14. Moore Lane Park-Newton Aycliffe FC

Newton Aycliffe 2-3 Bishop Auckland
Pre Season Friendly
Saturday 10th July 2010

Ground: Moore Lane Park
League/Competition: Pre season friendly (Newton Aycliffe are in the Northern league division two)
Admission: Adults: £4 Children: £2
Programme: £1 (brilliant)
Attendance: 180
Capacity: 1,200
Seated: 120
Covered: 120
Town: Great Aycliffe
Club shop: yes
Floodlights: yes
Step: 10

Newton Aycliffe is a medium sized town in County Durham. It has a population of 26,000 with the nearest large town being Darlington.
Newton Aycliffe RUFC and CC both play on Moore Lane Park's premises. The Rugby club are in the Durham/Northumberland Division 3. This is at step 9 of the Rugby Union pyramid. The Cricket club play in the North East Durham League Division 1.

Newton Aycliffe started out life in the Wearside League in 1984. Their first season ended up with them finishing near the bottom in 17th out of 20. In 1988 they managed to finish the season in 13th out of 20 with 45 points. In 1988 the league become the Wearside league Division 1. In 1990 they managed to finish 3rd out of 15. The clubs record was destroyed before the 1993/1994 season when they resigned from the league. Until 2008 the club went around playing in local leagues. The last of which was the Durham Alliance, before they finally applied to join the Wearside League again for the 2008/2009 season. This was followed by instant success as the side were promoted to the Northern league Division 2. They played in this in 2009/2010 under the condition they had to install seating by March 2010. They did this in late winter. The clun got a ninth place finish out of 20.

This match was set to be a local derby with Bishop Auckland about 10 miles away.
Bishop Auckland are 1 division above Newton Aycliffe.
I set off on Saturday morning to get the 12:20 train from Northallerton to Darlington. Here I switched to a train which took me to Newton Aycliffe station. I didn't quite know what to do with the couple of hours I had, so I wandered round the town. At 15:00 the match kicked off and I positioned myself by the corner flag so I could get a good view of the action.
Newton Aycliffe opened the scring on 6 minutes with Hawkins curling a shot home. Bishop Auckland equalised on 27 minutes through an Emson header. John Close sliced a free kick from Jake Richardson into his own net just two minutes later. Into the second half Garner chested a cross and volleyed home. With 6 minutes left Salvin headed home a long free kick to win the match for Bishop Auckland.
I made the 35 minute walk back to the station where I did exactly the journey I did before. I managed to get home by 20:15.

Moore Lane Park is situated in the East of Newton Aycliffe, in the Great Aycliffe area.
It shares the premises with the Rugby club and the Cricket club so it needs a lot of space. The ground is enclosed by a wooden fence. There is a small wooden turnstile when you go into the ground. The changing rooms are on your left as you go in. Thses are portakabins.There is also a food van selling hot dogs and pies on the right. The ground is fully railed off and has hard standing all the way round. There are two perspex dugouts on the North side. The South side contains the seater stand. This holds about 120. It is an Audience System stand (groan!) and is decked with blue seats. There is an empty concrete space next to it exactly the same to that underneath the stand. Could they be planning on putting another one in?

The programme at Newton Aycliffe is excellent. It is 32 pages long and is all in colour. An example of what it contains is: a message from the manager, posters of the players, profiles on the away players and details of what's available from the club shop. It is totally worth the amazing £1 you pay for it and is almost worth visiting the ground just for it.

Newton Aycliffe matchday pictures