Top Billing now for the Synners

Feb 28 2010 by Steve Brown, Sunday Sun

HE followed Middlesbrough to Wembley before the Steve McClaren era bored him off football for three years.

But Paul Sigsworth’s passion for the game has been revived . . . by a club named after an agricultural fertiliser!

Now, he writes match reports for Billingham Synthonia, testifies to the friendliness throughout the Northern League and, though the Synners are nestling in mid-table of Division One amid a period of transition, believes their ultimate destiny will be back among the top six.

“I used to watch Synthonia years ago, then I started watching Middlesbrough,” he said.

“I went to Wembley in 1997 (when Boro lost the Coca-Cola Cup final to Leicester City) but then got fed up during the Steve McClaren era and didn’t bother going to football for about three years. It was just boring football.

“I had a little bit of a lay-off and got back into following Billingham Synthonia about three years ago, then I was invited on to the committee. I do websites part-time and they asked me if I wanted to do the club’s.

“I started doing that, then the match reports for the websites and that led to doing them for the local papers as well. So they elected me to be unofficial Press officer.

“Having come back to grassroots football in the Northern League I was just hooked straight away again. It’s just the friendliness everywhere you go, you get to know even the opposition, the officials, the players and fans. It’s good banter, good crack.”

Not such good football mind, not on the night we chat, as the Synners are punished 5-0 at Dunston UTS. Sigsworth remains phlegmatic, however. After all, his club are the current Durham Challenge Cup holders, no less. And with manager Chris Rooney only beginning to fashion his team as he would have it – former Sunderland, Hartlepool and Gateshead star Darren Williams has recently been linked – Sigsworth believes a return to the glory days of Northern League and Cup doubles (1989-90) or going an entire season without conceding at home (1950-51) is not out of the question.