News
Diary
2007/8
Season
4
April 2008
Bishop
Auckland FC Appoint new Commercial Manager
Bishop Auckland FC announce the appointment of a new Commercial Manager . Introducing…….Andrew Matthews
I live in Newton Aycliffe with my wife and two kids. I was
born in Bishop Auckland more years ago than I care to remember and moved to
On a professional front I worked at the Yorkshire Bank for more than 20
years and some of you may remember me as an assistant manager and then branch
manager at the Bishop Auckland branch up until I left in 2000. Since then
I have been a mortgage advisor and I am now self employed helping people with
their finances and saving money on their utility bills.
I have come on board to help Bishop Auckland Football Club raise its
profile with the local business community and of course help raise funds
through sponsorship.
So if anyone has any business contacts that are interested in supporting
the club, please put them in contact with me.
My contact details are :
·
Home - 01325 312431,
·
·
e-mail andrew.matthews@uwclub.net
The Club wishes Andrew all the best in his new position. Please make him welcome.
13
March, 2008
Groundshare
move for 2008/9
Bishop
Auckland Football Club Limited - Board Statement
Bishop Auckland FC have reached agreement with
With continued delays on the
development of
The club would like to put on
record our thanks to Shildon AFC who have hosted Bishop Auckland’s UniBond and
Northern League games for the past two years.
5
February, 2008
Bishops stood in for Babes – Northern Echo - 5 Feb, 2008
FIFTY years next Wednesday since the
"I remember buying the Manchester
Evening News and it was in the stop press, as they used to call it,"
recalls Derek Lewin. "There were no casualty figures, of course, but
minute by minute the enormity of it just grew.
It was literally like a cloud hanging over
Three weeks later, still needing to play
football, Manchester United did something totally unexpected. The first
division leaders sent to Bishop Auckland for reinforcements. One was Lewin himself, another was left
winger Warren Bradley, the third the great Bob Hardisty, by then 37 and retired
from football the previous summer after winning every amateur honour.
"Though I wasn't as fit as I'd like to
have been, I felt that I couldn't refuse," said Hardisty - son of a Bishop
Auckland fruiterer - at the time. Jimmy
Murphy, acting manager while Matt Busby still fought for his life in a
DEREK Lewin was the son of a
He'd recalled the post-Munich experience at
an ex-Manchester United players' dinner just a month ago, told how Murphy - who
escaped the crash because he was also Wales manager and on international duty
elsewhere - had approached him in the Old Trafford gymnasium being used as a
makeshift chapel of rest.
"I'd been in the
Among regular visitors to his home at St Anne's
were Dennis Violett, Johnny Berry - whose lost passport had delayed the
Both Byrne and Bent were among the
casualties;
Derek recalls paying his respects in the
gymnasium. "I was quite overcome by it all. They were just boys, great lads and good
friends. "Jimmy Murphy tapped me on
the shoulder and asked if he could have a word when I'd finished.
"Half an hour later I'd found his
office and he told me quite bluntly that all I'd read in the press about other
clubs trying to help Manchester United was rubbish. They were supposed to be
doing all they could and it wasn't like that at all. Even the clubs who were prepared to offer
players were asking silly money for people who couldn't get in their own teams.
Jimmy said that he wasn't having it; all he needed was time."
Murphy asked for some recommendations.
BOB Hardisty had become a PE teacher. Lewin
and Bradley were still with the Bishops, due to face South Bank in a Northern
League match that Saturday until the call to stand with United. The reserves
were playing
"We met at the golf club and got the
bus in," recalls Derek, 78 in May. "I remember being amazed at the
crowds, thinking we must have been brought to a first team game by
mistake. They said the gate was 11,000
but there must have been as many as that still outside. It finished 1-1, United scoring with a Johnny
Giles penalty.
Hardisty had captained the 1948
Bradley - 73 when he died last year - was a
teacher who once told Backtrack that he wanted to be a headmaster like other
kids wanted to be a train driver.
Lewin and Hardisty knew that they were
simply second team stopgaps; Warren Bradley was different. "It didn't take
United long to see how special he was," recalls Derek.
Though he never gave up teaching - once
playing against Real Madrid after a hard day at the chalkface - he signed a
semi-professional contract, scored 20 goals in 63 first team appearances and
became the only Englishman to win amateur and full international caps in the
same season.
"He made three full appearances and
scored twice," says Derek. "These days he'd be a sensation; in 1959
he was dropped. Things were very much different then."
TWENTY three of the 44 people aboard BEA
flight 609 were killed when it crashed on take-off on a slush
covered
Former
The Echo had sent a reporter to Ashington,
meticulously noting that Cissie Charlton had been using her vacuum cleaner when
she heard the news from a shopkeeper up the road. "I gasped Oh Bobby. The
plane”. He nodded his head."
FOOTBALL went on; even Manchester United
said that it must. Though they reached the FA Cup final, the leaders won just
one more game all season, dropping to ninth.
"Players like Duncan Edwards were just
so special, full of so much energy," says Derek Lewin. "He'd come
across from his army barracks and we'd train together in the afternoons; what a
talent he had. Roger Byrne was a great
lad, too, but Matt Busby wouldn't let him wear boots in training because he
might break someone's leg. It was a
tragedy then and it's a tragedy now. That would have been one of the greatest
teams in the world."
27
September 2007
Bishop
The Board of Bishop Auckland FC are delighted to announce the appointment of
Brian’s
previous managerial experience is with
Brian
will be joined by former
The
club would like to thank former manager