Sir Tom Cowie Millfield
Northern League Division One
April 15, 2015
Ground No 168
It's safe to say there was little chance of any outbreaks of terrace dancing tonight.
And not just because the game - between two already relegated teams - ended 0-0. It was Crook's first clean sheet of the season, though, so that was at least something to celebrate.
It's because Crook, without a doubt one of the great clubs of grassroots football, are in the doldrums these days.
Five times winners of the FA Amateur Cup, they've also played in front of 100,000 crowds on a tour to India, entertained a Manchester City team including Franny Lee, Colin Bell and Mike Summerbee to mark the switching on of their new floodlights and from 1901-1902 were able to call upon the talents of Jack Greenwell who went on to play for and manage Barcelona.
These days Crook are facing up to Northern League Division Two football. The highest attendance of the season at a ground that once attracted around 20,000 fans (they stopped counting after a while by all accounts) has been 186 and they've leaked six goals or more at home on no fewer than seven times.
But this is a ground that positively screams its past glories and history at you. Positioned at the side of the A689 (which makes it easy peasy to find) it looks imposing as you arrive.
After crossing the road from the car park and walking through the turnstiles, you walk up to the top of a row of terracing behind the goal.
And there it unfolds in front of you, a ground that once regularly attracted 10,000 fans for cup games and, according to one report I read, never failed to entice fewer than 4,000 through the gates throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
To the right and in front of you are steep grass banks and it doesn't take much to imagine those areas packed solid with cap-wearing supporters of a bygone age, waving their rattles, cheering on their team - a fug of Woodbines smoke wafting overhead.
Immediately to the left is a covered area of terracing, its roof still bearing the scars of thumping clearances from defenders of days gone by, among them Frank Clark who made his own small alteration to it while playing for the Black and Ambers in the 1960s.
Further on is the main stand, a delightful old-style, 500-seat structure built in 1925. Apparently it was condemned in the late 1980s and cordoned off to spectators but thankfully its been brought back to life since.
.
Back in 1898 the club forked out £625 to buy the land formerly occupied by a mill and set about building their new ground. That equates to around £70,000 in today's money - and it was cash well spent.
A couple of years ago 90% of residents polled said they were in favour of a plan to knock the place down, relocate the club to a new ground and build a shop and a petrol station on the land.
This is a gem of a ground and thankfully it all seems to have gone a bit quiet on that front.
You could almost hear the ghosts of the thousands who once packed Millfield's terraces roar their disapproval at such a thought.
