Guisborough Town 1-2 Penrith, Saturday 13th November 2021

Guisborough Town 1-2 Penrith, Northern League Division 1, King George V Ground, att. 434

On my way home yesterday I called at a Lidl on the outskirts of Middlesbrough. ‘There’s definitely more than 2 kilos of onions in that bag…but I’ll let it go.’ I think I was being accused of stealing extra onions. Now, if I’m going to shoplift, it’s not going to be onions. What kind of a place IS Middlesbrough?

I digress. As usual. It’s another ‘international break’ so no fixtures in the upper echelons and a chance to visit another Northern League ground. And it turns out I’m not the only Barnsley fan choosing Guisborough today, as I get my pint in, wander around the perimeter, and bump into Kelvin, Ashley and Eric, all faces I know from Oakwell. (A 4th, Molly, woulda been there too had life not got in the way.) I had a shorter journey, yet Guisborough was still at the extremity of where I hadn’t been yet in the Northern League this season. Being a Saturday, it’s a chance to venture further away from my County Durham base.

Guisborough looked ideal. With other responsibilities (life!) in the morn, I didn’t quite have time to visit local beauty spot Roseberry Topping, but I could fit in a wander round the town, and see Guisborough Priory, mostly destroyed under Henry VIII’s policy of monasterial dissolution. I even looked up the opening times: 10am – 4pm. Ideal. What I glazed over was it’s closed November-March…and it’s now November. Oh well. I could see the top of it, but even my efforts to circumnavigate it for a view were ruined by a school. At least I found an open chippy and had (below par) fish and chips.

The town centre was thriving by modern standards, lots of independent shops, and I treated myself to a few CDs at one of the charity shops. The market was rather underwhelming though, 3 stalls, one of which was selling ‘bandanners’. Is that a cross between a banner and a bandana, I wondered? (No, it wasn’t.) I then jumped back in the car and set the satnav for the King George V Ground. As an aside, we have one of those in my town too – what was it with George V and recreation grounds?

There’s plenty of parking, which was lucky, cos there was plenty of cars. Turned out to be a bumper crowd today, 434. Once through the turnstile, I marvelled at a guard of honour from Guisborough’s junior teams, awaiting the players. (I don’t think any of the kids watched the game itself, preferring to play footie behind one goal.) With the teams out, I found the bar and waited to be served. And waited a bit more. Turned out the barman was outside ‘enjoying’ the minute’s silence for Remembrance Day. It’s a sizable bar too, and had a decent choice ie, some IPA on tap – Maltsmiths. Add this to Ashington as one of the few who serve owt but lager and crap bitter.

Then, as I say, I went outside, intending on the usual circumference of the ground, but instead bumped into some familiar faces and hung out with them behind the far goal. One thing we all agreed was that groundhopping for a day was far more preferable than watching Barnsley in current circumstances (managerless; off the bottom only due to Derby’s points deduction). The others also had the excitement of the golden goal competition, but as the 27th and 29th minutes passed by, all hopes were on Kelvin’s 90th minute for the 1st goal. Does that include injury time, thereby gaining 4 or 5 extra minutes? We’ll never know, as after 66 minutes Penrith opened the scoring. By now, we were under cover in the stand. The rain had started to come down, and maybe this helped the scoring, as it zipped around the pitch. 6 minutes later it was 1-2, as Guisborough’s temporary equaliser was quashed by Jamie Armstrong running free on the right and firing through the keeper’s palms. As I said, without the rain, that’s a save all day long.

Aside from my own company, I’d recommend a visit to Guisborough Town. Along with certain other Northern League grounds I’ve been to – Crook, Easington, Ashington – there’s a ‘buzz’ about proceedings, as fans crowded the Main Stand side of the pitch with their beers. A raised platform next to the Main Stand meant a second line of fans with immaculate views of the pitch. I wandered around…behind the goal had a small bank ‘Do Not Stand on the grass bank’ behind which was an expanse of grass large enough for the gaggle of kids to have a proper kickaround. Opposite, a two-step terrace with propped roof ran over half the length of the pitch. The other goal, meantime, had the odd building/portacabin as well as the external fence and turnstile. Yet surrounding 3 sides of the ground were trees reaching skyward, giving it a real enclosed feel. Quaint, buzzy, plenty of cover….I’ll be back. Sometime after March.

The Damage:
£7 ent
= £6

The Tunes:
Ultra Mono (Idles)
The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (The Orb)*

*79p from the charity shop. Bargain.

