Andy Potts
Bio
Community focused sports fan from Northeast England. Tends to root for the little guy. Look out for Talking Northeast, my new project coming soon.
Stories (173)
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Not by banana bread alone ...
Step one: Take one kitchen, a little boy and his mother. Wait for a rainy afternoon when the weather is too bleak to go outside. Season with the detail that it’s 1980, kids’ TV runs for a couple of hours each day, and there’s a long time to fill between lunch and dinner. Start preparing some pastry.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Feast
Junior Stars look to the future
Ice hockey in the Northeast has a proud history. Teams from Durham, Whitley Bay and Billingham were top-flight mainstays in the old Heineken League era, more recently Newcastle Vipers won an Elite League championship in 2006. Internationally renowned coaches Mike Babcock – a triple gold club member once of Whitley Warriors – and Jukka Jalonen – twice a world champion after coaching Newcastle Riverkings – are among the illustrious names to pass through. Even today, Whitley Bay provides talent for GB women, while Durham-born Ben O’Connor and Billingham’s Robert Dowd were among the key players in GB’s fairytale rise to the World Championship Elite Pool.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Unbalanced
Football comes back to Shotton
One of the unexpected side-effects of the coronavirus lockdown has been a groundswell of support for our local communities. And, in Shotton Colliery, an old pit village in East Durham, it’s been a trigger for a new football club aiming to bring the game back to town after 15 years without a team in the Saturday leagues.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Cleats
Hope in East Durham's 'Black Hole'
This story was originally published on Groundhoppers.blog in November 2018. Two years later, happily, both Shotton and Murton have Saturday football back at their grounds. Shotton Colliery FC, newly formed for the 2020/21 campaign, plays in Wearside League Division 2, one level below a reborn Horden CW. Among their opponents, Ryhope CW U23s have moved into Murton's ground. Peterlee is still home to the local rugby club.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Cleats
Reinventing the High Street
There are bright spots on the High Street – if you know where to look for them. While the old certainties are disappearing, local producers are taking the chance to boost their presence. And Discovering Durham, in the Prince Bishops Centre, is at the heart of that process.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Journal
Ploughing on
Sheffield is a city steeped in football history – and part of that heritage has been preserved against the odds. The Plough Inn, overlooking the historic Sandygate ground in the western suburbs of the South Yorkshire city, was scheduled for demolition. Even the local planning officers supported a scheme that would have seen the 19th-century watering hole levelled and replaced by housing. However, the city council rejected the proposal, in no small part due to the pub’s place in the birth of the beautiful game.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Cleats
Fussball unplugged
German football is often held up as a model of how the spectator experience should be. From the vast, swaying yellow wall of terracing at Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion to the self-styled anarchy of St. Pauli, the Bundesliga and beyond reflects the football many in England wish they could remember.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Cleats
Making yourself at home
West Allotment Celtic, a non-league football team from North Tyneside, announced over the summer that it was moving back to its roots to play Northern League football at Palmersville Community Centre. Three years ago, I saw the team play its first game at Druids Park, making an emergency landing near Newcastle Airport after a rent hike forced it out of the Northumberland FA ground at Whitley Park. This text first appeared on Groundhoppers.blog. More images of West Allotment, at Druid Park and Whitley Park, can be found here.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Cleats
Fishes, wishes, boats and hopes
It started with a fish. And a wish. Then a boat of hope. And, gradually, a stretch of the Durham Heritage Coast turned into an unlikely art gallery – conceived and curated by anyone who was inspired to contribute to a growing collection of transient creations using the flotsam and jetsam on the shores of the North Sea.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Wander
Positivity in crisis
Social distancing doesn’t have to mean isolated. At lunchtime in Bean Social, a lively café on Durham’s North Road, the tables may be spaced out, but conversation still ebbs and flows between them. A couple of weeks after returning from lockdown, it feels appealingly normal; a space to meet and eat.
By Andy Potts5 years ago in Feast
