Saturday 2nd December 2023 ko 14:00

Central & North Norfolk League Division 3

WEST ROW GUNNERS 6 (Tuffs 3 73 Andrade 61 81 88 Tamayo 90)

FC VIKING 1 (Basson 78)

Att 12 at Mildenhall Hub

Free Entry

Sometimes you stand at a game and wonder how on earth you ended up there. This was an unusual one though, even by my standards! The key to it was that Robyn and I had been invited to a birthday celebration at AFC Sudbury’s clubhouse in the evening. We’d be staying over so needed time to get to our accommodation, get ready and get to the venue. And before you ask, no Sudbury weren’t at home!

Then of course there was the weather. Any groundhopper will know all-too-well that point where wet becomes waterlogged, and cold becomes freezing. Here we’d had the first, then the second straight after, never a good combination!

So as you can imagine there were few options for a game, still fewer that would represent a new ground, and much much fewer that might actually be on! It was well-known groundhopper Andy English that found this game – on 3G no less, and the 3 of us were far from being the only hoppers there. The game was at the Mildenhall Hub, which as I drove in imagined would be a typical sports centre.

It really isn’t, we shared the cafe with the local library, and the other patrons were two policemen. Clearly delaying cold getting was a priority for everyone! It did give me a chance to work out exactly what we were watching, and perhaps more significantly at what level?

This was at the 3rd tier of the Central & Southern Norfolk League (and this game was in Suffolk!) and the league feeds the Anglian Combination, with that league having 6 tiers. If the top (Premier) division of the Anglian Combination sits at Step 7 of the Non league pyramid, then what we were watching was at Step 15. In all of the 2,500 or so grounds I’ve clocked up I don’t recall ever seeing a game this far down the pecking order!

There are of course caveats. Geography is everything, you couldn’t get anywhere this low in the likes of London, or in Wales for example. Then there’s the idea that you are 15 promotions from the Football League. You are in theory, but I’ve sat in enough league committee meetings to know that a side marching through the divisions will be placed in a division commensurate with their playing standard.

I remember Berinsfield moving up two divisions when they first re-entered the North Berkshire League. And of course, if West Row Gunners were to assert their Suffolk status, I’m fairly sure they could transfer to the Suffolk & Ipswich League, and Division 6 of that sits at the dizzy heights of Step 13!

Then there’s the idea that anything below a certain level isn’t worth watching. For me the great beauty of football is that so long as the two teams are reasonably well-matched then then there’s every chance the game will be entertaining. To add to that I’ve found over the years once you reach Step 7 the standard is roughly similar.

But my immediate thought wasn’t about the standard, after the finding a game on, and getting to it, I really didn’t fancy losing it to the fog, and this part of the world does have history with that sort of thing! Fortunately, both sides and the referee wanted to, and were happy to play, and we saw an entertaining game, with the result rather harsh on the visitors. In fact, the only minor difficulty was that the water bottles on the far side froze!

It was a perfectly watchable game, the company was excellent, and in the evening we’d warmed up enough to enjoy a quite lovely party. The drive back to Oxford the next day was, though a little delicate!