Popping up on BBC1 last week was a dramatic behind the scenes documentary on one of the region's non-league clubs. Who else but that man, Scott Robson, was watching for us.
If you think the Premier League has a closed shop feel about it, wait until you hear about the non-league pyramid where promotion brings almost bankruptcy and relegation is rewarded.
Ashington AFC, who play at Step 4 of the Non League system in the Northern Premier League East, faced relegation and ruin in the space of four weeks and a production company and the BBC thought it was a great idea to film things imploding for the benefit of the country when the One Show was on its summer break.
What transpired was a highly emotive, informative and at times, chaotic look at a football club right at the sharp end.
If anyone had said a documentary would be made about the Town, the usual cliches that being one of the most deprived areas brings, would have made it unwatchable. Instead the programme used the shortcomings the town has since the closing of its gargantuan industry of yore and used it to show how much the football club means.
Board members Brian Shotton, Nicola Sanders and Drew Tinsley took turns explaining in no uncertain terms the cost of existing in the league Ashington are in.
Travel costs (Ashington have played in Nottingham, Grimsby and Derbyshire in midweeks in the last year) are through the roof. It's upwards of a grand for a team bus and it's far easier playing in the Northern League where the furthest away trips would be Penrith and Teesside.
It's a problem Ashington have been juggling ever since promotion three seasons ago and it would be easier to just play locally. As was mentioned by Sanders, the club would flourish if it went down. Bizarre but true. But going to and welcoming different teams from outside the area is highly satisfying. Ashington made the choice (and only one in the opinion of me and fans) to be the best you can be and our ceiling right now is staying in this league.
The programme was filmed over four weeks and could have been stretched into further episodes, but in half an hour you saw the emotion of Brian Shotton as he held back the tears eulogising about the area which has brought two football World Cup winners, a cricket world cup winner, a PFA player of the year and a record Newcastle goalscorer for 60 odd years and explaining how he had put a massive amount of his own cash in to keep it afloat. Biting his tongue at the exact amount was a fine moment.
It followed Drew Tinsley around the now ramshackle main street, meeting some local businesses trying to grind out any kind of sponsorship he could find.
The grasscutter broke down.
In these sorts of programmes it would be so easy to concentrate on the football side, but apart from brief highlights, it was concentrating on the volunteers at the club. The players are the only ones who get paid. Northern Premier passions it wasn't.
The programme filmed a financial meeting which saw a lot of grimaces, furrowed brows and dropped jaws, as it was worked out Ashington needed £36,000 to see the season out. It was a side of the club only a select few know about and it was extremely interesting to see how it was laid bare the daily struggles a Non League team goes through.
The Easter Monday win over Heaton Stannington was featured quite a bit, as Ashington came back to win 2-1, but the 5-0 hammering at Matlock (when the home fans continually chanted “fuck the BBC”) brought us back into the mire. Shotton's deadpan response, “It could be a long afternoon, this”, proved to be succinctly true.
Matlock, for what it's worth, had a Northern Ireland international playing whose wage is eye watering. Much, much more than our whole squad. He ran us ragged.
The next game was Brighouse and the preview of that was linked into the highly emotive story of the death of fan Craig Dickinson, told by his brother Neil. The fans travelling to Brighouse dressed as chickens in tribute after last year, when he was tricked into going to a match in fancy dress. No one else did. Desperately sadly, Craig took his own life last summer and this was covered magnificently.
Brighouse were already down and indeed dropped down the pyramid immediately after the season finished, but with other teams winning, Ashington had to beat the whipping boys and the tense do or die (including a 355th penalty miss of last season) brought a real jeopardy to someone tuning in and not aware of how it turned out. The eventual win and celebrations were like we had won the league, again captured in all its glory.
The last game was played under no pressure and the six goal win showed that. It was left to the three main protagonists, the directors, to give better news. They had got a lot of sponsorship money and could live to fight another day. The look of surprise was a genuine moment and gratifying for the three people who could easily have thrown the towel in.
All in all, a real success and hopefully the programme, made by a local production company who really got it from the start, spending hours at peoples houses and arriving to film the groundsman at 6.45 am on a Bank Holiday, really gets us the exposure we need.
Watch it again and again please, I'm going to pause it to see what it really said written down next to the grass cutter on the big bit of paper.
I wouldn't trust anything the groundsman says, though.
Scott Robson