Hopping mad

We’d pioneered such weekends between 1992 and 1996, so popularly that folk clamoured to return.

Though shadows grow shorter and lenses ever longer, it was a sort of ground hop, ground hog day.

One man, his dog and pie and chips, at Ryton

The idea was to watch 11 football matches in four days, 12 if a Thursday night warm-up were included.

Organiser Harvey Harris, a retired former head of Darlington CID, is still very much on the case.

The mood’s convivial, the accent cosmopolitan, the collective noun perhaps a rucksack. They have nicknames like Guatemala and Veggie Burger, like Imitation and HBB, which stands for Hairy Bearded Bloke. HBB may be a little confusing.

Half the Hoppers are hairy bearded blokes.

They share 1990s memories like the Blyth Razor, the Fill-yer-Boots Buffet at Hebburn, the crossbar at Prudhoe and the Shotton Colliery ball boy (who parachuted into the centre circle from a light aircraft).

Most of all they tell tales of the Esh Winning monsoon.

There are survivors of the Esh Winning monsoon who wear it as a badge of honour, like GI veterans from the first Vietnam War, Another chap so greatly resembles the Railway Children’s father that it’s possible at any moment to imagine a tearful little girl running up, shouting “Daddy, my Daddy.”

If not quite from football’s lunatic fringe, the Hoppers are perceived as escapees from Oddball Alley. It is a calumny. They are brilliant people: passionate, knowledgeable, friendly, articulate and inexorably hungry. “It’s like catering for locusts,” says seasoned traveller Chris Berezei.

Ryton Albion (blue/black) v Whickham (red/black). Whickham attack from a corner

Almost to a man, they also remember what their mothers taught them about saying their thank-yous, though the maternal advice not to speak with a full mouth is rather less well observed.

Though it’s hard to hop when you’re on your knees, the column joined them, nonetheless.

MAUNDY THURSDAY: Brandon United v Willington isn’t an official part of the Hop, rather it’s the warm-up match.

There are those who suppose there are more temperate places in which to warm up than Brandon.

Many faces are familiar from 20 years previously. Some have gone up in the world, notably Mr Gary Brand, a London bus conductor who has flown from Heathrow and is still staying at the Newcastle Airport Hilton.

“You get a free hot chocolate muffin at reception,” he says, another star to the Hilton firmament. We have not heard the last of Mr Brand.

The crowd’s 150, four or five times normal. The pies have sold out before kick-off, the programme’s having to be reprinted. Brandon’s manager is the wonderful Vince Kirkup, an old friend of the column’s who not only works for nothing, but sponsors the stand – and by every account not just for a coat of paint, either.

On a good night, the only malcontent is a lady in Bournemouth who, because the club secretary’s mobile phone number is inadvertently listed as her own, is growing rather tired of being asked what time the kick-off might be. Half past seven.

Match in play: Bishop Auckland (blue) v Crook Town (yellow) with Bishop's Stuart Thompson and Crook's Marc Ellison

GOOD FRIDAY: There’s a history of football trophies being lost in unfortunate circumstances.

None will forget Jules Rimet and Pickles; fewer may recall that, in 1932, the Durham Challenge Cup couldn’t be presented because Crook Town secretary Fred Peart had left it beneath the bed.

What it was doing there in the first place has never satisfactorily been explained.

All this comes to mind because I’m on the 9.08 from Darlington to Newcastle and thence on the Metro to North Shields, carrying the Northern League second division trophy – precious, beribboned, Brasso bright – in a Rainbow Trust charity bag.

“Mind, you’ve got a canny bit bait there,” says one of the lads on the train.

“Make sure the police don’t stop you for pinching the bag from someone’s doorstep,” says the lady of the house.

The inscription says that the trophy was presented in 1906 by the makers of Oxo. Clearly, it came from good stock.

The North Shields crowd is a quite remarkable 1,312, including club president Malcolm Macdonald – the great Supermac, who now shoots on two new knees.

It almost doesn’t include 75-yearold Northern League secretary Tony Golightly who, standing with his back to goal during the pre-match warm-up, is struck on the back of the head by a misplaced fizzer and goes down like a concrete trawler.

Happily, he soon comes round.

“You’re supposed to hit the net, not the league secretary,” he says.

Already champions, North Shields beat West Allotment Celtic 3-0 –the first time in nine years’ presidency that Supermac has seen a home win.

“I sometimes think they must dread me coming through the gate,” he says.

It’s not far to the next game, at Whitley Bay, the travellers seemingly joined by two-thirds of Tyneside en route to a sunny bank holiday at the coast.

The crowd’s 588, the atmosphere fraternal, the old plates of meat already starting to play up. The day’s final match is at Ashington against Crook Town, but I’m committed to a family gathering. It may be just as well.

EASTER SATURDAY: Jarrow Roofing v Heaton Stanningon, but all the talk’s of the match the previous evening. Ashington have won 7-3, the 597 crowd improbably augmented by a horse of which someone has a splendid photograph.

The horse, as they say, has gone viral.

The Jarrow crowd also includes a barefoot Ground Hopper called Steve Rough – wasn’t it Jemima Puddleduck who also went barefoot?

– and Paul Proctor, who has a Facebook page with 152 members called Non League Bins.

To some surprise, Mr Brand seems not to have his photograph on it. He’s a great lad, understand, a particularly great lad for a Spurs supporter, but as trenchermen go, this guy could have dug for victory single-handedly.

