Tuesday 5th April 2016 ko 18.00

Banbury District & Lord Jersey League Division Two

CHACOMBE 0

BYFIELD ATHLETIC 2 (Childs 13 Jobbins 75)

Att 21 at Wardington Cricket Club, Thorpe Road, Wardington, Oxon

Entry FREE

No Programme

If you leave the M40 at Banbury and strike north towards Daventry for a few miles you dip in and out of both Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire. It’s a peaceful part of England, you can’t help but channel John Milton and dream of “England’s green and pleasant lands.” And in the spirit of cross-county identities Chacombe is in Northamptonshire, but their football team plays in nearby Wardington, which is in Oxfordshire!

By any standards it’s bucolic place, with the village and its church forming one backdrop, and fields the other. The JCB, indulging in a spot of coppicing decided to down tools for the evening.

The Banbury & Lord Jersey League nominally feeds the Oxon Senior League which would place this encounter in the league’s third tier at 11 promotions from Football League status. But worrying about this game’s place in the firmament would be to do the game a disservice.

For this was an entertaining, and honest game to watch. No primadonnas just 22 blokes playing for the sheer enjoyment of doing so. In the end the better side won, but as the sun slowly set in this part of Middle England it simply didn’t matter to me. The important thing was that I was there.