29th September 2018 - Bishop Auckland (h)

Could the lads recover from the previous week? There was a sense of deja-vue on entering Hillheads as a change to the team sheet was announced: Dan Taggart had injured himself in the warm-up. Still he was only one player and surely the rest would be keen to get back to winning ways. The sun was shining, it was warm, Mr Wednesday and little Wednesday (Chris and James) had arrived (the latter back from Uni to see the Arctic Monkeys at the Arena) and so had Bob and Moira. What could go wrong?

Sun and good company!

Unfortunately Bob had left all his positivity at the gym, where he'd been working out that morning. He started off with the phrase "That's the end of our season then!" and reminded us that now we were out of the FA Vase and Trophy, it wouldn't be long before Shields beat us in the League Cup. He continued: if we can beat Heaton Stan in the Northumberland senior cup, Morpeth are waiting to marmalise us. Moira reminded him that he had missed out our search for the league title...strangely he wasn't too optimistic about that either. Having finished saying all that, he then said Foalle wouldn't be with us long...there would be plenty of clubs looking enviously on. I love the confidence of youth!

In charge of the visitors were ex Bay stalwarts: the Chan and Brian Rowe. It would be the perfect pick-me-up to get one over them and the number of ex-Bay players returning in the visiting colours. 

Unfortunately, the returnees had a few things they wanted to say and it was Kyle Fryatt who put the visitors ahead. The lads responded well but just couldn't get the precious equaliser. 

Luke Salmon forced a great save and then Ben Richardson went close with two freekicks: one either side of each post. Foalle also came close after a great bit of skill but his cross was cleared. His skill had deserved better!

In between all this, there was bad news for the Bay as Tom Flynn was forced to go off with an injury. Soon after, his replacement, Liam Powell went the same way. With no more goalkeepers to call upon, Luke Salmon had to go in goal. It wasn't boding well.

There was hope however for the 334 fans who had turned up when Foalle blasted home, the ball landing kindly for him to finish with great aplomb. Our spirits were lifted for the firt time since scoring the opener against Whickham. The feeling of bonhommie barely lasted six minutes before Bishops scored, exciting their band of supporters behind Salmon's goal. The stand-in keeper had performed well but was just unlucky to be outwitted by some good attacking play. 

By the final whistle, the visitors had added another two to make the score 4-1 to them. Salmon had made two excellent saves and performed admirably to put himself in with a chance of retaining his number one jersey. 

However, lady luck had deserted the lads once again: the sending off the previous week and two injured goalkeepers. At least Bob and Moira were excited: it was spinach risotto night then Strictly Come Dancing. What more could you want?

22nd September 2018 - Altrincham (a) FA cup 2Q

The previous weekend, family duties had taken priority over the Bay as I had taken my eldest to university. The 2-1 defeat at Whickham had put a real downer on the weekend and if I could have made a pact with any kind of celestial entity, trading a guaranteed place in the next round of the FA Vase with a place in the FA cup, I would have done so gleefully. In the FA Cup, the games are only going to get harder. At least in the Vase we had the chance of more winnable matches. As it was, the Bay faced the likely prospect of being knocked out of both of the money-making competitions in the space of eight days. While we were losing to our fellow Northern Leaguers, Altrincham were winning away to Bradford Park Avenue 3-2. I was not hopeful.
My expectations dropped even further when I saw that top scorer Foalle was abroad at his father's stag do. Wandering up Hillheads Road, I had come to terms with this loss.
 I was singing:
"Foalle's not on fire, He's gone to his dad's stag do!" to Mr Programme David Hall when he told me that our striker wasn't the only absentee. Dan T, Callum A, Kevin Carr...the list was growing. They obviously hadn't thought that they would be involved at this round of the FA Cup: the curse of semi-professional football! We would just have to manage without them.