After the Teesside parmo, he is also credited with the invention of a new North-East delicacy, the pie burger.

There’s a Dutch visitor called Erik who’d flown to Birmingham Airport on Thursday, hired a car, drove to March Town to see the old stand – “they’re knocking it down” – made Northallerton in time for a 7.30 start, headed up the A19 for a drink with some German comrades and is still bright-eyed next morning.

Erik’s puzzled, however, about why so many Northern League teams play in black and white stripes. “Every match there’s at least one,” he says, though it might be yet more puzzling were there to be at least two.

Anders, a Norwegian fellow traveller, will complete the Northern League Hop and then head on Tuesday evening for Harwich and Parkeston v Gas Recreation. That may be Gas Re-creation; in the Ground Hopping world it’s easy to be overcome.

FA historian David Barber, a 200 games a season man, is adding all 11, too. His ganzey’s zipped to the glottals.

“It’s not as cold as I feared,” he concedes.

Washington, 2.15pm, offers Brighton- based traveller Duncan Wood the unexpected chance to reunite with club secretary Barry Spendley, with whom he’d been at school in Sunderland 50 years earlier.

The day’s last match is the derby between Birtley and Chester-le- Street, a solitary follower missing it because of the obligation to attend Vigil Mass.

Not possessed of turnstile technology, Birtley manually count the crowd, do it again, send a chap round anti-clockwise and announce that subject to re-scrutiny it’s 329. That’s about ten times higher than usual.

EASTER DAY: Consett have a splendid new ground with a state-of-the-art 3G pitch. They should not be confused with 4G.

They’re mobile phones.

Ryton and Crawcrook Albion’s ground is, shall we say, more homely.

The playing surface is grassy and uneven, the terrace characterised by a long queue of plastic bus shelters that may have come from a Gateshead Council jumble sale.

Since it had also been necessary for the club to remove several tons of pigeon muck from the seated stand behind the goal, it seems ungrateful that hardly anyone has the good grace to sit there.

No matter, the travellers simply love the place. “The hotch-potchier the better,” someone says, memorably.

The day starts at noon, Consett v Durham City, though half the Hoppers have first called at the Company Row, the local Wetherspoons.

They’re Wetherspoons collectors, too.

The crowd’s 411, the tea hut queue 410. Jim Kidd, an itinerant from Edinburgh, is particularly pleased that Consett can offer a slice of lemon in his tea. “It’s the only way to drink it, shows how far they’ve come as a club,” he says.

Brand X is already on his second burger of the risen day. “I don’t like the North-East, it makes me fat,” he says.

“If that guy stays around much longer, he’ll restore the regional economy single-handed,” says Pete Sixsmith.

The new Belle View ground is proving greatly successful both as a social and sporting centre, even attracting its first wake. Shortly before the mourners arrived, however, club chairman Frank Bell realised that the Northern League 125 stickers on the clubhouse windows were a little inappropriate. “Alive and kicking,” they said.

Just when the dark spectre of a goalless draw is looming, Rob Fenwick scores Durham’s winner. The travellers head happily for the Tyne Valley.

Ryton secretary Stevie Carter, the man whose administrative brief has included several tons of much shifting, has also bought 200 Bangladesh football scarves as a job lot on eBay.

“They’re sticking a bit,” he says.

The PA announcement that the crowd is 473 is greeted with applause.

The score against Whickham is 1-1, leaving Ryton and Esh Winning (they of the great monsoon) to fight over a relegation spot.

Though there are about five drops of rain, the aura’s universally sunny. Who needs bus shelters, anyway?

EASTER MONDAY: Bishop Auckland v Crook Town kicks off at noon. A group of Hoppers kicks off an hour earlier at the local Wetherspoons, named after the skinny one in Laurel and Hardy.

The day’s so pleasant that several among the 434 crowd sits sunbathing on the grassy embankment, thus keeping wholly on the right side of one of the more risible FA rules, which forbids standing on them.

Most, however, recall all that is said about casting a clout and remain steadfastly inside the anoraks with which ineluctably they are associated.

Mr Brand has started the day with a ham and pease pudding stotty and a Mars Bar, followed upon arrival at Bishop Auckland by a hot pork sandwich and, when collared by the photographer, by a cheeseburger and chips.

It’s the Bishops first home Northern League game for 25 years against their former arch-rivals, former England amateur internationals Mike Greenwood, Derek Lewin and Bob Thursby all back for the occasion.

Sadly for the opposition, if not for the Ground Hoppers – goal hungry, too -– it proves one-sided, bringing to 15 the number of goals Crook have conceded in two games.

Thereafter we’re at championselect Spennymoor Town –Mr Brand sees off a bacon burger and chips – and, in the chill of the evening, at Newton Aycliffe. The admirable Mr Harris sets out his stall for the tenth and eleventh times.

Gary Brand will be heading back to the Hilton, some of the other heroic travellers on the overnight bus to London and into work the following morning.

“I wouldn’t care,” someone says of his mate, “but he snores something dreadful.”

A pretty featureless game between Newton Aycliffe and Shildon ends 1-1, the parting assertion that the best seemed not to have been left until last pretty hard to contest.

The 446 spectators remain contented, perhaps even temporarily satiated, nonetheless. Though the old plates of meat are now pretty close to sell-by, it has been a joyous and hugely successful celebration of football’s true fraternity. A very happy Easter.