Giantkilling is on the cards at Spennymoor and South Shields this weekend – Colin Young reports
On FA Cup First Round weekend, two ambitious underdogs from the North East host teams from the Football League – where both hope to be before too long.
This Saturday, November 1, Spennymoor Town of the sixth-tier National League North welcome Barrow of League Two. Then on Sunday lunchtime, South Shields play Shrewsbury Town, the pair separated by the same two rungs of the league pyramid.
The FA Cup couldn’t find a more suitable place to sprinkle its magic than Spennymoor’s Brewery Field. A tiny ground in the middle of a housing estate in Tudhoe Village, on the outskirts of this former mining community, it holds around 4,300, including an unusual, small standing area for away supporters in the far corner.
It also has a significant slope, despite the fortune chairman/owner Brad Groves has ploughed into rectifying it. This anomaly, of course, has become one of their Spennymoor’s strengths, and will test Barrow’s resilience on Saturday.
According to Spenny defender Olly Dyson, Barrow won’t feel comfortable playing on Brewery Field: “A lot of their players won’t have experienced a ground like ours. It’ll be a shock to the system. It doesn’t look like much from the outside but it’s small and it’s hard to get a result here”.
“They’ve done a lot of work on the pitch over the years but I remember being on the opposing side here and you can definitely feel that slope. It’s intimidating. If it’s 0-0 coming to half-time, and you know you’ve got to play uphill in the second half, it gets in your head.”
Dyson should know – he was in the Barrow squad that made the Football League for the first time in 48 years in 2020. Last season he dropped a division to join Spennymoor on loan from National League York. His new club duly finished a point outside the play-offs, and runners-up in the FA Trophy after a Wembley final defeat to Aldershot.
Voted Player of the Season, Dyson was soon offered a permanent deal. He now works part-time for a bathroom company in Wakefield and travels to training in Billingham twice a week in a pool car with three team-mates.
The Barrow players and management team have completely since Dyson was making his trips from home in West Yorkshire to Cumbria. He knows manager Andrew Whing and his players will not be looking forward to their trip to County Durham.
“Barrow are a good club, the fans are great. They’ve been in the league for a few years now and they have some very good players who have helped establish them. We know it’s going to be a very tough game for us.”
“I had a great time at Barrow. We used to train at a college in Manchester during the week and then, for home games, we’d stay in a really nice hotel, about a mile from the ground, but right in the middle of nowhere.”
“The food was fantastic. We’d have a nice sit-down meal, and then just chill, play cards or the Xbox. It created a brilliant team bond and spirit. It was completely different because normally you’d only have a few hotel nights in a season but we did it nearly every week.”
Hardly the stuff of sloping pitches and corner huddles of shivering away fans. Now led by former Hartlepool player and manager Graeme ‘Spike’ Lee, they’ve been funded by local businessman Brad Groves for more than a decade. After climbing the pyramid with reformed local rivals Darlington on their tails, they are now looking to reach the next step on the ladder and hit the heights of the National League.
While the club has never reached the FA Cup Second Round, it has tasted cup success, winning the FA Vase in 2013, then beating Rochdale and Sutton United to reach last year’s FA Trophy final at Wembley. “I’ve never been too worried about the FA Trophy before, because I’ve always thought concentrating on the league was the most important thing but getting to Wembley, playing there, there is nothing like it”.
“The build-up, the game, full time, seeing our families together afterwards, the club did everything properly and it was all part of a brilliant day. We might have lost but it was fantastic for the players, families and the whole town. I think we all want a taste of it again.”
Twenty-five miles north-east of Spennymoor on the North Sea coast, many in South Shields are also dreaming. Their cup game against League Two strugglers Shrewsbury on Sunday is the TNT live midday match. Their Mariners Park ground will feel like the whole town has turned out.
The Mariners currently sit top of the National League North, ahead of Fylde on goal difference and nine points above Spennymoor just inside the play-off places. Recently relegated Shrewsbury, meanwhile, hover just above their own drop zone out of the Football League.
South Shields captain Robbie Tinkler is a former FA Trophy winner with Gateshead. He was brought to Mariners Park this summer by manager Ian Watson, who had tried to sign him at his previous post as assistant coach at MK Dons.
Like Groves down the A1 at Spennymoor, local businessman Geoff Thompson has powered Shields’ return journey up the leagues after they, too, were forced to fold and re-form.
Tinkler senses the aspiration around his new club: “If you look around, you can see it. The infrastructure is there, the training facilities are top-notch, the whole community is behind us and if you’re not striving for that target, then what are you really doing?”
“Shrewsbury are a League Two club. That’s where we want to be and that’s the ambition at this club, which is one of the main reasons I signed. Whether it comes off is another thing, that’s up to us and the staff but if you’re not aiming for that then you’re standing still.”
“When you’ve had a good start to a season, you start hearing people tell you that you can do this and do that but this is a real test of where you are.”
“Shrewsbury are a good side. Physically and emotionally, especially for the young lads because the ground will be full and everyone will be up for it. It’s a taste of where I’m at too and I can’t wait.”
Tinkler, 29, is the son of Hartlepool legend John and he fell in love with the idea of becoming a professional footballer when watching his dad play in Pools’ ‘Invincibles’ team in the 1980s.
Today John – ‘The Flying Dutchman’ to Pools fans – travels up and down the country, hardly missing a South Shields match. “He loves it,” says Tinkler junior. “Going all over the country, grabbing a pint or two and taking in all the grounds. My mam comes along occasionally – to the better trips like Torquay, anyway.”
“And he still has plenty to say to us after a game. It reminds me of those Saturday nights, when he’d pick up on my mistakes, and mam would look up from Strictly and tell him to back off. I wasn’t quite old enough or brave enough to have a go back then but that’s changed…”
“It’s great to have him there every week. When you get to this age, you look back at the lads you played alongside when you were younger – some made it, some didn’t, some won’t have kicked a ball since, some have had decent careers. I’ve played at Wembley, got more than 200 appearances under my belt, so I think I’ve done alright. But, yes, of course, I still want more.”
Spennymoor Town v Barrow, Brewery Field, Wood Vue, Spennymoor DL16 6JN. Saturday, November 1, 3pm.
South Shields v Shrewsbury Town, Mariners Park (aka 1st Cloud Arena), Shaftsbury Avenue, South Shields, NE32 3UP. Sunday, November 2, 1pm.
