Gutted

By Martin Haworth of the Arngrove Northern League

Gutted. There is no other word for it. I know it is an over-used phrase in football when referencing even the slightest upset, but my use of the word is delivered with its full meaning. I was as sick as the proverbial Psittacidae.

I recently took a call from Vodkat League Vice Chairman Alan Farnworth. He got an unanticipated response to his opening question of “How are you?”. I used the “G” word. Why, he asked. “Because you’re going to Wembley, and I’m not”. His sympathetic response? “Well, you’ve had a good run in recent years, it’s our turn now”. Thanks, Alan. That will stand me in good stead when I’m gnashing my teeth on May 11th.

For those who don’t know, I follow Northern League teams on their various travels in the FA’s national competitions, and while the FA Cup is seen as the major competition, certainly as far as our level of football is concerned, the Vase is the one to aim for, it is “winnable”. I enjoy seeing our teams “on the road”, and bit by bit, I’ve been chalking off visits to grounds in the NCEL and NWCFL watching our lads.

I’ve always thought we’ve had a pretty good record, in seeing our teams return home largely victorious, or at least I thought that was the case until I started writing this. In fact looking at this season’s stats, I haven’t seen one of our teams win on the road in the FA Vase this season. That’s not to say our clubs haven’t had their share of success, they have, but I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m becoming something of a jinx.

You may begin to wonder as to what the relevance is to the NWCFL. It does have a tie-in, but bear with me. Without wishing to sound too much like an anorak, if I’m traveling, I prefer not to travel to a ground on those competition days that I’ve been to before. We are forever being told to reduce our carbon footprint (yet increase our traveling to the ever increasing UniBond League, but that is another matter), so I largely tend not to make revisits. I broke that rule this year, and a very painful experience it was as well.

I’ll ramble on to anyone who will listen that the early rounds of the national cup competitions are frequently being made to look like League Cups as all too many of the draws pair teams from the same League. Can’t this be engineered so it is less likely? Of all the ties in the First Qualifying Round, only South Shields had been drawn away, at Thackely. “Been there”, I sulked, mind you it is almost worth a revisit to taste their cracking pie and peas they serve.

So I didn’t get started properly until the Second Qualifying Round. It was off to Armthorpe Welfare, and Chester Le Street. This was as good as it got “on the road”, as the Cestrians brought them back to the North-East, with a 5-5 draw. This sort of score-line suggests that the game was a bit of a farce, but far from it.

This was arguably the most entertaining game I’d see this season. Work reasons prevented me from traveling for the First Round Proper, but managed to stay local and see Seaham Red Star beat Selby Town, in a pretty tight encounter. So that was two games, no defeats! That’s when it all started to go wrong.

The Second Round Proper saw a defeat on the road, and the Third Round saw only one of our teams drawn away from home. That was Dunston Fed, who had been drawn away at fellow Northern League team Billingham Synthonia. So I gave those a miss.

After the turn of the year, that is when we start to rack up some serious mileage. The Fourth Round Proper saw us travel to Poole in Dorset to see Consett desperately unlucky not to walk away with the tie at the first attempt in a 1-1 draw. By the Fifth Round, we still had three teams in it. Whitley Bay got the journey from hell, Truro away. That’s 463 miles one way. I was at Hillheads, the home of the Seahorses a couple of days after the draw was made, and it was the only topic of conversation. It was the real acid test for a “die-hard”.

Those with the time and money could maybe afford to go down a day or so beforehand, watch the match, and travel home on the Sunday. Then the journey could be just about bearable. As they were being drawn at the red-hot favourites, did you really want to travel all that way to see your team given a thumping?

Given that background, and the likelihood that you are going to never want to go on a coach ever again, I salute those who made the trip by supporters bus. This left the North East at midnight on the Friday night, due to arrive around 10:00 on the Saturday morning. They would have time for a brief look around Truro, before going to the game. The coach was to make the return journey literally after the full time whistle, and planned to arrive back home around 3am on the Sunday morning.

Doesn’t that sound like a fantastic way to spend a weekend? As you can probably tell, I didn’t make that journey. I would have preferred to have made a weekend of it, but commitments in the North East meant I couldn’t extend beyond the weekend. Consett’s tip to Merstham also looked inviting, and with both teams being able to score at will, it was always likely to be an entertaining, high-scoring game.

