Open Writing

Football, however, was the reason I joined the B.B. and I was not disappointed. There were about fourteen teams in the battalion football league and we played matches on a Saturday afternoon at Cleadon Hills, Ridgeway and at the cinder-based Dragon at the southern end of the Bents Park.

Several theories exist as to how the Dragon got its name. Perhaps the most credible is, that it was informally named by the local children who, during the early part of the 20th century, perceived the shape of a dragon in the steam-driven earth moving equipment that was used on the site to level and redistribute the dumped ballast from ships on the River Tyne.

By 1947, the 'Dragon' had moved a little further south. I recall watching many corporation dustbin wagons weaving like ants as they sought an area to dump their contents of cinders and ash, which many years later provided the base for Frenchmen's Lea.

Of the three venues where our B.B. football matches were played, only the Dragon had any goal posts. Even then, this did not include a crossbar. The portable goal posts were supplied through the time and devotion of a B.B. officer called Ernie Gardner. He had an allotment on the area between Bents Park and the yet to be developed Westoe Colliery. The downside was that we had to collect and return the goal posts to Ernie's garden shed before and after each game.

Still, this was luxury compared to playing at Cleadon Hills or Ridgeway where players' clothes were also used as goal posts. No changing accommodation existed. Bikes as well as clothes were left behind the goals for the goalkeeper to watch.

We were the only team in the league without a strip and one week, somebody suggested that we should each play in an old white shirt. As several teams already played in white, it was further suggested that we should ask our respective mothers to dye these white shirts to a chosen colour. The elected colour was maroon.

The next week many mothers had been busy and the team turned out in a variety of maroon-coloured strips. However, several were more brown than maroon and this was explained when one member of the team said in a broad Geordie voice, "I thought we agreed 'broon' was to be our colour. What colour is maroon?"

Playing football at the Dragon was not a pleasant experience. The surface was a mixture of cinders and ash - the product of years of tipping ships' ballast there during the early years of the century. The pitch also sloped sideways and it always seemed to be raining, frozen hard, or blowing a gale. Yet the demand was high and we used to have an early and a late kick-off to get all the games played. If a westerly gale was blowing, games were often held up while the ball was rescued from the promenade or even the beach.

The average age of our team was about 13 years and every team we played seemed to be two or three years older. They were also taller, heavier and often better footballers. The outcome was that we usually got beaten very easily, as the following records for the 1947/48 season confirm.

Played 25, Won 3, Lost 18, Drawn 4, Goals For 30, Goals Against 156, Points 10.

Seven teams scored ten or more goals against us, and two of the three games we won were against 'B' (second) teams. Our third success was the highlight of the season, when we beat our old rivals, the 17th Company (Talbot Road Methodists) by three goals to one at the Ridgeway on 13th February, 1948.

Records indicate that their goal was scored by a lad called Hornby. Was this the same Richard (Dick) Hornby who later played cricket for South Shields and Durham County intermittently from 1955-1978?

The B.B. League was so popular that it had a weekly column in each Saturday's Green Football Gazette. The heading on 21st January, 1950, read, "18th Company bottom of the League." Little did the writer know we had been there for the last three years!

David Deacon was captain of our team and with Cyril Halliday, scored most of our goals. Billy Jermain was our key man in defence and he and I concluded that we had done our job well if we had kept the opponents' score down to single figures.

In addition to being a good footballer, David was an exceptional sprinter. He scored most of our goals because we put the ball over the defenders' heads and nobody could catch him. Some people said that we were like each other and occasionally I was taken for his younger brother.

The 18th B.B. Company football team in early 1947 would perhaps have been better named 'The Egerton Square Mob'. This was because most of the eleven came from that former well-known square that used to exist off Egerton Road.

They used to arrive together on bikes minutes before kick-off time and then disappear just as quickly, immediately after the final whistle. After one game, I casually asked, "What's the hurry?"

I was told equally casually that they were off 'to read the Bible'. As a very naive young lad of 12 years of age, I thought how appropriate this was for a church-orientated B.B. team. It was not until many weeks later that I accidentally found out that in Egerton Square language, 'reading the bible' meant playing cards.