The bus was filled from the front first with all the usual suspects with an average age of ______ (actual age has been removed to protect the innocent). Therefore, there was only one place to go: to the back with the wild boys and girl! Smithy, Pogo and his dad, Pc Paul, Kieran Brannen's mam and dad, George 'Whitters'... the ultimate collection of anarchists!
The anarchy started straight away when Mammy Brannen started handing out the mini sausages and scotch eggs. Then Barry emerged with the chocolate toffees! Bedlam. There was a further period of anarchy when one member of the group decided to teach all of us to swear in sign language... his dad wasn't impressed!
The journey passed quickly and in no-time we were stopping at a services near Manchester. Happily, we greatly outnumbered the combined numbers of Wolves and Manchester United fans: none of whom had a clue who we were. Philistines!
It's always a great moment when you've been on a long bus journey and finally see the ground and this time we actually had the bonus of arriving at an actual stadium, with stands or banks of terracing on all sides. The stands were covered by a multitude of roofs of different heights and styles, which reminded me of a big version of Jarrow Roofing (RIP). One of the stands seemed to have an open air toilet for the use of the camera crew... or maybe it was just me!

From the programme sellers to the bar staff, everyone I talked to was extremely friendly and humoured me with my photos but my favourite had to be Dawn, the pie seller. She has already emerged as the front runner for pie-seller of the season with her amazing Balti chicken pie! It was packed with stuff and had herbs and everything! Beat that Northern League? I'm not so sure. It has blasted Stockton Town's mince and onion pie into second place. Well done Dawn! Can we eat here every week? On the down side, Pogo was not impressed with his mince pie bought from the opposite end of the ground. Should have gone to Dawn's and should have had the Balti mate!

Spot the concealed baby!

Look at Dawn's pie!

Look at her condiments!

Flaky pastry, herbs and that, chicken baltiness inside!
Thanks Dawn..... not so keen on the polystryrene, though!

The next friend I made was the wandering mascot who turned out to be a robin! How excited we would be if we could have our own seahorse patrolling the the touchlines of the Northern League!

It's a robin!

It was great to be on a bank of terracing again and there was a good collection of Bay fans and flags.

Ground of many roofs.

Courtesy of WBFC Twitter: thank you Julian!!!!!!!

The first 28 minutes were going smoothly for the Bay. They were holding their higher placed hosts at bay and Flynn was dealing comfortably with the few long distance efforts that came his way. We'd even managed a couple of efforts on goal ourselves. Could this be our day after all? Then things started to go wrong...

One nil down, it looked like the tie was slipping away from the lads. However it looked like qualification would be impossible when Altrincham were awarded a penalty and Issy was given his marching orders as he was the last man. For me, there seemed to be very little contact and a disappointing twist in the game that threatened to undo all of the Bay's hard work.

Up stepped the Altrincham forward...

We did our best to put him off and were delighted when it worked. His shot hit the upright, bounced in front of Flynn and then the half time whistle was blown. The Bay were still in it! I was later to find out that it hadn't been my exotic dancing that had put off the forward off but Karen (KB's mam) and George "banging on the boards". Enough to put anyone off!

Unfortunately that was as good as it got. The Bay hardly visited the opposition half as Altrincham laid siege to the visiting goal. Some heroic defending was not enough to hold back the red and white tide. Roared on by occasional chants from the home fans...the goals kept coming and my best videoing of the season captured no Whitley efforts. With the Dunston scoreline in mind, it became damage limitation.
The ground rang out with the voices of ten individuals in the cow shed to our right.

"Ey oop alti...Alti ey oop"
The Alti chimes!

"A oL Ti!"
BLT would have been preferable but without the lettuce or tomato....so just the bacon please.

" Oh Alti Alti... Alti Alti Alti Alti Altrincham"

When a perfectly targeted lob finished the scoring at 5-0, there was a final chant of "Wemberley" from the home fans and then the final whistle blew. To rub salt into our wounds, the final piece of music was "Another one bites the dust" by Queen. Predictable really. A nice touch was the way the Whitley players and coaching staff came over to our end and applauded us for coming. It meant a lot.
There was time to play "Where's our bus" before heading home in a disappointed state.

Disappointment didn't last long.

We were joined on the way back by Baldie Bruce and after half an hour, the banter returned and we had a great return with some lovely people...what football should be about. Regardless of the score we had had a good day out. Karen KBM (Kieran Brannen's Mam) was taught more sign language while George revelled in telling everyone about his "Banging on the boards" with KKBM. CKBD tried not to listen.

5-0 final score but that was just a sideline.