Penrith 2-1 Northallerton Town, Wednesday 4th November 2020

Penrith 2-1 Northallerton Town, The Frenchfield Stadium, Northern League Division 1, att. 120

Welcome to ....

I was due to visit Penrith AFC a fortnight ago, when, as I was about to set off from the Wetherspoons in town, I got a call from the hospital.  There’d been complications with regards to my dad’s operation to have a pacemaker fitted, his blood pressure had plummeted and it was ‘touch and go whether he’ll make it.’  Cue a teary mad dash across the North Pennines in driving rain to Darlington Memorial Hospital…to find his blood pressure had recovered, he looked like he was going to survive…and the consultant could go home having stayed on an extra four hours to ensure her patient didn’t bite the dust (a major downside of the job, one would think).

Welcome to...(II)

Anyway, here we are and he’s still alive (just), still very weak, but in rehab awaiting a fairly imminent departure – home, not to the graveyard.  I figure if he’s home, I won’t be able to travel too far from my County Durham base, so best to get one of these further flung destinations out of the way.  Plus Penrith is actually a place worth visiting. Last time I went off the beaten track to visit the Neolithic stone circle of ‘Long Meg and her Daughters’ and then the town’s castle.  The former was good for a quiet moment’s contemplation (I could have done with that later!) while the latter was good for teens hanging out together after school.  My town had a pizza shop the cool kids used to congregate around.  What a difference.

Long Meg and some of her daughters.

Today though I called in at Brougham Castle, just outside Penrith and right next to the A66 I came in on.  It’s a spectacular location too, based as it is at the confluence of the rivers Eamont and Lowther.  It was open as well – as long as you pre-booked!  I hadn’t.  Why would I?  Oh yes, there’s this thing called ‘Coronavirus’.  Oh well, I saw it.  With time on my hands, I decided to drive to Ullswater, about 6 miles the other side of Penrith, through more amazing countryside, before accidentally coming across Pooley Bridge, a place I’d only ever heard of on Look North (the local news for the…ahem…north region, which I forget includes the far north-west).  It now has the world’s first stainless steel road bridge (wow!), replacing a previous one washed away in storms 5 years previous. 

Brougham Castle

All that still gave me time to hit Penrith for pre-match tucker, so I was back to where it all began: ‘spoons.  And what with the country being placed on lockdown from midnight, this seemed the place to be; I saw more cleavages in an evening than I have in 6 months, as several small gangs of young females entered.  (Not many males though; maybe they were appearing later.)  I was also taken aback to see some underboob action.  See this from ‘Urban Dictionary’:

Hands down, one of the finest aspects of a woman's anatomy that can be enjoyed in any public venue.

Underboob is achieved by wearing a very short halter top or cropped tank, also known as an underboob shirt, which exposes the bottom areas of a woman's breasts.

Much like the combination of low-rise jeans and a thong, the underboob shirt can only successfully be worn by select few women.

In an ideal situation, a hottie will wear an underboob shirt to accessorize her low-rise jeans/thong combination. When this happens, all men in the vicinity will regard her as "hot" or "a sexy bitch", while their wives/girlfriend may refer to her as "trashy" or "a slutty bitch", but that's okay. Everyone knows she's a sexy bitch and they all want to do her.

Anyway, imagine a blonde wearing THIS but in yellow.  In Penrith.  (She was later thrown out for ‘playing with the switches’, ha ha)

Back to reality.  Penrith is a decent-sized place (pop: 17,000) plus surrounding villages, but their football team is poorly supported.  Possibly this is historic (Penrith also has a rugby club) but it can’t be helped by the location of the Frenchfield Stadium – a couple of miles out of town, the floodlights highly visible at night from the A66, as I discovered on my last visit.  Still, what it does have is a magnificent stand, with social club at the back, with full view of the pitch, though a small platform behind the seats allows for standing.  Probably the best view in the Northern League, given how low most of the stands are elsewhere.  Opposite was a small (metal) terrace with roof, while a wooden fence surrounded the rest of the ground, perfectly in keeping with its country surrounds.  Though being a night game, we also had an array of brightly lit lorries climbing the hill of the A66 towards the promised land of County Durham.

