Harry Pearson at Meadow Park.
Author and journalist Harry Pearson is into his second spell of Northern League football. Last week, he took in the entertaining match between RCA and Washington in what was, I think, his first visit to Meadow Park. I asked Harry if he could pen a few words for us about what Northern League football means to him and here they are.
I first went to a Northern League game when I was writing The Far Corner. The original idea was that the book would be mainly about the North-East’s ‘big three’ with a few bits about non-League. That all changed when I heard my first cry of ‘Away Liner, get involved’ from one of the old blokes in car coats who used to stalk the touchlines back then. After that I went to a lot more Northern League games than League matches. There was so much material from the crowds it practically wrote itself.
I carried on going to NL games after The Far Corner came out, but at some point – birth of a child and all that sort of thing – I stopped. A few years ago, thanks to a friend who was involved with a couple of clubs, I was lured back to watch a game at North Shields. Last season I went to about twenty games, this season I’ve already been to fourteen. It’s all been helped by the fact that there seems to be a small pack of like-minded people round my age who – disillusioned with the cost of Premiership and Championship football – have turned their backs on it and taken to NL. I can now almost guarantee that any game I go to I’ll bump into one of them and we’ll sit munching Kit Kats and reminiscing about Tony Parks’ high-wasted shorts and other nonsense.
Since 1994 crowds have risen at NL games and there are a lot more young fans. Though that perception may just be a sign that I’ve got older. The standard of football is high for the cost – the inverse of the Football league where – as one national newspaper journalist recently said to me – you often pay thirty quid to watch £15 footballers. This season I’ve seen 56 goals for an average of £1.36 per goal – I doubt Man City will ever get comparable value from Raheem Sterling.
I write a column each month in When Saturday Comes and quite often cover things that have cropped up at NL games – the one last month was about going to watch Julio Arca play for South Shields at Brandon.
- The First Thirty Years Are The Worst - Harry Pearson’s football blog
- When Saturday Comes
- The Far Corner - in case you lent your copy to your mate and never got it back.