoppers from all the points of the compass.  Our estimable editor is a regular on the far side of the ground – unless it’s raining, which it often is.

Tuesday night’s game was at Ryhope CW. Ryhope is a former mining village on the edge of Sunderland. Until 1974 and the creation of that monstrosity “Tyne and Wear,” it was part of County Durham; its next door neighbour and deadly rival Silksworth owed its allegiance to Sunderland Borough Council.

The games between the two in the Wearside League were fiercely contested and often drew four figure crowds to the two Welfares. My late friend Dave Lish, a Ryhope lad through and through, told of battles on and off the pitch as bragging rights were fought for.

Now Ryhope have moved up and have a tidy set up at their Colliery Welfare. Walking through the gates, you pass the cricket ground, the bowling green and the tennis courts before handing over your £4.00 (senior citizens rates) and entering a tidy if unspectacular ground.

Surrounded by houses, I can imagine property developers drooling over the size of the site and calculating how many little boxes made of ticky-tacky they could stick on it. Dream on guys, dream on…….

Ryhope won their first league game 2-0 at Newton Aycliffe and then lost their FA Cup local derby with RCA, so they were probably due a draw. Shildon had drawn with Stockton and won at Guisborough and knew that a win could well take them to the top of the league.

The chat amongst the considerable Shildon support revolved around the signing of Keith Graydon, universally known as “Rasher”. He has had an excellent career in the Northern League, winning titles, Vases and the adoration of the supporters of Blyth Spartans, Spennymoor Town, Gateshead, Durham City, Newcastle Blue Star and Morpeth Town and he now adds Shildon to his list – for a month at least.

He made an immediate impact. In the sixth minute the ball broke to him just outside the box, he steadied himself and despatched a sumptuous volley past Ryhope keeper Jonathan Ball.

That was the end of the scoring until the 89th minute when substitute Billy Greulich-Smith, just back from Ibiza and about to embark on a seven-week odyssey around South East Asia, wrapped it up as the Colliery pushed forward in search of a deserved equaliser.

In between, there was some fine goalkeeping from Ball and Shaun Newbrook, a multitude of missed chances from both sides and some strange decisions by the officials.  Many felt that Shildon should have had a penalty when Waters was fouled in the box but failed to go down straight away (memo to Walters; if he pushes you son, go down) and when the excellent Ball picked up the match ball a good yard outside of his box, the assistant decided to ignore it.

There was a decent crowd of 126 and they enjoyed watching Ryhope batter away at the Shildon defence in the second half and seeing the Shildon defence, ably directed by player manager Moore, stand as firm as the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.

It was a fine game, full of incident and played at a tremendous pace. It’s no wonder that visitors from other parts of the UK gaze at the Northern League in wonderment at its competitive nature and sheer quality.

Next week I shall be in Kent and will take in a game in the Premier Division of the Southern Counties East League; I doubt that it will be anywhere near the standard of this one.

Ryhope CW 0 Shildon 2 – Ebac Northern League Division One

Pete Sixsmith