Inside the clubhouse

A second bonus was the appearance of former Northern League chairman and erstwhile Northern Echo correspondent Mike Amos, who’d brought along a few copies of his book to sell.  I grabbed the last one of 6.  He lacks ambition, does that lad.  Mind, he can’t have been impressed as I took to picking an argument with his mate, the PA announcer.  The latter had used the mic to welcome the news that Sheffield Wednesday’s punishment for breaking FFP rules (or ‘cheating’ as it’s known) was to be reduced from a 12 points deduction to 6.  This will be the difference between them going down and staying up, mark my words.  Or at the very least, provides the impetus for them to shoot up the table.  ‘Justice’ my new friend called it.  (Yes, he’s a Wednesday fan.)  Licence for every team in the Championship to continue overspending in the vain hope of reaching the Prem.

Practicing?  Should be experts by now...

I’d done a lap of the ground pre-match, but as much as I love to stand, I couldn’t resist a view; back row of the stand.  A local came out and I swear he scowled at me, but he lightened up when I offered him the seat, thinking I’d upset a regular.  No, he was fine, he’d stand.  He was rewarded too, as Penrith battered a Northallerton side 6 points ahead of them in the table.  Woodwork was struck twice, the keeper pulled off 3 or 4 great saves and yet more shots were off target.  It coulda…shoulda been half a dozen.  Instead, we reached half time one-all.  The only conversation around me was how many Penrith should be on…I heard anywhere between 3 and 6, and as I say, I’d have gone high.  They certainly didn’t look a bottom 4 team (indeed, joint bottom till they destroyed Billingham Town 5-2 in the basement battle I missed two weeks earlier).

The ref points this way, the player that.

The second half was nowhere near as fraught, though Penrith continued their ability to find the woodwork within 2 minutes of the restart when a hook rebounded back into play.  Otherwise, chances were fewer, despite the added space as the teams tired.  And perhaps that was the key to ‘The Bonny Blues’ (Penrith’s) victory, as a lazy challenge resulted in a penalty.  Portly/stocky striker Kingsley Grandison bagged his second (the 1^st, a lovely strike on the edge of the box from a corner).  Be wary the non-league centre forward who doesn’t look quite the part for football; he will undoubtedly be the cleanest striker of a ball at the club.  Or a fat lump making up the numbers.

Each team even has their own tunnel.

The Damage:
£6 ent
£1.50 tea (most expensive in league; do teabags cost more over the border in Cumbria?)
£1 minute of 1^st goal (I got the 3^rd minute.  I lost.)
= £8.50

…plus a tenner for the book, all about life as a reporter in the north-east.

The Tunes:
Hunky Dory (David Bowie)
Settle (Disclosure)
The Book of Traps and Lessons (Kate Tempest)
Favourite Worst Nightmare (Arctic Monkeys)

Spick and span in the corner.

Down the touchline.

The standing enclosure.

Toward the Main Stand.

The Main Stand.

Inside the clubhouse.

The Penrith Pensioners.

Those by the touchline.

The deciders of the goalden goal time.

Who doesn't love a Neolithic stone circle?

Brandon United 1-2 Penrith, Saturday 10th October 2020

Brandon United 1-2 Penrith, Calvert Stadium, FA Vase 2^nd Qualifying Round, att. 50

Welcome to...(actually, as of today, The Sawmills Kitchens Ground)

I’d done my homework (thanks to the excellent Northern League website).  I was off to Bedlington Terriers.  Being a Saturday, I fancied a drive out, and Bedlington was the furthest Northern League outpost (with a game on) from my dad’s house in Ferryhill.  Plus they’ve barely any fans these days, so no prospect of being turned away at the turnstile with a Covid-19 capped capacity of 150.  Satdy morning, I’m reading my Northern Echo.  The local non-league preview must have mentioned every other game apart from Bedlington.  It wasn’t listed in the fixtures either.  I went on the website – match postponed.  Blimey, good job I checked.  40 miles is a long way to drive for a postponed 10^th tier game.

A rainbow at the start of my journey today.  Couldn't resist.

I checked out the options.  Whilst up for a drive, the best options appeared to be Brandon or Esh Winning, both within about 10 miles of home.  Other games were at risk of hitting the 150 capacity.  I plumped for Brandon, 15-20 minutes away.  As ever, I used Google maps on my phone, and good job I did too, as I was directed down what looked like a farm track behind some houses.  I might have been 200 metres from the ground, but I’d still not have seen it, which is odd considering the view it commands over the County Durham countryside – the vista included Durham Cathedral in the distance.  Even Durham City AFC can’t claim that (though it doesn’t help that they’re groundsharing at Willington for the time being).

The pitch is up a small bank from the car park.

