A North East football legend has passed away, aged 71.

Fondly remembered as a member of the famous Blyth Spartans team that got to the 5th round of the FA Cup in 1978.

A cracking player for Pools, remember him scoring 5 penalties in 4 consecutive games in March/April 1987, the only goals Pools got in those 4 games, 2-1 1-1 1-0 1-0.

Also well known in local football circles, where he ran the successful Coundon Three Tuns Sunday football team, think he ran the pub as well.

I've always wondered whether he was the last coal miner to come out of the pits and play professional football at the age of 25.

RIP

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/footbal ... ngNewsSerp

Very sad news Horden a brilliant footballer who achieved the almost impossible with Blyth then went on to star for his club Newcastle United then onto Pools. R.I.P Alan great memories.

R I P Alan.

Working class lad, will always be remembered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJwGkvX7PjA

R.I.P. Alan Shoulder.

Sad news--back in the day where football was more local and you got some really good players in the lower leagues--not the prem hoovering up anyone who looks half decent before they've even hit puberty.

https://blythspirit.wordpress.com/2020/ ... der-story/

That's a good read as well

R.I.P Alan. 76 games and 26 goals for Pools.

Any idea what cause of death was…?

RIP Alan, fantastic player for Pools

RIP Alan, also good to see Horden back on the Bunker your pearls of wisdom have been missed.

Sad news, I'll always remember him for that 1985/86 season when we were promotion contenders for most of the season. He had a fantastic season. The one that sticks in my mind is when he got two goals at Macclesfield in the fa cup, a great afternoon.

Clever player though struggled with us at times.RIP.

Ye he was fantastic that season.
Very sad news.

I seem to recall him playing against Middlesbrough in the second leg of the league cup at Ayresome Park.
Their two centre backs were Pallister and Mowbray and Pools just hoofed the ball into the penalty area at every opportunity. I don't think he got many chances in that game.

Some things never change.

its hard to get your head around it when ex players younger than you die with just fading memories to rely on.

He'd been fighting Cancer for a couple of years apparently.

Taken from Mike Amos's blog.

Alan Shoulder, the very essence of all that’s supposed about good stuff and little bundles, has died after a long and gallant battle with cancer. He would have been 72 on Tuesday.

Alan was a footballer and a family man, a miner, a manager and a top, top bloke. He was a Coundon lad, and that was very important, too.

He stood just 5ft 5ins, more fat on a pit prop, but figuratively and on occasion physically punched far above his weight.

He will be remembered for his role in Blyth Spartans’ extraordinary FA Cup run in 1977-78, for his immediate and indelible impact at Newcastle United where he became a people’s champion, for successful spells at Carlisle United and at Hartlepool and for later years back in the Northern League where last he played when 53.

Those who knew him also remember his indomitability. “I saw him at Christmas” recalls friend and fellow Coundon lad Paul Aldsworth. “He knew he was dying but, God love him, he had us in stitches with his jokes and stories. He didn’t realise how funny he was.”

*Coundon’s a former pit village a couple of miles east of Bishop Auckland. Leeholme’s joined indivisibly. It was for Leeholme Juniors that first he played competitive football, an early game against Mainsforth Juniors refereed by future Fifa official George Courtney. Alan still talked of it.

“I think George thought World War III had broken out, there were fights all over the place. It was nothing in that league, you fought on the field and you fought off it.”

George remembers it, too. “Alan was a warrior then and a warrior all his life. I loved refereeing him, especially when he was a junior, frightened of no one but a wonderful character and such a nice man.”

He also had a season with Byers Green St Peter’s, getting on three miles from Coundon, where saintly virtues weren’t always obvious, either. “I remember a committee man chasing the ref all the way from Byers Green to Willington” said Alan,

He joined Bishop Auckland in 1972, top scorer for three successive seasons, was also in the Langley Park Rams Head team – managed by future Blyth team mate and manager Brian Slane – which won the FA Sunday Cup in 1976.

In December 1977, after some fractiousness at Bishop which also involved the Northern League, he finally joined Blyth for a fee said to be £200 and, of course, went straight into the team and an FA Cup third round win against Enfield.

In the delayed fourth they were drawn at second division Stoke City, Alan’s mum among the crowd. “It was only the third match she’d ever seen” he once told me. “She was interested in us as kids, not as footballers.”

Spartans won 3-2, his mum and half Northumberland headed happily homewards. “The only disappointment was that the draw had already been made and we had Wrexham, who’d beaten Newcastle in the previous round. What if it had been Newcastle.”

The rest’s hisotry, what might be supposed an Alf Grey area. The following season Alan was suspended for three matches by Spartans for playing Sunday football – for Coundon Workmen’s Club, inevitably – and sought a transfer, protesting that several other contracted players turned out elsewhere on the Sabbath.

“I think I’ve been hard done by. I’m upset about it and feel very bitter” he said, uncharacteristically, at the time.

The word – the expectation, indeed – was that he’d join Spennymoor United while still working as a deputy down Horden colliery. Perhaps remembering the adage about shouting down the shaft to find a centre forward – hadn’t Jackie Milburn been a miner? – Newcastle manager Bill McGarry had other ideas.

