It’s a long time since the FA Amateur Cup ended, infact it’s as far back now as 1974 that the competition that began in 1893 ended, but it’s back in the news at the moment thanks to the 125th anniversary of the Northern League, the league which has Celtic Nation, Penrith and Whitehaven among its members, two of the teams which won the Amateur Cup the most, in Bishop Auckland and Crook Town, being from the Northern League hence the celebrations.
Northern League chairman Mike Amos saying : "The Northern League and the FA Amateur Cup were for many years synonymous. There'd be crowds of up to 100,000 at the finals and 10,000 thronging the streets to welcome them home. The trophy is now quite fragile and the FA gesture to let it return one more time to the region that became its second home is very much appreciated. It will almost certainly never be here again."
The trophy was greeted a week last Monday at Crook Town’s Millfield Ground by four players from Northern League clubs who were involved in overall victories in the competition between 1950 and 1969. After a civic lunch in Durham the trophy then moved on to the National Football Museum in Manchester to be the centrepiece of a 125 years of the Northern League exhibition which was opened last Thursday by former Northern League player Gary Pallister, ex-of Billingham Town, that exhibition now running until the end of April.
Northern League clubs won the trophy a massive 23 times across seven different teams, those being Bishop Auckland (10 times), Crook Town (5), Stockton (3), Middlesbrough (2), North Shields (1), South Bank (1) and West Hartlepool (1). Middlesbrough’s wins coming in 1895 and 1898 when the club still played at an amateur level only, with Ayresome Park also hosting the final itself on a number of occasions when one of the finalists was from the local area.
Bishop Auckland, as well winning the competition ten times, having also been runners-up on seven different occasions, with one of those defeats coming in a remarkable 1953-54 final against local rivals Crook Town. The showdown drawing an amazing total attendance of 192,000 after it went to two replays, the two sides drawing 2-2 after extra-time first at Wembley Stadium and then St James’ Park before Crook finally took the honours thanks to a 1-0 victory at Ayresome Park.
Those years were the golden days, both for the competition itself and for the success of Northern League sides in it with crowds of 100,000 for five successive finals at Wembley in the 1950s. The first of those finals to achieve that attendance coming in 1950-51 when two-time winners Pegasus beat Bishop Auckland 2-1. The Pegasus team being a host of older Cambridge and Oxford University graduates whose careers had been put hold on by the Second World War, their short-lived life as an Oxford-based football club lasting just 15 years between 1948 and 1963.
As far as the Northern League clubs were concerned, Bishop Auckland were involved in six of the eight finals between 1949-50 and 1956-57, with the club not taking their defeat to Crook to heart as the following three seasons they completed an FA Amateur Cup hat-trick defeating southern clubs Hendon, Corinthian-Casuals and Wycombe Wanderers. Crook meanwhile picking up another three of their five final victories between the 1958-59 and 1963-64 campaigns as three more teams from down south were put to the sword, in Barnet, Hounslow Town and Enfield.
Formed in 1893 due to the domination of the FA Cup by professional clubs, interest in the competition though began to wane by the mid-1960s with crowd sizes for the finals at Wembley Stadium taking a hefty drop. The last final taking place in April 1974 when Bishop’s Stortford defeated Ilford 4-1, as eight of the last ten victories, North Shields and Skelmersdale United aside, went the way of southern clubs, while at the end of that 1973-74 season the Football Association abolished the rule whereby all clubs were officially considered professional or amateur. The FA Trophy, formed in 1969, for clubs currently between Steps 5 and 8 and the FA Vase, formed in 1974 at the end of the FA Amateur Cup, and for clubs from Step 9 and below now filling the void that a proud competition once held.