For my second Boxing Day game I headed north for an hour or so to Blyth. I was there early enough to be able to leave the car outside the Gateway Park ground. With plenty of time to kick-off I made my way through a housing estate and followed a beck until I reached the sea.
It was busy, with people walking their dogs and strolling along the promenade. You have to stroll on a promenade, it’s compulsory.
With kick-off approaching I retraced my steps and handed over the six quid for admission. I was soon relieved of another two pounds for a raffle. I’m not really sure why I bother as the only thing I’ve ever won at one of these games is a trucker’s cap advertising engine oil. Maybe I should re-train as a lorry driver to get some use out of it.
Gateway Park has a small seventy-seater covered stand and I was there early enough to nab a seat before most of the crowd had left the clubhouse. There was a smaller adjoining standing area for latecomers with others lining the pitch perimeter and many of the two-hundred plus crowd nursing pints that seemed out of place on a cold winter’s afternoon.
Home side Blyth Town are a fairly recently established club, dating back to 1995. I had a look in the online programme and they had only made it into the Northern League around three seasons ago. The visitors, Bedlington Terriers, have a more illustrious history. They’ve been around for the past eighty years or so and hit a purple patch around the millennium when they won five Northern League Division One titles on the trot.
This fixture was in the Second Division and both sides were handily placed for promotion with Blyth in second place and Bedlington just one spot behind them. They both trailed leaders Newcastle Blue Star by a single point.
There weren’t many chances in the first half and the most excitement came whenever a wayward shot ended up in the car park. As I’d bought out the insurance excess on my hire car I had little skin in that game other, I suppose, than the inconvenience of having to have a windscreen replaced before driving home.
At the break I wandered into the clubhouse and had a look around. For a club with a short history, Blyth had a lot of trophies on display. As I bought a Bovril the bloke next to me let me know, with some delight, that Blyth Spartans were winning at South Shields three divisions up. Clearly there isn’t much of a local rivalry between the Blyth clubs, or at least not as far as that fella was concerned.
Blyth took the lead not long after the re-start with a strong header at the back post. They doubled their lead on seventy minutes with what may well have been intended to be another header but looked as if it might well have actually bounced off someone’s back.
The trusted tactic of a lofted ball into the box paid off for a third time with a cleaner headed connection as the clock ran down. The goal sealed the win for Blyth and opened up a gap between the teams in the battle for a top two spot.
Trail of the Lion King 
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