The Farther Corner, Harry Pearson's North-East football book

The Far Corner was so highly regarded after it was first published in 1995 that Pearson was resistant to the idea of an immediate follow-up for fear of tarnishing its reputation.

The book took an affectionate look at North-East football at all levels and followed the author on a season-long journey around the region’s grounds.

Now, 25 years on, Pearson has decided the time is finally ripe for a new chapter with the publication of The Farther Corner.

The front cover of The Farther Corner, written by Harry Pearson

“It seems like a long time, but a lot of things have changed in my life, in football and the North-East since then,” said Pearson’

“Back then I would look at these white haired men with their anoraks thinking ‘how have they got here and why are they here?’ – and suddenly it dawned on me that I was now one of them.”

Now aged 59, Pearson’s “sentimental return to North-East football” again sees him visiting some of the region’s lesser-known footballing corners – Dunston UTS, Ryton and Crawcrook Albion, Heaton Stannington and Newton Aycliffe among the teams he watched in the 2018/19 season and documented in the new book.

As well as describing the matches, players and officials he saw, Pearson offers wry observations on the crowd, the journeys to and from the games and many other things on the periphery of the matches – although, he says, that is all part of the North-East game.

“It is a football book, but I think all the best sports writing is about other things as well,” said Pearson.

“Sport is wrapped up in life. It’s very much wrapped up in its communities and in the world around it.”

Community is very much at the heart of The Farther Corner – and Pearson argues that non-league football is still very much at the heart of North-East communities.

He recalls that when he first started to go to football in the 1960s with his grandfather, top level footballers could often be seen in local shops or driving down the street.

“The players were part of the community and understood what the community thought of their clubs,”he said.

“It seems to me that the Premier League, the players and the clubs, have got more distant from their communities they serve. They have as much to do with their communities as McDonald’s does.

“Non-league clubs still have that connection to their communities and the fans are still important at that level. I like that.”

Harry Pearson

Because fans of clubs he follows are unused to success, it makes even the smallest victories seem even sweeter.

Pearson says one of the greatest games he has ever been to was an FA Cup qualifying tie at Dunston UTS, when they pulled off an unlikely victory, a match documented in The Farther Corner..

“That was a fantastic game, all the people around the club were so excited. The atmosphere was so hyper, people were so pleased,” he said.

.Pearson’s frequently irreverent take on the matches he’s seen and the places he’s been to has never got him into trouble.

“I think people understood in The Far Corner if I took the p*** out of things it’s affectionate,” he said.

“It’s like taking the mickey out of your your own family – and I take the mickey out of myself more than anyone else.. No-one’s ever said to me that they were annoyed by it.”

Of course, like most other football fans, Pearson has been starved of match action this year due to the coronavirus. And he, for one, can wait for the fans to be allowed to return properly.

“It’s quite a social thing for me because I work from home. When I go out on a Saturday and go to a game, there’s someone I know at pretty much every club, he said.

“They’re people from outside my normal circle of friends but you can stand and have a chat about football so I do miss that a lot.”