Daily Archives: March 24, 2013

The Backlog

24 Sunday Mar 2013

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Thursday 21st March 2013 ko 7.45pm

Isthmian League Division One North

BRENTWOOD TOWN 1 (Butterworth 43)

WROXHAM 1 (Harrop 58)

Att 41

Entry £8

Programme 50p (reissue with insert) 50p

Badge £3

Bacon sarnie £2

It would be easy to write off Brentwood as an unlovely Essex town, after all it is the birthplace of people like Jodie Marsh, Amy Childs, Louise Redknapp and Noel Edmonds. Scratch at the surface a little and there’s far more than fake tan, and silicone. The town was the birthplace of the 1381 Peasants Revolt, instigators John Ball and Jack Straw met regularly in local pubs and inns. The first event of the Peasants’ Revolt occurred in Brentwood, when men from Fobbing, Corringham and Stanford were summoned by the commissioner Thomas Bampton to Brentwood to answer as to who had avoided paying the poll tax. Bampton insisted that the peasants pay what was demanded of them. They refused to pay and a riot ensued as Bampton attempted to arrest them.

The town was a stopping point for pilgrims en route to Canterbury, and a chapel is still dedicated to St Thomas à Becket to this day. Brentwood has a huge Premier Inn, whose former use was as Amstrad’s head office, and businesses such as LV and Ford have bases here.

The football club have their base tucked neatly at the back of the leisure centre. Its typical of a club that graduated from county grade football with the clubhouse extended forward to provide requisite seating, and there’s a covered terrace constructed behind one goal. What makes the Brentwood Centre Arena unique is the details. From the sofas behind the goal, the picnic table behind a dugout to the cinema seats for HOME directors, there’s something to make you smile at every turn. The cafe is well worth a visit too, my bacon sarnie was excellent.

Of course it isn’t the fixtures and fittings that make a club, and Brentwood’s band of volunteers are a credit to their town and club. They are the first Isthmian League club I’ve visited recently to print me off a team sheet without grumbling, and the gateman and stadium announcer were happy to talk about the club and their plans for future. If I moved to Brentwood, it would be a pleasure to follow a club with people like these at the helm.

The problem the club have is a massive fixture backlog, with one corner of the pitch prone to waterlogging. For a hopper, Thursday fixtures are a bonus, for everyone else its a major bind with players getting more and more tired. Tonight Brentwood looked as if the season was getting to them as Wroxham on the back of a quite horrible journey from the Norfolk Broads, belied their lowly league position and really should have travelled home with 3 points.

Against the run of play Brentwood took the lead, as a run on goal down the right was only half-blocked, and Steve Butterworth was on hand to dink the loose ball into the net. The lead lasted a mere 9 minutes, as Angelo Harrop superbly curled his shot from just outside the area into the top corner. A point was the least Wroxham deserved and they had chances to win it, Brentwood keeper Richard Wray making a fantastic triple save to deny Jamie Spellar. You just got the impression that with all players fit, Brentwood would probably have won the game.

That of course is the kind of luck you see week in, week out in football, but nevertheless I still left this gallant friendly club feeling slightly sad for them. Their band of volunteers deserved to have witnessed a win on a cold Thursday evening.

 

 

The Rouncil House

24 Sunday Mar 2013

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Tuesday 13th March 2013 ko 19.45

Midland Combination Division Two

KENILWORTH TOWN KH 0

COVENTRY SPIRES 2 (Mwackukwo 3 74)

Att 13 (h/c)

Entry FREE

No Programme

Can of Coke 70p

The Warwickshire town of Kenilworth is probably best known for its 12th century castle, once owned by Simon de Montford. Its genteel market town air seems light years from the urbanised sprawl of Coventry, a mere 6 miles away. Its very much a commuter town these days with the smart rows of semi-detached houses give an unsubtle view of the wealth here.

As is ever the case, a genteel town leads to a football team that struggles to make much of an impact. You turn left from Rouncil Road, into Gypsy Lane and the whole feel changes. The wide tarmacked avenue changes to a potholed track, with a group of allotments at its end, who take exception to football traffic parking there. The ground is just before, with parking at a premium even with the tiny attendance present, but the welcome was fulsome.