We opted to take the shortest journey – although this is not a journey to be undertaken lightly. Lowestoft (you may have heard of them in recent weeks), were lower mid-table in the Ridgeons League, and paired at home against Dunston Fed, a team who are not a flamboyant side, but very effective at getting results.

Of the three ties at this stage, this was the one that was the most likely be successful for the north eastern teams. Not knowing East Anglia all that well, I’d completely underestimated just how long it takes to get to the most eastern most point of Britain. Once you leave the A1, you still have three hours of driving ahead of you. It felt like I was driving to the end of the world, and that’s from someone who used to live in Workington!

If you haven’t been to Lowestoft Town before, it’s definitely a club that is geared to greater things. The whole place exudes confidence, and an organisation and infrastructure that would not look out of place two to three rungs higher up the Pyramid. This was early February, and they were already selling “Wembley hats”!

We’ve all heard of examples of merchandise being produced ahead of events, but this was pushing it a little. When you consider that their league form had been indifferent, and they were not one of the fancied teams, surely the effort was nothing more than a quick cash-in? At least I hoped so.

It was a beautifully glorious, late-winter day, and the ground was bathed in warm sunshine. There had been talk prior to the trip of Dunston doing a pre-match warm up on the front at Great Yarmouth, but then again, it was still February. Both teams looked good in the warm-up, and then it all started to go wrong for Dunston when the bloke in the black blew a whistle.

Dunston conceded an opportunistic goal in the opening minutes, and worse was to follow before the 20th minute when the Trawler Boys (as they are known) got a second goal. I’ve said this many times to anyone who will listen, that Dunston will never play as badly as that again. It was a classic case of not being “their day”. That’s not taking anything away from the home side, but in many ways, Dunston almost beat themselves. With time running out they eventually got a goal back, and they finally woke up.

They pulverized the home goal, and Lowestoft, like a punch-drunk boxer, hanging on the ropes, managed to hold out for a 2-1 win. What looked on paper to be a good bet for a safe passage turned into a nightmare. Elsewhere, events seemed to be conspiring against Consett, as a man down, they took Merstham through extra time before going down 5-4.

The good news on that day, was the score from Truro, and a result nobody expected. Whitley Bay knocked out the current holders 3-0. It was reward enough for the supporters who had made that extraordinary journey to Cornwall. At least we still had one team left in it. Quarter Final day once again saw me “confined to barracks” as work once again dictated that I had to be in the North East, and I missed Whitley Bay’s narrow 1-0 win at Hungerford Town. Am I the only one who finds work as a very unwelcome intrusion in their social life? Still, we were guaranteed at least one more trip in the Vase with the two-legged semi-final on the horizon.

….and we got the draw we didn’t want.

Lowestoft. Again! There was great debate about whether it was worth spending upwards of 13 hours driving to go somewhere we’d already been. Add to that, the first leg was away in Suffolk, and on the Easter weekend! What’s the traffic going to be like? We gave plenty of good reasons for giving it a miss, but in the end, the “glamour” of a Vase semi-final, and the added attraction of being able to see the first day of the CML Groundhop on the Friday, and break the journey proved to be just too irresistible.

By virtue of having already knocked out the holders, Whitley Bay were now installed as favourites to win the competition, and facing arguably the fourth-favourites. Surely they would be too good for Lowestoft over two legs? Anyway, it would be another chance for me to buy a “Wembley hat”.

Although it was mid-March, the weather was mid-winter. I thought we got blasts of cold air in the North East, but this was something different. A gale that seemed to come straight from Siberia, blowing snow in almost horizontally. The pitch was looking a little worse for wear, but the club had made excellent efforts to stage the game, after heavy rain had threatened to wash the match away. The locals really got behind their team, as the gate was double that of my last visit, two rounds previously. They were augmented with mascots, guards of honour and a supporters band! It all contributed to a big match atmosphere.

Then it all started to go horribly wrong when the man in black blew his whistle. Just like the Dunston game, Whitley Bay conceded a goal in the opening five minutes after a defensive mix-up. Still, no worry, there is plenty of time to go. However, instead of getting better, it got worse. On 14 minutes, influential defender Brian Rowe was sent off, and with seven minutes to the interval, they conceded a penalty, which Lowestoft converted.

Half time could not come quick enough, and I was beginning to really regret having made the trek. Just when you thought that it couldn’t get any worse – it does. With the referee getting ready to blow for the interval, Lowestoft added a third. A tie that was to be played over two legs was as good as dead after the first 45 minutes. The home support, were ecstatic. The cheering and jeering seemed to be getting louder as each goal went it. Was there some sort of hex that had been placed on Northern League teams at this ground? It was becoming a bit of a graveyard for us. All the game plan must have been now, was “damage limitation”.

