Billingham Town 1-3 Redcar Athletic, Friday 11th March 2022

Billingham Town 1-3 Redcar Athletic, Northern League Division 1, Bedford Terrace, att. 219

Another case of Friday Night Lights in the Northern League, and a second bite at the cherry for me with Billingham Town. Does it count as a groundhop if the game gets called off after an hour, as it did the other week? No such worries this evening as a decent crowd was boosted by a Boro Cabs minibus full of Redcar fans. What better evening entertainment in this neck of the woods? No programmes though, to the disappointment of one of the party (and me).

Learning from my earlier jaunt, I parked up in the club car park, a beautiful bit of tarmac formerly a mudbath, and headed for the social club, a spacious building behind the main stand. Last time, I wondered where everyone had gone at half-time. It was to here, the spacious social club, where I sank into a couch to enjoy the last-but-one bottle of Brewdog IPA. ‘We just don’t sell enough of the stuff’ the barmaid told me.

I was out in time to see the teams take to the field, as ‘Right Here, Right Now’ tickled out of the Main Stand speaker(s). Like last time, I edged slowly around the ground as the first half developed. Billingham, in all sorts of problems at the bottom of the table, were up against a lower midtable Redcar side. A chance, then. It took 6 minutes for Redcar to go ahead. It should have been two, as a Billingham throw-in put REDCAR clean through. I can see why they’re bottom.

Surprisingly, ‘Billy’ equalised on the half hour, though that was to be it as Redcar romped to 1-3 by half-time. That still didn’t stop the Town ‘ultras’, half a dozen blokes with a drum in the main stand. ‘What do you think of Synners?’ ‘S***’ ‘And what do you think of s***?’ ‘Synners.’ ‘We hate Synners and we hate Synners.’ Obviously, local rivalry with Billingham Synthonia counts for something…though perhaps too much, as talks to groundshare broke down and Synthonia currently reside across the border (the River Tees) in Stokesley, their Central Avenue ground long gone. Perhaps it’d be good for both teams if Synners returned?

The Damage:
£7 ent
£3 Punk IPA (bottle of)
= £10

The Tunes:
Whirlpool (Chapterhouse)