Daily Archives: March 11, 2012

Mae cyfle a gollwyd?

11 Sunday Mar 2012

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Saturday 10th March 2012 ko 1.30pm

Mid Wales League Division 2

ABERAERON 3 (R Jones 20 B Thomas 64og R Davies 85)

MACHYNLLETH 1 (Jarman 60)

Att 224

Entry FREE

Programme £2

Badge £3

It really was a very short drive south from Aberystwyth down the coast to Aberaeron. The pretty fishing town is that way for a reason. There are very strict guidelines on what get built and how it looks. Unusually for a Ceredigion/Cardigan settlement there is a regency feel to the place, due to the work of Shrewsbury architect Edward Haycock. The council keeps a book of pastel colours approved for houses, and the houses have to have sash windows. In typical Regency style the village is built round a square, and in untypical Regency style, the town square is where the football team plays.

This fact is why we were there, as on August Bank Holiday the square is used for the town carnival, and the club are moving off at the end of the season, in favour of a move of a shared pitch with the local rugby club nearer the sea front. That facility was where the players and officials changed before walking through town to the pitch. The Town Square, without meaning to, caused a whole host of problems.

In order to get a visit in we had to schedule the hop a year earlier than we’d planned, and not so early in the year as to risk postponements. We also didn’t want to clash with next week’s Central Midlands League Bonanza, run by our good friend Rob Hornby. Putting our event on a week before was not ideal, but we couldn’t run later, as that would clash with the final arrangements for the Northern Counties East Hop, in a month’s time, over Easter.

On a more local level the ground has one other massive problem, namely that, despite the presence of a quite wonderful old turnstile, the club are not allowed to charge for admission. That inevitably means entry by programme, and under those circumstances a club has to work all the harder to get people to pay. I’m not sure how many two pounds were collected. Again, with no catering facilities, a burger van was parked behind one goal, and the bakery and pub on the square did a roaring trade. I managed to get the line-ups put up on a blackboard, and many locals delayed watching Wales play 6-Nations rugby in favour of more local entertainment. I’ve certainly never seen a ground like it, and suspect I never will again. It was certainly worth the effort getting there.

It was a bruising encounter with a couple of unsavoury off the ball challenges.  After one I commented to a fellow hopper that the perpetrator was lucky to stay on the pitch, I was told by a Machynlleth fan, that it was a “Contact sport!” Well I suppose kicking out at your opponent is contact-of a fashion! Aberaeron had just that little too much for their guests. Ryan Jones’ opener was equalised by Kurt Jarman courtesy of a defensive howler. Parity didn’t last long as a good cross was turned into his own net by Ben Thomas, and Rhydian Davies made things safe with 5 minutes left.

As we waited for Keith and the coach (he had to park some distance away at a local school) I watched as all trace of the big match was quickly dismantled and the locals disappeared into the pub to watch the rugby. I just left wondering how much impact the day made on the town and its football club.

Apart from the first one, and the last eight, all pictures by Craig Dabbs

Pêl-droed Myfyrwyr

11 Sunday Mar 2012

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Saturday 10th March 2012 ko 10.30

Mid Wales League Division One

UNIVERSITY OF WALES ABERYSTWYTH 0 G Thomas sent off 44 (dangerous play)

BOW STREET 1 (D Evans 86)

Att 236

Entry & Programme-Hop Ticket

Badge £3

It was a early start for everyone to get this one done. Those in the hop hotel, were treated to a gargantuan buffet breakfast, which the hotel could not have made money on, but I suspect with an exclusively male clientele I reckon that breakfast will be remembered more for the two Slovakian waitresses!

It was a short trip across to Vicarage Fields, home of the local University side UWA. The reason this ground couldn’t be visited on the August hop is because being a University, they aren’t there in August. In fact the League has to schedule their fixtures so that they start and finish their campaign in a smaller than usual window of opportunity! One or two hoppers got lost as the League website has the wrong postcode for the ground, and we were endebted to hopper Chris Powell for supplying the correct code a few days before the event.

The coastal town of Aberystwyth, is a link between North and South Wales. Its isolated, in comparative terms, with the nearest large settlement being Swansea, 70 miles away and in driving time 2 hours. Other than the university, the other academic institution is the National Library of Wales, one of only 5 deposit libraries in the UK. The impressive building can be seen high above Vicarage Field.

There’s plenty of interest at the ground, and some of the older hoppers noticed that the pitch has been rotated through 90 degrees, with the steps of an old stand, long since demolished, now isolated a remnant of the past. The stand’s replacement is a movable metal terrace, a rather poor relation of its predecessor, but ideal for the crowds UWA normally get. The students were there en masse, working against the quip that students cannot get up in the morning. Everything worked efficiently, although they brought in a burger van for the catering. That will have cost them revenue, although with no catering facilties at the ground, doing food and drink themselves would have been difficult. Not impossible though, a some clubs have done very well on that front in less than ideal circumstances. The opposition, Bow Street were a case in point.

The best complement I can pay the club is that all I had to do is count the crowd. Unfortunately the game was not worthy of the efforts made to stage it. The first half was notable for the horrendous challenge by Gareth Thomas for which he was correctly sent off. The second half continued in the same turgid vein, and just when everyone had written the game off as a ni nil bore draw up popped Dean Evans to win the game for Bow Street! Sighs of relief emanated from the bumper crowd, and we soon moved on to our next game.