The second half had fewer fireworks than the first, as Lowestoft seemed comfortable, happy with their three goal lead. To be fair, on this occasion they looked worthy winners, but again, only because Whitley Bay were playing like a team of strangers. Surely this can’t the team that beat Truro? Any lingering hopes of a comeback were dashed a few minutes from time, with Whitley pressuring the home goal, they were caught with a classic counter-attack and ended the game 4-0 down. So much for firm favourites. The home supporters were delirious. It is thought that it is a slight disadvantage to play the first leg at home, but surely a four goal lead would be enough to see them through.

Arguably, this defeat was all the more upsetting than last year’s semi-finals, when Billingham Synthonia narrowly failed to make the Final as a result of a fluffed penalty. Two years prior to that, Bedlington Terriers lost out on penalties in the semi-final to AFC Sudbury, so surely we were due a visit to the Final? We drove home from East Anglia with a very heavy heart, and the never-ending journey made all the more delightful with flurries of snow blowing across the road, and warnings on the radio about only making journeys if it was necessary.

It wasn’t over-confidence in going into that first-leg of the semi-final that made me so positive. I knew that Whitley Bay are a good side, and we’d avoided Kirkham and Wesham. My ideal Vase Final, if it is not to be an all-Northern League affair, would be to have it against an NWCFL team. Over the years I’ve met a number of your club and League officials and have always been made very welcome. I always like travelling to the west of the Pennines, and it would have been great to have had a big day out at Wembley, and a final between two of our clubs. Now, with still half of the semi-finals to play, the dream was over.

I was like a bear with a sore head for the next few days. Anyone who knows me, will know that most nights of the week, I’m out at a game. Following that first game against Lowestoft, I didn’t go out to football for almost a week. It would have been too must to bear. People would have been asking about the game, and what had gone so badly wrong. It would have been like prodding an open wound. I stayed in and sulked.

It was for that reason I didn’t go to the second leg at Whitley Bay. It would have been just too much. Ironically, I went to a League match at Dunston Fed, and the jungle drums were soon beating that Whitley had taken a two goal lead early in the game. Then there was news of a third with little over 20 minutes played. Surely not. I have been victim of this sort of hoax before. I rang people I knew who were at the game, and yes, Whitley were 3-0 up and were also missing chance after chance.

Could the unthinkable happen? They had instructions to call me whenever more goals are scored. When things like this happen, you lose all interest in the game you are attending. I kept staring at my phone. Has it rung yet? Is the battery flat? Is it still working? After almost an hour when I believed that my phone wasn’t working, I called them back. Damn! The phone was working, and it is still 3-0. Time just ran out on Whitley, they couldn’t find a fourth, and bring about the sort of recovery that Roy Race would have been proud of.

So Wembley was off for another year, but I was glad that Kirkham and Wesham got through. Which brings me to the link. In the Second Round I saw another of our teams come to grief. West Auckland went to Fylde to play Kirkham and Wesham, and went out 3-0. Not much of a positive influence, am I? The score flattered the home side slightly, but overall, the team in white deserved it. They were strong up front, and steady at the back, although if West had brought their shooting boots with them, it might have been a little closer. This was another club that seems destined for bigger things. To have created what they have, in the time they have, shows that the club has huge ambitions.

It means that I’ve seen both the Vase finalists this year, and what’s my thoughts? I think of the two, Kirkham & Wesham are the stronger side, and are in my mind slight favourites. Lowestoft are playing away from their Crown Ground and whatever hoodoo they are able to inflict on visiting teams. Then again, I’ve been wrong before….repeatedly.

To everyone at Kirkham & Wesham, enjoy your big day out. I’ve no doubt that there will be many more than the die-hards making the trip to north London. Many of them probably watching a non-league game for the first time. I remember going to the Vase Final in 1998 to see Tow Law Town. In front of me was someone who wasn’t hedging his bets. He had a Tow Law scarf, wore a Middlesbrough replica shirt, and Newcastle United tracksuit bottoms. All three played at Wembley that season, and all lost. I think he’s more bad news that I am!

I shall probably be spending the 11th May mooching around at home, wishing I was a few hundred miles further south, and still feeling gutted.

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