HOWAY the Hill! Ferryhill Athletic are back! This evening, the reborn club play in their first senior cup final since they were burned out of their ground by arsonists and forced into dissolution more than 25 years ago.
The Latics were formed in 1921: they thrice won the Northern League during the golden age of amateur football, and to this day, they hold the post-war FA Cup goalscoring record, thrashing 18 past Skinningrove Works.
But their story goes back further than their formation, because the first team in Ferryhill provided the first competitive opponents for another newly formed club, called Sunderland.
READ MORE: HOW A LUCKY BREAK SET DAVID HODGSON ON THE PATH TO EUROPEAN FOOTBALLING GLORY
In November 13, 1880, Ferryhill were supposed to be playing in the first round of the first Northumberland and Durham Challenge Cup against Darlington Grammar School, but the school pulled out, leaving Ferryhill without a fixture.
Instead, Sunderland, a team made up largely of teachers, invited them over to the Blue House Field in Hendon and there, in a strong wind in two 40-minute halves called “forties”, the Black Cats played their first ever match (in blue shirts, probably because of the name of their ground).
And they lost. An unrecorded Ferryhill player – they had a six man attack – “cleverly kicked” the only goal of the game towards the end of the first forty.
The Ferryhill team folded soon after this triumph, but interest in the game had been sparked in the pit village, and various teams formed in the years afterwards, including Dean Bank Villa FC.
But, in 1921, there was a split in the Villa ranks, and a breakway team, Ferryhill Athletic, was formed. They leased land on Darlington Road from a local farmer on a 999 year term on condition that it was used only for sporting and recreational purposes.
The Athletic, playing in amber and gold, won the Palatine League and the Durham Amateur Cup in their first season, and were admitted to the Northern League in 1923-24, finishing second just one point behind Tow Law.
They won the championship in 1938, 1948, and 1958, and twice got through several qualifying rounds to reach the first round proper of the FA Cup.
In 1935-36, they were drawn against the other Latics, Oldham Athletic, of the Third Division North, and were hammered 6-1.
But 1953-54 saw them make history. In the 1st Qualifying Round they played Skinningrove Works, and were 4-0 up after 10 minutes and 7-0 up by half time. Kicking towards their favourite end at Darlington Road in the second half, they could not stop scoring – literally.
When they’d reached 15, they were awarded a penalty. Captain Tommy Whitfield pleaded with the referee that they’d scored enough, but the ref insisted on the spot kick. Tommy deliberately tried to side foot his shot wide but it hit the inside of the left post and bobbled in.
The final score was 18-0, which is still the highest post-war score in the FA Cup.
For the first round proper, Ferryhill took more than 500 fans to Workington, all of them joining in their favourite chant of “Howay the Hill”, only to lose 3-0.
Perhaps the most famous player to have been produced by the Athletic is Richie Norman, who had excelled as a schoolboy on Tyneside before coming to Darlington Road and helping the club to the 1958 Northern League title.
"It wasn't long before the Bishops came in,” he once said, referring to the greatest ‘amateur’ team of the day. “They offered much better money – they'd just had three successive Wembley wins – but I was quite happy where I was. There was just something about Ferryhill, it was part of the community. The crowds were fantastic."
However, clubs even bigger than Bishop Auckland were beating a path to Darlington Road to see if he might make it at a higher level.
“A scout told me that Leicester wanted to sign me but that Ferryhill wanted to get a fee, but they couldn’t do this because I wasn’t a professional,” he once said. “I was an amateur, getting expenses, so I had to turn professional.”
To do this, he had to go to Horden Colliery from where, after only three months, Leicester City signed. Richie played for the Foxes for 10 seasons, making 365 appearances at left back, scoring twice, and playing alongside the great Gordon Banks in the 1963 FA Cup final, which Leicester lost 3-1 to Manchester United, who featured Denis Law and Bobby Charlton.
If Ferryhill got a few pennies for Richie, they soon disappeared. In the 1980s, the Latics invested in their ground, installing new changing rooms and floodlights so it was good enough to attract players like Alan Shoulder, the former Newcastle striker, and Terry Cochrane, the former Middlesbrough winger, at the end of their playing careers, and even homeless Hartlepool United were based for one season, 1994-95, at Darlington Road.
However, the club didn’t own the ground. They’d borrowed heavily from Vaux Brewery against the lease, and soon debts crowded in on the club. The only hope seemed to be a £300,000 deal to sell the ground for housing, but that fell through, and then metal thieves, vandals and arsonists targeted the ground, driving Athletic, who had tumbled to bottom of the Northern League, out in late 1995.
They had no team and, following demotion of the derelict Darlington Road, no ground. Not even local fund raising efforts could repair the damage, and Ferryhill Athletic was formally dissolved on January 12, 1999.
Teams continued to turn out in the lower leagues under the “Ferryhill Athletic” badge, and in 2022, Durham Football Club, formed the year before, came with the support of the town council to play as Athletic in the Wearside League Division One at the Dean Bank Recreation Park.
The ground is only a few hundred yards from Darlington Road and dates back to 1927, when miners at the Dean & Chapter Colliery agreed to have a few pennies deducted from their pay to create the community facility.
They have established an Under 18s team, while the first team looks likely to finish third, just missing out on promotion for the second successive season to the Wearside Premier League.
“Ultimately, Athletic hope to make further progress and return to the Northern League,” says chairman Chris Orton. “We aim to have our own ground again, hopefully in the town although there aren’t a great deal of sites, but we have a small, dedicated team of volunteers working behind the scenes in an attempt to help secure this.”
And this club, which holds a goalscoring record in the world’s greatest cup competition, has reached its first cup final since 1971. It will play in the final of the Clem Smith Bowl against Durham City on Wednesday at Dean Bank Recreation Park, Ferryhill, kick off at 6.45pm, and once again the town will echo to the cries of “Howay the Hill!”.
IN 1926, Clem Smith turned up for a game of football in Herrington, Sunderland, only to find there was no referee and so the game could not proceed.
This inspired him to take up the whistle, and from 1935 to 1950, he refereed many top flight English Football League matches. These included the Sunderland, Newcastle and Middlesbrough derbies, although he always rated a derby that had officiated in Belfast as his most exciting match.
When the Washington League was reformed after the war in 1949, Clem became its secretary and treasurer, and helped it become one of the strongest local leagues in the country. He retired in 1976 but the Clem Smith Bowl, which is now played for by teams in the Wearside League, allows his name to live on.
READ MORE: THE SURPRISING PLACE IN LITERARY HISTORY OF A DARLINGTON PUB
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here