Saturday 27th December 2025 ko 14:00

Somerset County League

WATCHET TOWN 0

STAPLEGROVE 2 (Hibbert 86 Bidgeway 90+6)

Att 65

Free Entry

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed

The light-house top I see?

Is this the hill? is this the kirk?

Is this mine own countree?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797)

As is normal for Robyn and I, we split our time over Christmas between family in Oxford then family in Bristol, so that those days between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve tend to be spent in Knowle West. Or putting it another way, I do tend to see quite a lot of the Somerset County League at this time of year, and Watchet Town had been on my to-do list for quite a while.

The town is probably most famous for being where Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was written in 1797. Coleridge was travelling through Watchet and apparently the view of the harbour, from St Decuman’s Church in the town, was his primary inspiration. I am though bound to point out that given he had an opium addiction through much of his adult life, perhaps his memory was a little hazy! In September 2003, a commemorative statue of the mariner complete with Albatross tied around his neck was erected at the harbour, close to the War Memorial Ground.

The War Memorial Ground dates from 1922 with the quite wonderful pavilion from 1929 with the help of a grant from the United Services Fund to comemorate those from the town who fell in the First World War. And with all due respect to Coleridge, it was that wonderful pavilion that drew me here. And before you ask, there was more than a drop of water to drink, in the form of tea at £1 a cup dispensed with great efficiency from a hatch!

There were two issues with this game. One was the howling gale blowing off the Bristol Channel, yes that is Split Rock Battery island you can see in the background, but the second was that Watchet were, and are having a terrible season. So bad in fact that their only points, a solitary win had been removed by the league presumably due to an eligibility issue. But like so many struggling teams it wasn’t that they were obviously poor, it was just that everything seemed to conspire against them.

If they’d have been comfortably mid-table then the goalkeeping howler wouldn’t have happened and the injury-time thunderbolt would have whistled wide. As it was Watchet clocked up another defeat, and the players glumly took down the goalnets as I headed back to the car. It was almost as if they had a collective Albatross around their necks…..

Dedicated to the memory of Peter Miles, Author, Blogger, and Southend United fan. A major influence on what I do, and why I will forever keep an eye on Southend United’s fortunes. Rest in peace my friend.