Two Rooms And A View: 80 – A Very Successful Season
Robert Owen recalls his footballing days, when manners on the pitch were much better than they are today.
To read earlier chapters of Robert’s autobiography please click on Two Rooms And A View in the menu on this page.
The Battalion team played their home games at the Dragon and used to change in Ernie's garden hut. He had an allotment on the area between the then Westoe Colliery and the Bents Park. On this allotment, he had built a very large and a much smaller garden hut.
The large hut had been fitted out with benches and twenty-two pegs and this was used as changing accommodation for the two teams. The smaller hut at the bottom of the garden was reserved for the referee. Neither hut had any lighting, heating or water supply, yet there were few complaints, the main one being that the accommodation was about 400 yards from the pitch.
During each game, we used to leave our bikes outside in Ernie's garden and our clothes and possessions in the locked but unprotected hut, without any fear of its being broken into or vandalised.
How our team manager got away with using his allotment hut for changing accommodation for so long amazed all of us. In addition, Ernie conscientiously used to collect all our football strips after each game and turn up the following week with them all laundered and pressed.
For this and half an orange at half time, we paid 1/- (5p) per week subscriptions. This also included an hour’s training each week at Cleadon School Gymnasium, when who should be the instructor but Jim Storey from my town schoolboy days. For financial reasons, Ernie had to guarantee double figure attendance every Wednesday, and as we had only thirteen signed players, this was not easy. Anyone absent from the mid-week training session had a lot of explaining to do the following Saturday.
Playing for a principled team like the Boys' Brigade, other teams in the league may have thought that we were a set of overgrown choir boys. We soon proved them wrong. I do however remember Ernie ordering 'no spitting'. 'No swearing or arguing with the referee' was taken for granted.
Fifty years later I am amazed by the amount of spitting that is allowed in first class football. Many of us used to carry a handkerchief and this was not uncommon in the fifties. John Gibson (1990) states that Jackie Milburn used to play with a white handkerchief tightly clenched in one of his fists and players often had a handkerchief tucked up the long sleeve of their shirt.
As the season progressed, we found we had an above average side in a league of twelve teams. The pitches were satisfactory and the changing accommodation was usually better than ours - except for the well-known Cleadon Juniors. They played at Farding Lake Farm near Cleadon Hills and used part of an old farm building as a dressing room. To say it wasn't becoming of such a good team would be a gross understatement.
At the end of the season the Division 2 League table read as follows:-
P W D L Pts
S. Shields Boys Brigade 22 15 7 0 37
Cleadon Juniors ‘B’ 22 16 7 3 35
Jarrow Metals Juniors 22 15 3 4 35
Hebburn St Aloy’ B.C. 22 12 5 5 29
Hebburn Power House Y.C. 22 10 5 7 25
Palmers Juniors 22 8 6 8 22
S. Shields Juniors ‘B’ 22 8 3 11 19
Readheads Juniors 22 7 1 14 15
C.I.C. Welfare Juniors 22 6 3 13 15
Marsden Juniors ‘B’ 22 6 2 14 14
Cleadon St. Cuthberts 22 3 6 13 12
S. Shields St Gregg 22 3 2 17 8
We also won the North of England Boys' Brigade Pitrie Cup.
In winning the league championships we scored 108 goals but only conceded 25 in 22 games. My colleague Cyril Halliday scored 26 before leaving early for national service, while Brownless, Carr and Thompson all contributed 22 goals each.
One of the highlights of the season was when the team got through to the fourth round of the Durham Junior Cup - a competition open to all junior teams in the county. We were drawn at home against Croxdale Juniors - a colliery team with a high reputation from south of Durham.
Most colliery teams in the fifties had a first-class ground, with top-class changing rooms to match. Our visitors lived up to that standard by arriving in an official coach, something unknown in the J.O.C. League. Their faces had to be seen to be believed when they saw the sloping cinder-like pitch at the Dragon with no goal nets. After a 400 yard walk through the allotments and seeing our primitive changing accommodation, somebody remarked, "We have better hen crees in Croxdale!"
"Where are the showers?" another member of the team asked.
Fed up with their showing off, one of my colleagues replied, "You passed them on your way up, the tap for watering the allotments. We all strip off and have a cold shower on the way back after each game!"
That shut them up because their manager looked disgusted and said, "We will change in our coach."
The unfortunate part was that after a strongly fought game, we lost by two goals to nil, one of only three cup-ties we lost all season.
Because it was such an important cup-tie, Ernie and his committee arranged for a meal for both teams after the game. We all went to Colman's Cafe in Ocean Road for fish and chips. I don't know yet where the money came from!
At the end of a very successful season, a presentation evening with a meal and music was held at St Andrew's Church on Tuesday, 10th July. Someone knew a local professional footballer called Johnson who played for Gateshead and he was invited to present the J.O.C. League Division 2 Shield and medals. John Chalmers, the Battalion president presented the North of England B.B. cup and a new set of strips.
That evening in July 1951 was the last I saw of about half the team because they were too old for the next season.