Alan became a Magpie in early December 1978, £20,000 fee, and went straight into the team. “I told the manager I couldn’t get kicked any harder than I did in the Northern League” he said. “I think that’s what swayed it.”

Received wisdom is that his wages rose from £14 at the coal face to £180 at St James’ Park, bonuses capable of taking weekly income to £300. Alan got a Ford Capri, his lovely wife Marie a tumble dryer. Soon he was being stopped in the supermarket, chased for his autograph.

“I wouldn’t say I was afraid to go out but I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t regard myself as a star at all” he once said. “You wouldn’t say it was a dream come true because I’d never got round to dreaming about it in the first place.”

United had been relegated from the first division the previous season and were finding life uncomfortable in the second. Instantly he was successful, immediately among the scorers. “His spirited play captured the hearts of the United crowd, a breath of fresh air in United’s flagging side with his trademark infectious enthusiasm” club historian Paul Joannou once wrote.

Today, Paul remembers him no less affectionately. “Alan never forgot his roots, such a great lad as a player and a man. The Shoulder/Peter Withe combination was one of the best, albeit only for a short time.”

In the rest of that season he hit 11 goals, in 1979-80 he banged in 21, including nine bullet penalties. Less favoured thereafter, he was signed by Carlisle United manager Bob Stokoe in 1982, scored 33 in 122 games for the Cumbrians and then moved to Hartlepool, and back to the North-East, where he scored 26 in 76.

Though injury compelled retirement at 34, it was by no means the end of his football.

*Alan had begun as a miner at South Hetton colliery, near Kelloe, on one occasion chosen in a ballot to carry the lodge banner at Durham Big Meeting. It didn’t quite work out. “It was a great honour but unfortunately I’d had a pint or two the night before, it was a 6 30am start and I slept in. It was one of the biggest regrets of my life.”

He never again went to the Miners’ Gala – “didn’t dare show my face” he insisted – but like many miners still enjoyed a pint, often after a United home match at the well-remembered Tuxedo Junction floating night club on the Tyne. “Other players might have been looking for something else but all I was looking for was a drink” he said. “After a mid-week match I needed a drink to help me sleep.”

Professional career over, he’d happily have gone back down the pit had not the coal house door been slammed in the miners’ faces. Eventually he became an egg dealer at Leasingthorne, a village which must be nearly a mile from Coundon and was the base for legendary racehorse trainer Arthur Stephenson, he who supposed that little fish were sweet but who landed some pretty big uns, as well

Alan continued to play and manage in the Northern League and elsewhere, coached the kids at the Coundon village school where Marie taught, turned out (of course) for the workmen’s club. His last Northern League match, for Brandon United, was when he was 53. If ever there were a football man, it was Alan Shoulder.

*We got on very well – hard to imagine who wouldn’t have done – on one occasion enjoying a pie and a pint, or a hot beef sandwich and a pint, to mark his 50th birthday. He was manager – player/manager – at Willington and had played twice in the previous three days, 8-0 and 9-1 defeats. Life would be very canny, he said,if it weren’t for worrying about Willington.

The resultant column was enthusiastic. “While others stumble shamelessly around the after-dinner speaking circuit or fan limelight’s last embers, Alan Shoulder is unpaid player/manager at the Northern League’s bottom club. It’s impossible to imagine a more passionate football man, nor one less filigreed by fame.”

The guy even insisted on buying his round, and he was too little to argue with.

*A last story – for now – from the pages of Prairie stories, my book about life and times on Stanley Hill Top. It was the year 2000, Stanley United manager Vine Kirkup struggling – by no means for the first or last time – to raise a team for a Durham Challenge Cup tie with Dunston UTS.

Alan was 47. Pushing at an open door, Vince rang Alan to ask if he could play.

His marker was Paul Brown, known universally if inexplicably as Porky and a man who, like Alan, could on occasion be combative. Thus it was that the younger man squared up to the player old enough to be his father with a suggestion (shall we say) that all might not end well.

This it also was that, as a South Hetton miner might say, Alan decided to get in the first bat. Or the first two. “I’ve never seen two punches like it, lifted Porky clean off his feet” recalls Vince – also playing at the age of 50.

Referee Chris Matthews sent off both. “You’re too old to be fighting” he told the former miner. “Aye” said Alan, “and I’m too old to be getting a bloody good hiding, an’ all.”

The stooshie continued in the Little House on the Prairie and overflowed into the car park. In Pitmen’s terms, said Vince, Porky got his bait put up.

Vince can have the last word, too. “No matter what the level of football, Alan’s enthusiasm never altered. If ever there was a man you’d want on your side, it was Alan Shoulder.”

Brilliant read that....cheers Horden.

Ye a great read.
I've mentioned before I last seen him play about 30 years ago for Coundon v Rovers at gray fields in the Sunday morning County Cup.
Got booted all over but just took it in his stride no problem were some players would of caused a commotion about it.

Didn't realise he was a West Co. Durham lad though.
RIP fella.

Thanks for the info.

You done Alan proud with such a wonderful insight to a good footballer and an even better man. Thanks Horden

My pleasure.