8th September 2018 - Whitby Town (h) FA Cup 1Q

The day started with my best Whitley Bay parkrun in two years (22:46 for the record) but it didn't really feel like it was going to be a lucky day for the Bay. A sense of foreboding followed me up the hill. These reasons bounced backwards and forwards in my head:

•  the team had won the last three games, scoring 18 goals...they had to fall sometime.
• Whitby were two leagues above us.
•  there would be a big crowd without any Premiership or Championship games on: the players were bound to freeze.

I had arranged to meet the Boy Mark at the ground but was late: buying new blue and white ribbons at the Singer shop in town for my car: great for spotting your car in car parks! He texted me to say there were lots of 'scary people' singing in our 'new' stand. I could hear them as I reached the ice rink...definitely not Whitley fans.
Sure enough, there were the usual crowd standing in the stand but they had decamped to the near side of the stand, trying to hear each other over a big group of visitors (to the Bay anyway). The back of the stand was taking a right battering as a makeshift drum as our visitors sang their medley. The were frequent inspersed choruses of "Sea, sea, seasiders" and "We hate Scarborough". The latter of which was my particular favourite. I had an immediate vision of two small groups of fans in a mostly empty stadium shouting abuse at each. You can't beat non-league football for comedy.

The Town Boys! The Seahorse did well today?

They were certainly welcome, as they had woken up our normally sleepy afternoon/evening terrace. Even Bob and Moira agreed before we launched into a discussion about favourite washing powder. It was also good to see the return to Hillheads of Chrissyboy: Mr Wednesday. It turned out he had attended the 6-1 victory against Barnoldswick in the previous round. His love for his adopted town's team had been re-awoken. There were a number of returnees from the Vase days and it was nice to see a 680 crowd enjoying the mild afternoon weather. The predicted rain was staying off too. What could go wrong?
Also returning was Josh Nearney, not that I noticed until I looked at the team sheet. I only hoped it stayed that way.
There were few chances at either end in the opening minutes and so the conversation swang around to the increased traffic using the Aldi causing problems on Hillheads Road. This followed onto the problems of the British Education system caused by years of government interference. Thankfully, 'The Raven's freekick interupted this topic: McHugh, in the visiting goal, turning it away smartly. Then Whitby started piling on the pressure with their numbers 9 and 10 finding themselves plenty of space at times to run clear on goal but thankfully Flynn was equal to them, saving on a number of occasions. The only time he failed to stop a shot, Ibby Hassan was on hand to clear off the line. All the while the Whitby Massif continued their sonic barrage and it only seemed a question of time before they were to be rewarded.
Thankfully, at half time the score was still 0-0 and we felt lucky to be level.

This is what part of 680 looks like...apparently!

There was a definite shift in the second half as the Bay boys seemed to be a lot taller and less willing to be knocked around. There also seemed to be a bit of gamesmanship creeping in to the Town game as they seemed to fall over easier with tumbles of varying degrees of artistic licence. It looked like Ibby was in trouble when a goalbound shot bi-passed Flynn completely only to strike Ibby's hand outside of the penalty area. Thankfully, the ref decided it was only a booking and a freekick to the visitors.
Despite the continued effort from the home boys, the game was still edgy and the visitors were dealing fairly comfortably with the Bay pressure. Too many crosses ended up in McHugh's hands or being booted clear by the Town defence. At the other end, Flynn and co were having their work cut out keeping a tricky set of forwards away from the goal. But battle they did.
It looked like all their hard work had been undone when a Whitby forward steamed into the box and was brought down. The ref theatrically pointed to the spot, seeming to enjoy taking the limelight. Up stepped the visiting penalty taker who launched a stinger away to Flynn's right.

