Wednesday 1st January 2025 ko 15:00

Northern Premier League-Premier Division

WHITBY TOWN 0

Gell sent off (2nd booking) 74

STOCKTON TOWN 2 (Sweet 70 Nicholson 76)

Att 826

Entry £12

Programme £2.50

I do question my sanity sometimes. A 4 hour trip north the morning after a New Year party, in the aftermath of the a storm affecting the North East and Scotland. In fact so daft was my idea we cruised into Whitby far earlier than we needed to be, which got me thinking…

So when you think about Whitby what do you associate with it? Perhaps the seaside? Or maybe Captain Cook whose house is in Grape Lane to which my mother asked directions to, but failed completely to understand the local accent ( “Greeappp Leane” ) ! Or you could even think of Scampi, the town does claim itself to be its home! Yet for me, I always think of Whitby for Lucky Ducks!

I’d visited Whitby on a family holiday as a teenager and soon spotted the little blown glass ducks on sale at Whitby Glass. I’m not remotely superstitious, but rather liked them, but was kyboshed by my folks from buying one!! We enjoyed our fish and chips on the front, and afterwards I dashed over to the little shop, and it was closed. Lucky eh?

The Turnbull Ground is roughly 1 mile north-west of all of that and is no more than 200 metres from the North Sea, so yes I did feel the wind! Whitby have played here since 1929 after Wilfred Turnbull, a wealthy shipowner, who bought some land close to the seafront and donated it to the town’s football team. The ground was opened by Turnbull in August 1929 before a friendly match with Stockton. No, I didn’t plan that!

Do get there early if only to go to the club shop, the programme is excellent, and they sell ducks- of the rubber bathtime type. I have no idea whether they are lucky, the evidence of the game would suggest not!

For me the outstanding feature of the ground is the West stand, I remember Groundtastic magazine awarding it “New Stand of the year” in 2006, and you can see why! The only small issue is it’s capacity of 505 means that the club needs a safety licence, but only by 6 seats so by taking a few seats out they’ll save roughly £8,000 per month. It’s worth commenting that this won’t affect the club’s responsibilities in regards to crowd safety but it will allow more flexibility in how the club will steward a capacity of 1,400.

There may have been a shade over half the capacity at our game, but it was busy and one factor was people finding to shelter from the wind! Other than the historic nature of the game, there was the clash of the fishing styles, Whitby with Scampi and Stockton-on-Tees, Mackerel. We even heard songs telling Whitby exactly what they could do with their Scampi!

Despite the less than helpful weather it was a good game to watch with the feel of a local derby. The difference in the end was a little more sharpness, particularly in front of goal. Of course the red card really didn’t help Whitby’s cause!

It was a mighty long journey on a mighty windy day. In fact so long was the journey home we managed to answer a question from a few Christmases previously. You may remember a late night journey back from Redcar Athletic and a vaguely demonic Peppa Pig ride at a services. We stopped at the same services and discovered it was the thoroughly distopian Tibshelf, but thankfully the ride has been removed. Small mercies and all that, but at least Whitby made it all worthwhile.