My thanks for Chris Bedford and Craig Dabbs for the use of their photos

Eisteddfod

11 Sunday Mar 2012

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Friday 9th March 2012 ko 7.30pm

Ceredigion League Division One

LAMPETER TOWN 2 (Rivers 39 Coombes 90)

LLANYBYDDER 2 (McEnery 13 D Thomas 84)

Att 197

Entry & Programme by hop ticket

Badge £3

Cawl (Lamb stew) £3

For those of you who don’t know me, I should explain my involvement for the next 4 games. I’m Chris Berezai’s deputy at GroundhopUK and we’ve organised hops over England and Wales for many years. I also assist Kim Hedwall who organises the Swedish groundhop in June each year. The idea is to “Turbo-charge” groundhopping by staggering kick-offs so multiple games can be seen in a day. To attract the fans the clubs produce a programme, and lay on catering. In the case of the clubs on this hop, it turned a normal attendance of 20 , into 200 or so, producing a good payday for the clubs.

This hop was in fact a tidying up exercise to get visits to Aberaeron and UWA done. Both are Mid-Wales League sides, and we’ve done hops in that league on August Bank Holiday for the last 3 years, with another, the last this coming August. Trouble is neither of those two sides are able to play at that time, so an extra hop was needed. More pressingly Aberaeron will vacate their ground at the end of the season.

With 2 sides to visit, the day needed padding out. The original idea was to finish at Llanrhaedr, but when the visitors refused to a later kickoff we had real problems. We were fortunate that Dai Davies at the Ceredigion League (a feeder to the Mid-Wales League), grabbed at the idea, and after much to-ing and fro-ing, games were resheduled to give us a Friday night under lights at Lampeter and a late afternoon game at New Quay the next day. Accomodation was booked, Keith Regan at Castell Coaches (a legend and he knows it!) sorted us out a coach, and his expert driving services booked.

Friday turned out to be a very long day, albeit very rewarding. Fellow hoppers Craig and Lee met me in Oxford at 8am, and our first job was to head to Coleshill United for a ground inspection for September’s North Berkshire League hop (You’ll love the place!). Then it was over the Severn Bridge to meet Chris and his party at one of our old stamping grounds, Trefforest. Whilst the others enjoyed South Wales’ best real ale pub The Otley Arms, Chris and I drove to the western end of the the M4, Pont Abraham to meet journalist Chris Harte, who very kindly had collected the programmes for all 4 games. From there it was back along the M4 to another hopper Richard, who let us use his front room to put together 95 programme packs for those with prebooked tickets. From there it was back to Trefforest to pick up the others. From there just a short drive along the A470 to Caerphilly to Castell Coaches.

It’s always a pleasure to work with Keith and Castell, and he was in his usual ebullient form as he bypassed Friday afternoon traffic as we picked up 35 hoppers from Cardiff station, and headed north, via Merthyr Tydfil, to the west Wales town of Lampeter in double-quick time.

Make no mistake, you are in Welsh Wales here. On an extreme level, the Free Wales Army was founded here in 1963, by  William Julian Cayo-Evan. A paramilitary Welsh Nationalist organisation, it fizzled out in the 1970’s. On a far less extreme level, the town is a centre for the Welsh language and culture, and is the UK’s smallest university town, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David adding around 1,000 on to the normal population of around 3,000. On a personal level, I very nearly went to university here, before choosing the brighter lights of London.

If things had worked out differently I may have visited Maes Y Felin over 20 years earlier, its very much the junior partner of the rugby union club running parallel to it. The rugby pitch is railed off, and there’s a large club house behind one goal. The football club makes do with a changing room block, and a rope for the pitch. The floodlights were an unusual sight for this league but gave us our Friday night game.

An under 18 game was in progress on the rugby ground and I was pleased to see our game gettiung a larger attendance. The rugby crowd looked a little nonplussed a the high attendance the football was getting!

The club made the most of their opportunity with a gazebo being erected, and a barbeque on an old circular saw fired up. A pot of Welsh Cawl (lamb stew) provided sustainance for Keith and I, followed by some Barra Brith (malted loaf). Programme packs were distributed and we were royally entertained as Lampeter entertained Llanybydder hailing from a mere 12 miles away.

Oliver McEnery’s free kick was a spectacular opening to the game, but Mark Rivers’ reponse was a fitting reposte. The two sides slugged it out in a highly entertaining, end to end match, with Daniel Thomas thinking he’d won it for Llanybydder only for Josh Coombes to fire home for a deserved equaliser deep into injury time.

It was a marvelous start to this mini-hop and it was a happy coach party that arrived the Hotel Gwesty Marine in Aberystwyth around an hour later. With around 40 hoppers staying a poster in the hotel lift amused me. It read,  ” If the hotel bar is quiet we will be closing at 10.30pm.” They clearly didn’t know who they were dealing with, as we were still chatting and drinking at midnight! When you see some people so infrequently, you have to use every opportunity to catch up!

Many thanks for Craig Dabbs for the use of his photos