 However, Bay's number 1 dived full length to pull off a remarkable save. He appeared to take a boot for his troubles and lay forlornly in the penalty area as play continued. As the ball was cleared to the wing, there was another incident and Whitby's Jassem Sukar was shown a second yellow card. With Town down to 10 men, the game was there for the bay to take. However, they pulled nine men behind the ball, leaving one up front and managed to smother the Bay's attack for long periods. The crowd were doing their bit to raise the players but it was hard going against an experienced team.
Callum Anderson's header zipped just wide then Ramsay headed wide. The lads managed to break with three players but the chance was lost when Ramsay (I think) chose to selfishly shoot rather than pass to an unmarked Bay player. It looked like the Bay would be travelling to the home of Prawns (Whitby that is) when Foalle sent the home crowd wild.
There seemed to be nothing on for 'The Raven' as he flew down the wing in the 89th minute (my book is still available as a paperback btw: http://bit.ly/89thminute). With a defender battling furiously for the ball, Captain Fantastic managed to swing in a left wing cross that was met by the superbly positioned Foalle to score. He couldn't hide his delight and neither could we!

The last few minutes were filled with tension and everyone was delighted to see Foalle head to the corner with the ball in the 93rd minute. Finally the whistle blew to spark celebrations not witnessed for many years. Fans were hugged by jubilant players and if anyone had suggested that the players didn't care then this was the perfect example of how much they did.

The fans and players applaud each other

The lads were into the second round and with a Vase game to come the following week against Whickham, these are certinly exciting times to be a Bay fan. We'll make sure we enjoy them as this team can only get stronger. Good decision to leave Josh?

1st September 2018 - FA Vase Q1 - Esh Winning (a)

Like being back at Leeds Festival...

Autumn was here but the Summer sun was still strong. A hard Whitley parkrun had seen me applying first aid to a very shocked fellow runner, come acropper, tumbling on the course...but he finished! Surely this act of kindness to my fellow man would be repaid with a Bay victory?
It was Pogo and I who set off on the 45ish minute trip to County Durham. It also looked like he had chosen the best option by wearing shorts.
I'd never been to Esh Winning before but those that had would often regale me with tales of how picturesque it was so I was excited to see it for myself. Interesting to note that the name of the village comes from the Saxon word for Ash and the Victorian term for a discovery of a coal seam! For all you historical vocabulary fans out there!
Driving through Esh Winning itself did not prepare you for the picturesque drive through the forests that surrounded the ground while the car park resembled more of a meadow than anything else as we parked up.
Everything said about the ground and its location were true as it nestled amongst the rolling hills and forests. Perhaps the groundsman had been admiring the view when he had marking the lines: that might have explained the wobbly halfway line. I wouldn't blame him if this was the reason: it really was breathtaking.

A bit of a wobbly one?
No less than four bus shelters on offer!

The usual big crowd of away fans had converged on Esh using service buses, cars and coaches. Worth noting was the number of bus shelters on two sides, with the more modern versions decorating the sideline while their more rustic wooden counterparts proving to be very popular behind the goal away to our left.

Sing in the cheap seats!

At the start of the match, the only real danger for the travelling fans was the number of wasps marauding around anything and everything sugary. On the pitch there was a quiet start for Liam Powell in the Whitley goal but he was lucky when Esh hit the crossbar. This happened shortly after Ramsay had driven just wide from a good position: after 20 minutes the game had woken up.
Powell came to the Bay's rescue when he saved well, before Olly Martin stole in to give the Bay the lead. Powell again rescued the Bay with an instinctive save three minutes before half time. Happily the final piece of action was provided by Jack Foalle - sprinting through, this time onside, to slot home: a fitting reward for the young striker who had constantly been thwarted by the linesman's flag.


In the second half, the behind-the-goal-gang relaxed amongst the long meadows on the bank or sat on the provided park benches. The warmth of the sun combined with the pleasant surroundings, and the 2-goal lead, to give an off-pitch chilled vibe to the occasion.

Things got even better for us as a Karl Ross cross was lob/volleyed high into the net. For once, my video was running! Shortly after Esh had once again hit the post, substitute Kieran Brannen sprinted clear to score with great aplomb...the condensation on my camera making it an emotional occasion!

Three wise Bay monkeys enjoy an afternoon in the park?

David Attenborough eat your heart out!

Although my camera then went to sleep, there were two more goals for the Bay - both to the Bay's Jack Foalle who completed his hat-trick. Yet again my camerawork had let me down for Foalle's goals but at least I was able to join in with his song: "Foalle's on fire, your defence is petrified!"
Fingers crossed, this week, there are two more wins to go with the last three!
"6-0 to the mighty Bay!"