Triangle grinding

THE East Durham Triangle is a strange and terrible place. Football clubs just disappear there.

What, in recent times, of Shotton Comrades and of Eppleton CW, good Northern League sides vanished without trace?

What, a little further back, of wellsupported teams like Dawdon, Wingate, and the once-mighty Blackhall Colliery? Gone to flowers, every one.

What of Murton, just relegated to the second tier of the Northern Alliance, or of Peterlee Newtown? The town is new no longer, the consuming apathy equally familiar.

Just three East Durham clubs – Seaham Red Star, Horden and Eas- Ington Colliery – survived in the Northern League this season. They are the bottom three in the second division, Easington already relegated back to the Wearside League when they hosted Esh Winning last Wednesday.

The ground’s approached along the avenue of trees that commemorates the 81 miners and two rescue workers who died in the terrible explosion of May 29, 1951. On a dank and drear evening, the setting seems suitably lugubrious.

The little clubhouse is hung with memories of better days, of teams where stripe-shirted players might be outnumbered by committee men in flat caps and waistcoats, watches chained timelessly to the bottom pockets.

Barely a decade ago, indeed, Easington played Chester City in the last qualifying round of the FA Cup, Sky TVs cameraman perched precariously atop the dugout, the rainsoaked crowd approaching 1,000.

Last Wednesday evening, the crowd was fewer than 20, the paying crowd possibly half as many and the paying crowd from Easington perhaps two.

Probably the club wouldn’t exist at all but for Andy Colledge, a taxi driver from Sunderland who took over its running after yet another crisis in mid-season.

Colledge education, perhaps, it has certainly been a learning curve.

“There’s just been so much to do and so very few people to do it,” he says.

Problems have increased overnight after local ne’er-do-wells broke into the generator room, kicked out the cables and stole the diesel.

Without floodlights, the game kicks off at 7pm, the rain scudding in from the shrouded North Sea, the wind rattling the perfunctory little stand, the corrugated iron banging like a bit house door in a gale. Down in the once-vibrant village, an ice cream van chimes out of joint, optimism frozen at about five degrees.

Horden manager Peter Mulcaster, 66, is among the crepuscular crowd, trying gloomily to see better times ahead. “It’s mainly the attitude of the players,” says Peter.

“If they play at all, they’d rather play on a Sunday morning because the pubs aren’t open then.” At least some of them aren’t, he adds.

There, too, is the sedulous Sixer, aiming for 200 matches this season.

“I might have to include one or two in Scotland in May,” he supposes.

The light’s dimmed, the game doomed. Across the roofs the floodlights of Peterlee Newtown, becalmed in the Alliance, can be seen.

Peterlee’s lights are pretty good, but ineffective from a mile and a half.

Referee Peter Osgood abandons it after 71 minutes, Esh Winning leading 3-0. The result will stand, Easington may not.

“To be honest, things look pretty desperate,” says the admirable Mr Colledge. “I’m literally doing everything.

We don’t have one supporter from Easington. It was one of the last pits to close and when it did the big London landlords bought up a lot of the houses. They aren’t colliery people any longer.”

Inevitably there are counter attractions, too. “You drive in and you see the clubs showing every Sunderland and Newcastle match on television in the warm. We’re asking £4 to stand out in the cold. What are they going to do? I charge £1.50 for a can and even then they’re cheaper than we are. “ On Tuesday, he resigned. The East Durham Triangle may be about to swallow up its latest victim.

NONE knows the finer points of the East Durham Triangle – the area that produced England internationals like Stan Anderson and Colin Bell, 20-year pros like Bob Taylor – better than Brian Honour.

Born and raised in Horden, these days down the road in Blackhall, he made almost 400 appearances for Hartlepool United and now coaches, among other places, at East Durham College, in Peterlee.

Five days after the Easington twilight, we’re chatting in the college canteen. That day’s paper has a book review about Britain’s grimmest places, Easington ineluctably in their midst.

The author hadn’t seen a soul under 40. “Easington is the most economically deprived community in the United Kingdom,” he concluded.

Brian’s 48, still known as Jackie around the coalhouse doors of the Durham coast, effortlessly recalls better days. He remembers how his elder brothers, Allen and Raymond, played for Wingate against Wingate Wanderers – “hundreds upon hundreds there” – how the Christmas road between Horden and Blackhall would be wick with folk heading for the derby, how coach after coach would arrive for the big games at Horden.

“At half past five, the clubhouses would be like New Year’s Eve. It was fantastic, it really was.”

Until last Christmas, he was Horden’s manager, developed a successful youth policy – “I have lots of contacts” – but couldn’t even pay the players’ expenses.

“The chairman and I went begging round all the businesses, all the shops, but if they haven’t much money coming in, they’re not going to give what they have to Northern League football. It’s no coincidence that when the pits closed, everything else went to pot as well. Once Horden had 17 pubs and clubs, a half in every one and you’d be tiddly. If you’d been away for ten to 15 years, you wouldn’t recognise the place. It’s heartbreaking to see.”

The Premiership has much for which to answer, the television has much for which to answer but, so he supposes, have the big club academies.

“A lad of eight is probably playing on Saturdays and Sundays and training three or four other times a week.

When he gets to 16 he’s fed up. He’s been playing at places like this – bowling green pitches, excellent gym facilities, excellent training facilities and suddenly you’re asking him to turn out on a clarty pitch on a wet night at Tow Law.

“It’s a bit cliche-ish, but once they’d spend ten hours underground and come up still longing to play football. Now young kids of 16 and 17 want their football all frilly and fancy. They’re just not mentally attuned any more.”

At Hartlepool he was named player of the decade for the 1990s and was third in the player of the century voting.

The most agreeable of men, he now coaches around 300 youngsters a week, more bibs than Mothercare.

So what would he do if another Northern League club offered him a job? “Well, my wife might have something to say, but you can still smell the Oxo, can’t you. You never say never, but it’s hard to see things around here getting any better. In ten years time, who knows, there mightn’t be a club to manage at all.”