Mike Amos at the funeral

Had Alan Shoulder’s funeral been a football match, they’d have closed the gates 45 minutes before kick-off. Had it been a hustings meeting, the constabulary would have sought a dispersal order, so great the throng.

Alan, said Fr Gary Nicholson, was “the village lad who dared to dream”. The village was Coundon, a couple of miles outside Bishop Auckland, though a note of explanation may be necessary before proceeding.

Coundon’s one of those places, familiar in Co Durham, to which other communities are seemingly seamlessly attached but which forever claim a separate identity. “Alan wasn’t Coundon” folk insist, “he was Leeholme.”

It should perhaps also be explained that, though St James’ church is part of the Anglican communion it liturgically gazes down upon the Vatican – when in Coundon do as the Romans do – and that a familiarity with the Newcastle United theme music Going Home Local Hero by Mark Knopfler, by many a mile football’s most powerful and most emotive anthem, would be helpful before reading on.

“Is this seat free?” someone asks, optimistically, 45 minutes before the 3 30pm start. “You’re from Eldon Lane, aren’t you?” comes the suspicious response. Eldon Lane must be nearly two miles away. It seems prudent not to mention that I’m from Shildon; Shildon’s even further.

Alan died two days before his 72nd birthday, after a long illness, the football story now familiar. A miner, he’d played in junior competitions – Coundon, Leeholme, probably both – had five Northern League seasons with the Bishops, helped Blyth Spartans to that wondrous FA Cup run in 1977-78, was courted by Newcastle where he became a sort of people’s champion before successful spells with Carlisle and Hartlepool and happily returning, unchanged and unspoiled, to his roots.

United are represented by former players David Barton and Billy Rafferty – some claim to have seen Bob Moncur – Sunderland, happily, by Richie Pitt and Mick Horswill. Long serving Spartans goalkeeper Dave Clarke is among familiar non-league faces.

Even the undertaker wears a black and white scarf.

Fr Gary admits he knows nothing about football, talks wonderfully well, nonetheless. Alan, he recalls, had met Marie – his wife for 47 years – while a paper boy at Leasingthorne. Leasingthonre must be at least one-and-a-half fields away, or two fields by the road.

While courting, the vicar recalls, Alan would always carry a tennis ball in his pocket, take every opportunity to practice with it. “He was obsessed, but if his passion was football, the only thing which surpassed it was family.”

Until his final weeks, says Fr Gary, Alan would insist upon cooking Sunday lunch for the extended family and insist that all 13 of them sat down to it.

He also talks of their shared membership of the Coundon and District Society for the Prevention and Prosecution of Felons, formed in the early 19th century to tackle local ne’er-do-wells but these days enjoying a rather more social role, meeting monthly to plan an annual dinner.

It’s also said that the Felons retain the right to walk their geese down Coundon main street, though it’s unknown if Alan ever exercised that privilege.

The service is thoughtfully and affectionately conducted, a love story for St Valentine’s Day. Prayers towards the end are said against the background of Going Home played gently on the piano and orchestarted via the vicar’s mobile.

It’s as they prepare shoulder high to carry Alan on that Knopfler bursts forth at high volume and the mutlitude breaks spontaneously and unanimously into applause. It’s wonderfully appropriate, for if ever there were a true local hero, it was the lovely Alan Shoulder.

*The service had begun at 3 30pm, standing room only after 2 45 and barely even that 15 minutes later. It doesn’t quite explain why a well known North-East football personality, who’d best remain nameless, turns up at 12 45, wonders where everyone is and calls me to enquire.

It does explain why my mobile rings at the most solemn part of a lunchtime Holy Communion service at St Nicholas’ Cathedral in Newcastle.

It’s a service to celebrate Canon Janet Chapman’s 30 years in the priesthood. She and her husband Peter, a former Northern Echo colleague are old friends, now retired to Wallsend where Peter has developed a happy allegiance to West Allotment Celtic.

We’ve to dash back to the station immediately afterwards, missing the lunch but supplied with a splendid doggy bag. The phone may not ring again for a month.

*David Barton, both team mate and room mate at Newcastle, tells after the service the story of New Year’s Eve, heading towards 1980, when Magpies manager Bill McGarry insisted upon his squad spending the night in a hotel ahead of the big derby with Sunderland.

“We were top of the league, Sunderland second” Dave recalls.

Festive jollity in the corridor threatened their sleep. Alan, ever the joker, insisted that his team mate go and have words with them, got to the room door, pushed him out and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Unfortunately I wasn’t wearing a stitch” Dave recalls.

Yet more unfortunately, manager McGarry happened to be passing and didn’t (shall we say) ask if he could let their first foot in. “Alan wouldn’t believe it was the boss, still wouldn’t let me back in” says Dave.

The following afternoon, 38,700 in St James’ Park, the Magpies won 3-1 – Cassidy, Cartwright and, unerring from the spot, the mischievous Shoulder.

Just out of interest, how old is Mike Amos…?

He was 73 when he was made redundant by the Echo in 2019, after 55 years with the company. So he'll be 78 now.

Probably replaced him with some ‘ bright young thing’.