Fog On The Tyne

FC Geordie   7  Bilborough Town Development   0

Notts Senior League – Division Two North

The journey from Long Bennington to Calverton was relatively straightforward and painless, so much so I was happily parked outside the Village Hall a good ten minutes before my scheduled second game of the day was due to kick off.

Calverton, for the ill-informed, is a village just to the North East of Nottingham, with Hucknall to the West of it, but not a lot else around it other than fields and some significantly smaller villages of modest consequence.

I’ll be honest, I’ve only been to Calverton twice in my life before, both times they were to watch games involving Calverton Miners Welfare, firstly when they were a Notts Senior League side, and then when they had moved into the Central Midlands League. Interestingly enough, when I first went, the club secretary of ‘Calvo’ was John Daniel, a former left back at Belper Town and old friends of my parents (my Dad was his Best Man). His Son Tom played for Calvo, but not long after that I think both Tom and Dad moved on, to where I don’t know.

Anyroadup, as has been well documented by these blog pages, the Notts Senior League invited the whole World to join it’s ranks in the Summer, and now it has more leagues than a Jules Verne novel, stretching from Colsterworth near Grantham, to Newark, across to Worksop and down into Leicestershire at East Leake. It’s a beast of a competition now, the downloading of the handbook, despite it’s early inaccuracies, was almost as important as uploading the Track & Trace App (I said ‘almost’ as important, not ‘as’ important for those of you about to go on a moral crusade!)

So, FC Geordie, what’s in a name?

Firstly, you could forgive someone for thinking they were a Newcastle based team, but clearly, even a league like the Central Midlands for example (other leagues are available) wouldn’t be so daft as to include a team 200 miles away in their footprint, but there must be a connection to Tyneside?

An Interweb search didn’t really help, they have a Twitter account, which again, doesn’t give any indication of the clubs origins, other than the fact the club badge says they were formed in 2009, and the red and black stripes are more akin to AC Milan than Newcastle United!

They do have a Latin motto though, ‘Nos Venit, Nos Aw, Nos Victum’, which translates to ‘We Arrived, We Saw, We Conquered’, which disappointed me somewhat, I was hoping it would have meant something like ‘Whay Aye Lad, Gazza Like, Wor Jackie’, but not so, and still no obvious connections to the Tyne Bridge?

I then made an assumption, and this was very much an assumption, that whoever formed the club was a Geordie, but, due to the clubs colours not strictly a United fan? Crikey, this is like watching ‘Through The Keyhole’, who plays in a kit like this? Put simply, no Newcastle fan would ever have red as a colour, not the deadly rivals the Mackems colours, surely?

Anyway, I was wrong on so many levels, it’s nothing to do with football, it seems the Working Men’s Club in Calverton is known as ‘The Geordie Club’. Some smart arse might now want to ask why that is, well I don’t know, and to be honest, I’ve not got much of an inclination to find out, other than the above paragraph might have the answer, the person who formed it etc etc……..

Calverton Village Hall is a nice place, a large building adorns the site which looks relatively recently build, while in front of it is a car park, albeit on a match day, it looked to be full to capacity and beyond. To the side of the building is a large and again, relatively new looking children’s play area that to be honest knocks spots off what play areas used to be like when we were kids. You had to go to Alton Towers for the kind of rides and equipment kids have got nowadays!

Then set behind a hedge is the football pitch, and what a fantastically manicured surface it is, clearly looked after by someone, or some organisation, and for saying it’s in a communal area, to keep it in the condition it’s in is a credit to those that care for it and the community as a whole.

FC Geordie went into the game sat on three points from their opening two games thanks to a 9-1 victory at Beeston Development, which followed an opening day 2-1 defeat at Pythian Reserves.

Visiting Bilborough Town Development had edged a close game at Brinsley on the opening day before losing at home to Beeston Old Boys, so it was a tough game to call in advance of the kick off.

It was clear at outset that the visitors were a very young side, whereas the Geordies had the look of a team that had been together a while, having been in the Notts & Midland Amateur Alliance last time around.

It was definitely the Geordies day, and while Bilborough had plenty of the ball and had a few lads that were a bit of a handful, it was the hosts who were simply too ruthless against a side who to be fair, were victims of their own downfall when it came to defending, especially balls over the top.

Troy Smith was the destroyer in chief with four of the goals, while Daniel Gallagher, Corey Ashley and Chris Jackson all found the net to take the final total to seven.

By the final whistle, all was now pretty quiet in the park, having been very busy when I first arrived, maybe they were off home to prepare for a night at the Geordie, you have to start early these days what with the 10pm curfew………