Friday 20th December 2024 ko 19:45

Northern Counties East League Division One

DEARNE & DISTRICT 0

WORSBROUGH BRIDGE 3 (Grist 4 62 Brown 62)

Att 208

Entry £5

No Programme

It seems that just before Christmas there’s usually a couple of Friday night games, seemingly to tempt groundhoppers who’d finished work for the festive break. It does pay to be adaptable though, at lunchtime I’d planned on being South Wales, not South Yorkshire. Thanks to Phil Sweet of the South Wales Alliance for the early heads-up of a waterlogged pitch at Llwydcoed!

Dearne & District play in Goldthorpe, in the centre of the triangle formed by Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster in the centre of the South Yorkshire coalfields. The net result of that, even with the closure of the industry, there are still a myriad of football clubs still representing those colliery communities.

What makes Dearne & District different is that they are a more recent creation, dating from 1992. They’ve always been based in Goldthorpe, the Dearne refers to the Dearne River a tributary of the River Don that reaches its confluence at Denaby Main. Another difference you’ll find with Dearne & District FC is the sheer ambition you’ll see.

The club played at Kingsmark Park in Goldthorpe until 2023 but moved knowing they’d never be able to erect floodlights there. They’ve taken on the Welfare Ground, once the home of now defunct Goldthorpe Colliery who played Sheffield & Hallamshire League games here until 1995. What they took on was a site with little or nothing already in situ, but had the potential, vital since the club won the Central Midlands League Premier North last season, and therefore needed a floodlit ground for the Step 6 Northern Counties East.

The ground manages to both show the remarkable transformation the club has made to the place while still being very much a work in progress. One side of the ground is out of bounds to spectators while hard standing is put down, and behind the far goal building work continues apace, while the trains whistle past both above and behind you. This is clearly a club with a plan and the means to make it happen.

I’d arrived to something of a kerfuffle. There’d clearly been heavy rain, and the pitch markings had been washed away. Social media when I left Oxford had said that the game was on, when I arrived it had been called off then delayed 45 minutes. Frantic efforts were in place to remark the pitch interupted briefly when the groundsman’s dog spotted a rabbit running on the pitch and gave chase…

I was quite happy with a 20:00 kick off in the end, and seeing the lack of a programme, they normally do issue, I did wonder whether they expected the game to take place? It would have been straightforward to call the game off, it is only 8 miles to Worsbrough, and who could forget their ground and their hop game back in 2012? Perhaps I was better off ignorant sat on the M18!

But we did get a game, thankfully, and it really didn’t go by the formbook, the visitors winning convincingly. I didn’t expect the result, but then I didn’t expect a lot of what I saw here. All in life’s rich tapestry is the way I look at it, and the motorways didn’t misbehave either!