Saturday 6th December ko 14:00

Bristol Premier Combination Division One

LION 0

AFC MANGOTSFIELD 3 (Mansfield 9 Rice 23 Douglas 49)

Dorrington sent off 90 (violent conduct)

Att 2 at Little Stoke Park, Bristol

Free Entry

Red sun go down way over dirty town
Starlings are sweeping around crazy shoals
Yes and a girl is there high heeling across the square
Wind it blows around in her hair and the flags upon the poles
Waiting in the crowd to cross at the light
She looks around to find a face she can like.

Church bell clinging on just a trying to get a crowd for Evensong
Nobody cares to depend upon the chime it plays
They’re all in the station praying for trains
Congregation late again
It’s getting darker all the time these flagpole days
Drunk old soldier he give her a fright
He’s a crazy lion he’s a-howling for a fight

“Lions” Dire Straits 1978

On one hand it isn’t usually difficult to find a game in Bristol on a Saturday afternoon. I’d organised to drop Robyn off at a friend’s birthday celebration in town, and the idea was to pick her up as soon as it was over. That meant that I wouldn’t be able to travel far, but that wasn’t going to be a problem was it?

Because the footballing pyramid dips down as low as anywhere here. Below the Western League at 5 and 6 promotions from the EFL, you get the Gloucestershire County League, and below that there’s 3 further leagues including 2 divisions of the Bristol Premier Combination, then below that the 5 divisions of the Bristol & District League. Then theoretically at least you have 4 divisions of the Bristol Downs League- I make the bottom division of that league at a nominal Step 18!

But November had clicked over into December and it seemed that it hadn’t stopped raining. By the time we’d reached the M32 it became clear that the only games that were on in the city were Bristol City, a game on the 3G at the GFA Ground, and Lion FC in the Bristol Premier Combination. The only reason I knew about the latter was due to the excellent Bristol Premier Combination Twitter feed. But stop for a moment and consider just how much football had been postponed to put me in that position.

Lion are graduates of the Downs League suggesting that divisions of the pyramid can be skipped if needs be, and as the name might suggest are a forner pub side. They are using Little Stoke, in the north of the city as a base and are finding themselves in the odd position that they are the more senior club using here- Little Stoke are plying their trade in the Bristol & District League having fallen a long way since their Gloucestershire County League days.

The legacy of the County League is proper dugouts and a railed off pitch but that didn’t stop me questioning my sanity when I parked up. It was bleak, the cold wind was whistling across the pitch and rainy squalls punctuated the afternoon. It was a good job the cafe was dispensing restorative hot drinks, it was borderline essential on a day like this. And yes, the attendance reflected the weather, just a bloke following the visitors, a breakaway from Mangotsfield United, the league official who runs that excellent Twitter feed, and me!

But despite the conditions the meagre crowd (if crowd is the right word) were well entertained. The visitors were just that bit sharper in front of goal than Lion were, and the fracas that produced the late red card was more heat than light. If only that last phrase hadn’t been rhetorical!