Its not often I wax lyrical about a ground that features two sets of prefabricated stands, but there’s so much more to the place than that. The jewel is undoubtedly the clubhouse which manages to bow both at the roof and bulge at the walls. It has the feel of a village hall, but with photos of successful Kenilworth Town sides of the past and a huge tin trophy in one window. The other window has been broken, but fixed in a way you’ll only find in non-league- with the tactics board! The committee were keen to tell me about the history of the club, and I look forward to reading the leaflet they’ll be posting to me. It’s clear that the club has fallen to a low ebb, but having regained league membership, they’re looking to progress again. Incidentally the KH stands for Kings Heath who the club swallowed up in 2005, and whose influence has been completely lost.

A new set of changing rooms have been built, and a new clubhouse next door to the current one. That clubhouse isn’t ready yet, but when time and finances allow, that will be fitted out, the memorabilia will move and a quirkly part of the club will be demolished. I do wonder when this can happen though. The club don’t charge for entry, and there’s little or nothing in the way of sponsorship. I saw how much it cost for the referee and two linesmen, and its clear that expenditure must exceed income, and I do wonder why linesmen are necessary at such a low level (level 8 of non-league).

The game was entertaining on a cold evening. There wasn’t much to seperate the two sides, both teams at the margins of Midland Combination membership. Ultimately two good strikes from Jhoe Mwakchukwo was enough to swing the tie in Spires’ favour but the home officials didn’t seem too concerned. Perhaps when you’ve been to hell and back small things like home defeats don’t matter too much.

Didcot Snow

24 Sunday Mar 2013

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At 2pm on Friday 22nd March they shut Didcot Power Station. An icon of the Oxfordshire countryside became a mausoleum at the flick of a switch, and a mausoleum that won’t be around for long either. With land prices high and a railway line nearby, once decommissioning has finished in around 18 months, the demolition will start. Inevitably the story is slightly more complicated, as there are two Didcot Power Stations. It’s the Coal and Oil fired Didcot A that’s closed, as it can’t meet EU emissions targets but the smaller Combined Cycle Didcot B is still in use, but the huge cooling towers and the vast majority of the skyline will disappear.

Many will be pleased to see it go, the plant was voted Britain’s third ugliest building by readers of Country Life magazine in 2003, and many times I’ve driven past and wondered how on earth it got planning permission! It’s visible for miles, from the M40 at Stokenchurch, and from the A34 at West Ilsley. The ecologists hated the place, in 2006, 30 Greenpeace volunteers invaded and a group chained themselves to a broken coal-carrying conveyor belt. A second group scaled the 200 metre high chimney, and set up a ‘climate camp’. They proceeded to paint “Blair’s Legacy” on the side of the chimney overlooking the town, claiming it was the second most polluting in Britain after Drax in Yorkshire. Friends of the Earth describe it as the ninth worst in the UK, so these groups will doubtless be celebrating.

The locals take a completely different view. For Friday’s light show finale, artists were seen sketching the towers, and descriptions comparing the towers to Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North were recorded. As far as I know, no-one went quite as far as Kelly Green who had the towers tattooed on her shin, but it’s clear that Didcot’s identity and the power station have become intertwined since its opening in 1968. Before then, Didcot was a Garrison town, with the Great Western Railway running through, itself only there because Lord Wantage objected to the line going through the more logical Abingdon to the north. I sat in the pub in Oxford last night and we talked about the station. I was surprised at how as children, we all used the place as a landmark to place when we were close to home after a long journey.

I visited the site after the celebrations had finished, the cameramen had packed up and gone, the artists nowhere to be seen. The cooling waters still flowed from the bottoms of the towers, as the snow began to fall gently. I smiled, Didcot got snow sometimes when nowhere else did, due to the cooling tower’s steam condensing and freezing. I contemplated the curves of the towers designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd, who also designed Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral. It’s obvious he was massively influenced by the likes of Le Corbusier and the entire Bauhaus movement. Those designs, noted for functionality rather than form, think of 1950’s tower blocks, were seldom easy on the eye but I do think the Didcot residents have a point. There is a sense of “So ugly its beautiful,” about the station, and on that level alone I’ll be sad to see them demolished.