Monday 10th April 2023 ko 11:30

Hellenic League Division Two West

SHIPSTON EXCELSIOR 4 (Fetherston 43 secs Gill 21 Cardwell 36 Clarke 53)

FECKENHAM 2 (Davies 46 Skelton 85)

Att 193

Entry £3.50

Programme £1.50

I drove past Chipping Norton, then headed still further north heading over from Oxfordshire to Warwickshire. There always seemed to be a sense of crossing the Rubicon at that County boundary- from Hellenic Country to Midland League territory. Just to add to the sense of change, the rains came. We drove through Long Compton with the wipers barely able to keep the windscreen clear.

I’d first visited the Shipston in October 2009 to see Shipston play a Midland Combination game against the wonderfully named, and short-lived Anglo-Zimbabwean outfit Young Warriors. Here’s a glimpse of the ground back then.

The ground hasn’t changed a massive amount in the intervening years, but the league has with the club leaving playing in the Stratford Alliance, and the Midland League before transferring to the Hellenic in 2020. As is so often the case at this level of the game, the issue will tend to be floodlights, or the lack of them!

But in the here and now the problem was the rain and the referee’s rather nervous inspection as volunteers forked away the rain. I’ve little doubt that had this game not been a hop game we’d have had a postponement, and yes, I did have flashbacks to Phil Hiscox’s travails on the 2018 Peninsula Hop.

The game was something of a surprise. Feckenham had won the reversed fixture on the opening day of the hop, but hoppers who’d attended soon picked up that there were marked changes in their personnel for this game. I’m sure Shipston didn’t care, you can only beat what is put in front of you after all!

15:00 Hellenic League Division One

SOUTHAM UNITED 3 (Lawes 20 45p S Barby 61)

LITTLETON 1 (Keene 76)

Att 231

Entry £5

Programme £2

A revisit to Bobby Hancock’s Park was intriguing for Robyn and I. We’d been at the very first game to be played there back in 2020. That game was played both under the shadow of the pandemic and before the clubhouse had been fully fitted out. 

That clubhouse really proved its worth, easily accommodating a bumper crowd. The unusual feature is the 50 or so seats that jut out from the clubhouse behind. They only are sufficient in number for sponsors, so for anyone else wanting a seat, there’s a walk round to the rather blowy far side to the line of “Arena” stands. I do wonder why the design put in so few seats when the view from the clubhouse is easily the best in the ground? 

That view will get quite considerably more interesting in the next few years too. That’s the HS2 project you can see being built behind the goal; those trains whizzing by will look spectacular.

Both in terms of the ground, and the game it was a fitting end to a hop, although I’m sure plenty managed to make the later kick-off at Hartpury University we dropped the game from the schedule only because we couldn’t have got all of the coach party back to Gloucester station in time to get their trains home.

We watched Southam beat a Littleton side destined to finish to finish second-from-bottom and I note that they’ll start next season playing in the Step 7 Midland League Division 2. They will, though have the facilities and the facilities to return to Pyramid Football in due course. 

That of course was a route taken by Southam in recent years, and as I headed for home along familiar roads Robyn and I reflected on how Southam United have finally managed to get themselves both a ground and into a league commensurate with their ambitions.