Former Man City and Aston Villa star makes shock unplanned visit to South Shields

Seeing former Premier League stars at South Shields’ 1st Cloud Arena is nothing new for Mariners supporters.

After all, former Sunderland favourite Julio Arca rounded off his playing career with a trophy-laden spell and returned to the club to have a short stint as manager last season. The Argentinean succeeded another Black Cats legend Kevin Phillips after stepped down just weeks after leading the club to the Northern Premier League title and into the National League North.

Then there was Graham Fenton, a former Premier League player with Leicester City, Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers, who worked alongside fellow joint-manager Lee Picton to guide the Mariners to a historic quadruple-winning season that culminated in their FA Vase Final win against Cleethorpes Town and an impressive band of travelling support descended on Wembley.

Another former Premier League star was seen at the 1st Cloud Arena on Saturday afternoon ahead of the postponed National League North fixture with Oxford City. However, due to a lack of knowledge of the North East and an incorrect Sat Nav instruction, former Manchester City and Aston Villa defender Micah Richards has admitted he made the journey to South Tyneside in error. His destination was meant to be on the other side of the River Tyne after he travelled to the North East to watch an FA Vase tie between Northern League club North Shields and North West Counties League side West Didsbury and Chorlton. Richards did make it to the Daren Persson Stadium in time to see the game as former South Shields forward Lee Mason scored to help his side come from a goal down to secure a 2-1 win that took them into the last 16 of the competition.

Speaking after his eventful journey to the North East, Richards told The Rest is Football Podcast: “My friend Paul Marshall is the manager of West Didsbury and Chorlton in non-league. So I’ve been meaning to go to game for a while now and, obviously, I work Saturdays and Sundays so I can’t really get to the games. He said they’ve got a game at the weekend up at Newcastle and Newcastle is only an hour and 20 minutes from Harrogate so I thought ‘I’m not working, I fancy a bit of that’.

“I know people are going to think I’m stupid - but I only think there’s only Shields up North. So I’ve typed in South Shields. I’ve heard of South Shields, I’ll get myself into South Shields, I’ll put it in my Sat Nav and head all the way up to Newcastle. I got out of my car, nice parking, got there with 45 minutes to spare, nice and early and I walk across to the ground and everyone was like ‘you aren’t going to believe this, the game is off and the team came over last night as well, they think the pitch is too frozen and don’t want to risk it’.

“I thought have West Didsbury and Chorlton got the budget to stay over? It twigged but I was only going to the game so I didn’t know what’s what, I didn’t know their schedule. As I’m going towards the turnstiles, a guy said Oxford decided not to play. My mate doesn’t manager Oxford. I’ve only gone to the wrong ground, it’s North Shields vs West Didsbury and Chorlton, not South Shields - and it’s miles away, so I get in my car and it’s about 35 minutes away. To make it even worse, they lost the game, they played really well so it was a bad day all round.”

Richards got little sympathy out of fellow pundit and Newcastle United’s all-time record goalscorer Alan Shearer as he replied: “It serves you right for not telling me you were coming up to my area.”

South Shields gave their own cheeky reply to Richards by suggesting the former England international was ‘welcome back anytime he likes’ - and a quick look at the Mariners fixture list would show he could visit the 1st Cloud Arena on the first day of February when Elliott Dickman’s men take on National League North club Scarborough Athletic.