Home Bankers

That it rather became the South Bank Show was perhaps inevitable and by no means unwelcome.

Wasn’t it the great Wilf Mannion who supposed South Bank “the enchanted city?”

The Bankers’ Normanby Road ground had been one of three on which the league headed trepidantly into the future, the team starting with a 3-0 win over Auckland Town.

The others were Birtley Football Ground, which none now seems able to locate, and Newcastle East End’s pitch at Heaton Junction, the start delayed by 45 minutes because Darlington’s train was late.

The Normanby Road ground is now Golden Boy Green, a salute to Mannion himself. Though there’s now skateboard park and basketball court, nothing acknowledges its place in football history.

All may soon change. Alerted by the Ebac Northern League, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council are on the case: Carole Simms, the borough mayor, wore a red-and-white striped South Bank shirt to re-enact the big kick-off, said that she’d have worn the shorts as well, but her daughters wouldn’t let her.

The mayor was herself a South Bank girl – “Low Albion Street” – recalled great days at Normanby Road.

Founded in 1868, the club was the North’s first, won the FA Amateur Cup in 1912, reached the final on two other occasions and nurtured a string of top class players, amateur and professional. In 1946, also against Bishop Auckland, more than 8,000 had crowded the ground.

“We should do something, definitely, perhaps a blue plaque,” said Coun Simms. “South Bank should be proud.”

DOWN the road in the Erimus Club there was a bit of a reunion, too, among those present Northern Ireland international Terry Cochrane, who managed South Bank when his Middlesbrough days ended.

It was towards the end of their Northern League life, late 1980s, the club blighted, benighted, by vandals and by villains.

Terry’s writing an autobiography, due before Christmas, which will recall the bad old days – so desperate, he recalls, that they arranged to have a guard dog chained up overnight in the clubhouse.

Someone stole the guard dog.

A hard place? “Oh yes,” said Terry. “If you had two ears in South Bank, they reckoned you were a cissy.”

Among those offering apologies were former rightwinger Geoff Cook, perhaps better remembered as an England cricketer and Durham’s cricket director. A year after a major heart attack, Geoff was completing the Great North Run.

Old favourites like Ged Hartley were there – “the best ten years of my football life,” he insisted – and goalkeeper Maurice Gormley, whose 405 appearances remain a club record.

Maurice is Irish, born on the once-infamous Falls Road in Belfast. “Clubs used to check my credentials before they’d let me in,” he said.

Back then, South Bank belched like a prepubescent pop-drinking competition, damn-and-blast furnace oft enshrouding the area.

Particularly Maurice remembered a Thursday night in 1986, a winter-delayed FA Trophy match against Wealdstone, from down south somewhere.

“We knew they wouldn’t like all the smoke and the smog and that night it was is if the works had turned it up specially. You could hardly see a thing.”

The Bankers won 2-1, the Wealdstone sub – a certain V Jones – perhaps mercifully unused. Four days later, 2,386 squeezed into Normanby Road for the quarter-final with Enfield.

Maurice recalls that it was like the iron and steel industry had suddenly signed up to the Clean Air Act. Visually unimpaired, the southerners saw their way to a 2-0 victory.

MIKE Howling looked in, too, carrying mementoes and recalling the day that his grandfather really did get on his bike.

Granddad was Teddy Howling, who kept goal for South Bank in the 1910 FA Amateur Cup final – lost 2-1 at Bishop Auckland to the Royal Marine Light Infantry (Gosport) – and won two England amateur caps, against Switzerland and Belgium.

Mike still treasures the Switzerland cap, still carried a photograph of the final – his grandfather flailing at the air a bit – still wondered about the family name.

“We’d never heard of it up here, but when we went on holiday to Great Yarmouth there were quite a few Howlings with their names above shops. I’m hoping to research the family tree.”

Teddy had been a blast furnaceman, summoned from his labours one Saturday morning. Goalkeeper Tim Williamson, who made 602 appearances for Middlesbrough and seven for England, had reported injured. Could Teddy come quickly?

He did, or as quickly as his push bike would carry him, made it to Ayresome Park on time. He played subsequently for Bradford City, broke his leg and returned, content, to Dorman’s.

BACK in 1868, South Bank had kicked off on the Cricket Ground, moved – doubtless celestially – to Paradise Field, moved to Normanby Road in 1889.

These days they’re in the Stockton Sunday League, sharing the Harcourt Road ground with the splendidly-named Eston Villa and with Middlesbrough Homeless (that well-known contradiction in football terms.) Before the afternoon formalities, we catch the second half of the cup match, 10.30 kick off, with Grangefield Park club secretary Peter Livingstone already having hauled off one of his own players for persistent foul play.

The gentlemen not only removed his shirt but kicked it, thereby ensuring that he’d never play for South Bank again. “No one kicks that shirt,” says Peter.

Fifty years a Banker – “we only got married on a Saturday because the league hadn’t given us a fixture that day” – he also helps run the Ellis Cup, cradles it like a midwife with a newborn.

Also founded in 1889, still annually contested on Teesside, the Ellis includes among its protagonists Sir Matt Busby – Portrack Shamrocks v Cargo Fleet Home Guard, 1946.

The Stockton Sunday League is one of those allowed by the FA to use up to seven subs on a roll on, roll off basis. “You have to remember what usually happens on the Saturday night before,” says Peter.

Neither half-time nor added time appear to have been allowed, the referee blowing the final whistle as the church clock strikes 12, lest he find himself with 22 pumpkins.

South Bank win 6-0, perpetuating Peter’s eternal optimism about the enchanted city. “We’ll be 150 in 2018, I really want to have a proper ground and be back in the Northern League by then. They didn’t really throw us out, they suspended us. We’re just getting our second wind.”