FA Cup Third Qualifying Round: Buxton 0-2 South ShieldsWe’re at the highest football ground in England, where the air is clear and the local club is inextricably linked to the health-giving source of the town’s fortunes. Buxton Water, the business borne out of the Derbyshire spa town’s ancient natural springs, is the name Buxton FC wear on the front of their jerseys. It’s a beautiful antidote to one of football’s bleakest weeks.At 12.30pm, the pitch is still teeming with activity as 30 children conclude a training session on the 4G pitch, laid nine years ago and now central to both the home club’s revenues and community. When your local town’s population is only 20,000, you need to work every asset.On the front row of the wooden main stand as kick-off approaches, Jason Ye surveys one of the most sublime backdrops of FA Cup 3rd qualifying round weekend – the distinctive Axe Edge Moor summit and the Solomon’s Temple viewpoint set into Peak District hills under a brilliant blue sky. He reflects that this scene encapsulates why he, a Singapore-based Chinese American, headed a consortium which four months ago concluded a deal to become visiting team South Shields’ majority owners.Ye is a capital markets lawyer whose respected New York-based boutique law firm, Ortoli Rosenstadt, links Asian firms with US markets, but ownership of South Shields brings him into our Journey to Wembley told in 13 instalments – following a club as far as they go and then picking up with the team who knock them out, all the way to the final. We’d first spoken a few days earlier, not long after the 37-year-old had landed on Tyneside from his base in Singapore, when he outlined the logic of what, on the face of things, seems an improbable choice of sports investment for a consortium with partners from Singapore and Shanghai. Jason Ye (right), the visiting team’s majority shareholder pictured with his commercial director Carl Mowatt before Buxton play South Shields Max Woltman stretches in the dressing room before the FA Cup clash at Silverlands‘Provincial level grassroots football is huge in China – semi-professional, but attracting crowds of 40,000 and 50,000 people in many places – and there are no better grassroots teams than those in the UK,’ he said. ‘Everyone into football in China also knows about Newcastle – the team was very big there in the 1990s with Alan Shearer – so that’s another connection. We at South Shields are not a PSG or a Juventus but what we could be is a fun and young grassroots football team that build a following if we get it in front of people in China and the US.’How you achieve that without the creative genius and documentary pull of Wrexham’s Ryan Reynolds is, as yet, unclear, and there’s ample evidence in the North East, at American-owned Hartlepool and Gateshead, that foreign investment is not always a straight path to glory. ‘We’re still thinking about some kind of media presence, whether that could be through social media or something else,’ says Ye. ‘People once didn’t know about Wrexham but now people want to go there. We see similarity.’There’s far more to the visiting club’s ambition than being big in Shanghai. Shields have been turned from a struggling, homeless club into arguably the North East’s top non-league side at present, under the astute ownership of local businessman Geoff Thompson. They own their ground – a huge appeal for Ye when Thompson’s investment proposal reached him. They see themselves as a development club for players released early by Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Sonny Lee, loaned and then bought from Middlesbrough, was sold to Grimsby Town this summer. And they are looking to build on the distinction of being held in affection by fans in both Newcastle and Sunderland. The coastal town is halfway between the two.It’s not every club that can pull off an event in which Julio Arca and Lee Clark share a stage, as they did in April. It was one of a string of evening events partnering former Newcastle and Sunderland players to talk football, pulled together by commercial and operations director Carl Mowatt, who’s driven Ye here in a bright maroon VW van adorned with the names of the club’s sponsors. ‘The Sat Nav did some strange things, so we saw more of Sheffield then we intended,’ Mowatt confides.‘Arca was our gold standard,’ says George, a Shields fan making his way up to the ground from Buxton’s Duke pub where John Higgins, Bolton’s 1958 FA Cup final winner, once drank. Home fans watch the action from the Railway End, with South Shields on top in the contest The National League North sides were meeting in the FA Cup and the visitors claimed the win The home team’s mascot ‘Bucky’ is seen emerging from the main stand ‘There’s never been another Arca.’ George looks nervous, just like Fred, Steve, Dave, Colin, Arthur and other Shields fans. Their side beat Buxton 4-0 in the league last weekend but the two sides have progressed up the pyramid together and built a keen rivalry. They reached the sixth tier in consecutive years – Buxton first, in 2022 – and Shields only narrowly beat Buxton in last year’s National League North play-off semi.Fred worries about ‘the 4G advantage’ afforded to Buxton, who train on the surface every day and is also concerned about ‘the slope.’ It’s nothing like a gradient of the old Yeovil ground’s proportions and is less marked now the artificial surface is on, but distinct, nonetheless.Buxton are fretting, too, because we’re now within touching distance of the First Round Proper, the holy grail which brings the prospect of a televised tie, national spotlight and cherished income.Chris Hill, club secretary, community liaison manager and club fan of 30 years, is in his Portakabin office reflecting on The Stags’ excellent FA Cup record of the past five years: a televised First Round home tie with Morecambe in 2021, a 2nd Round tie at Ipswich Town’s Portman Road a year later and last season’s visit to Cheltenham at the same stage. ‘The draws we’ve had were generally kinder than this,’ he says.Hill is the one whose work sees hundreds use this ground. Buxton punch above their weight in the sixth tier because of owner David Hopkins, who runs the locally-based Markovitz builders’ merchants’ chain, his family’s business. Buxton Lime, another business the town was built on, is a big sponsor. But the pitch and the community are the engine of the club’s success.The teams run out to Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and the first mascot we have encountered on our journey – Buxton’s Bucky the Buck – finally takes a break after a heavy hour of activity in the heat. Buxton, playing down the hill, start well until defensive indecision allows Caden Kelly to pounce and arc in a goal from the edge of the box. Buxton’s Tony Weston is excellent, throwing himself at a cross from Sisa Tutulwana, who’s scored nine in nine since arriving from Gainsborough Trinity, but keeper Jasper Sheik hurls himself into a fine save. The away side bench watch on – Shields are arguably the North East’s top non-league team Up in the stand, Ye relates that hadn’t even been aware of the Peak District. He’s closer to the stuff of contemporary FA Cup legend than he seems to appreciate, given that Macclesfield beat Crystal Palace just ten miles down the road last season. ‘Every man and woman in China heard about that,’ he says. ’Hundreds of millions saw the social media clips of the fans flooding onto the pitch.’ Journey to Wembley: Story so far Nelson 3-2 Stockport GeorgiansWitton Albion 1-0 NelsonAvro 0-2 Witton AlbionSouth Shields 7-0 Witton AlbionBuxton 0-2 South Shields <!- – ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/us/sport/football/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 – ->
Buxton seem to operate better up the hill, but they can’t find another gear and there’s no evidence that playing around 1,000ft above sea level is having any effect on a robust Shields defence. This is no Azteca. Toby Onanaye pops up in the box to double the lead just beyond the hour and though there’s noise from Buxton’s raucous Railway Stand until the very end, it’s over. Buxton have rarely threatened.After his players have left the field, Shields manager Mike Williamson sits unobtrusively in the dug-out, from where he relates that the slope hadn’t been so much of a problem, but the blinding sun, a ‘sticky’ pitch and Buxton’s intensity brought challenges. ‘There’s an emotional element to progressing,’ he says. ‘The boost to morale and the magic of being in the hat, seeing who we’ve got. But at this level, it can add £20,000 or £30,000 onto your budget in the middle of the season. With injuries and small squads, that’s huge.’Ye and Mowatt head back to their maroon van and a few teenagers among the departing contingent of fans strike up a rendition of ‘We’re going to Wembley’ as they drift off. It’s the first time we’ve heard that one on this journey. The investment consortium has some very big plans for South Shields but those boys will happily just take the Cup’s onward path, wherever it might lead them next.