While there were some Northern League games on today, it was also the 2^nd round of the FA Vase, a competition Northern League clubs have done very well in lately.  However, there was no romance here.  It was the battle of the second off bottoms, as 2^nd division Brandon United hosted 1^st division Penrith, who I’d seen dismantled 4-0 at Ryhope CA a fortnight ago.  Brandon meantime were still smarting from a midweek mauling at home to Heaton Stannington (0-8!).  Seems half the team couldn’t make the match.  Would I see an improvement today?

New floodlights.

Well, for 45 minutes I’d say not.  Only poor finishing and indecisive final balls prevented Penrith from running up a score, I thought.  Then Brandon broke through, 2 on 1…and they couldn’t even take advantage of that.  But from the resulting corner, all the Penrith players avoided the huge Brandon centre half, who ambled to the backpost to score with a header.  Why wouldn’t you mark by far the tallest player in the opposition on a corner?  I’d have stuck the keeper on him.

The car park and clubhouse.

I’d spent the 1^st half in Brandon’s main stand.  As you enter the stadium, it towers opposite.  I marvelled at how the ground had zero seating, as it looked like a terrace from where I looked.  Once I walked around and saw it was seated, I couldn’t resist a pew on the front row.  How often do you get a front row seat in professional football?  It was quite steep too, so an excellent view.  Thus Brandon is the first Northern League stadium I’ve been to where most fans elected to sit.  Normally, the seats are so low that you’re at a disadvantage from standing.  (As an aside, there’s a row of benches behind one goal, and many a wall to sit on.)

Further Coronavirus orders.

I’d also spent the first 10 minutes wondering who was who.  (It’s not my style to ask.)  The perimeter barrier was painted in red and white, so I presumed the red team was Brandon, until I heard a supporter tell his mate Brandon were playing in their away kit because it was the FA Vase.  This was later dispelled by the gatelady/kitwoman who confirmed there weren’t quite enough spare home kits to go round as they didn’t want players swapping kit (Coronavirus, again).  Thus, Brandon politely asked Penrith if they could play in their blue away kit, while Penrith had their red home colours.  No problem.  Teams have to pull together at this level.

The Main (Only) Stand.

At half time I fancied a cuppa, but couldn’t see anywhere to get one.  I’d missed the large building in the car park, Brandon United’s social club.  So I presume I coulda got a cuppa there, even if I had to leave the actual ground.  I did that anyway, heading to my car for some sweets (Opal Fruits!) before chatting on with the gate lady, followed by a late arrival, who was none other than the chairman.  Upon hearing Brandon were winning, he toyed with the idea of leaving, not wanting to jinx it.  I put his mind at ease.  ‘Brandon have been appalling.  Most of the players can’t kick a ball 20 yards’ was my honest assessment.  And I don’t mean ‘couldn’t pass a ball 20 yards’.  No, many of them physically couldn’t kick it that far.  I did though compliment the state of the pitch, which was in excellent condition.  That was a most judicious comment - the groundsman is the gate lady’s husband!

That definitely looks like a terrace from here...

The match had kicked off, so I headed back up the steps.  Even by Brandon’s standards, it was a disappointing crowd, generously numbered as 50.  Thus, winning was even more important – the winners of the tie would be on for £725 while the losers got £225.  I began rooting for the home underdogs.  The second half was much more even but my support made no difference as Penrith grabbed the equaliser when the centre forward turned and hit one from inside the box.  Chances were then missed at both ends before a torrential shower forced me to head back to the stand  – I didn’t fancy standing out in the storm for the length of time it would take for the ensuing penalty shootout to take place.  I needn’t have worried.  Two minutes later, in the 87^th minute, Brandon’s brave resistance was over, a 20 yard snap shot finding the bottom corner.  I was looking forward to penalties an’ all…. 

The Allotment End.

The Damage:
£5 ent
free programme (Well done Brandon, only the 3^rd programme I’ve come across in 10 non-lge games.)
= £5

The Tunes:
The Universe Smiles Upon You (Khruangbin)
6 Music (Gilles Peterson Worldwide)

Down the touchline.

The stand, snuggled into the bank.

Roped off mud.

The teams come out.

Looking towards the Durham countryside (the cathedral in the distance).

Inside the Main Stand.

Today's teams.

Seating behind the goal.

Welfare Ground panorama.

The countryside disappears in the downpour.

Inside the Main Stand (II).

Full-time.

Welcome to...(II).

Match programme.