Author Archives: laurencereade

Men of Harlech

01 Monday Dec 2014

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Saturday 29th November 2014 ko 14.00

Gwynedd League

CPD HARLECH TOWN 3 (H Williams 10 Parry 13 77)

Y FELINHELI 5 (Pennie 21og AW Jones 44 Martin Hughes 50 G John 55 Daffyd 64)

Att 21

Entry FREE

Nothing for sale

This part of Northern Wales has always held great resonance for me. From childhood holidays in Barmouth, to travelling home from a weekend in Porthmadog in complete silence as my marriage collapsed, the area has signposted stages of my life, although I am bound to comment that my father still hasn’t managed to pronounce Bettws-Y-Coed correctly yet!

But then during this year’s Welsh hop our coaches left Nefyn and travelled via Penrhyndeudraeth to Barmouth and we passed through Harlech on the way, passing more or less under the Edward Longshanks-built castle. Apart from humming “Men of Harlech” for the rest of the journey I wondered whether there was a team in the town. That was answered conclusively when we arrived at Barmouth when the Harlech team made themselves gloriously known by commandeering the stand. Continue reading →

The Town That Didn’t Stare

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

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Tuesday 25th November 2014 ko 19.30

Isthmian League Cup 2nd Round

EAST GRINSTEAD TOWN 2 (Campbell 3 Joseph 37)

PEACEHAVEN & TELSCOMBE 1 (Gatting 62)

Att 59

Entry £8

No Programme

Tea £1

It would be all too easy to treat East Grinstead as part of that sprawl of London commuter-belt south of the M25. Are you in Surrey, or are you in Sussex (the latter!) the endless affluent suburbia making the county irrelevant. But this is one of those towns where you need to park your prejudices and look at little deeper. Continue reading →

Another Octave

24 Monday Nov 2014

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Sunday 23rd November 2014 ko 15.00

Women’s International Friendly

ENGLAND 0

GERMANY 3 (A Scott 6og Sasic 12 45)

Att 45,619 at Wembley Stadium

Entry- Complimentary

Programme £5

It’s a fact of my footballing life that I don’t watch nearly enough women’s football. My cause in that respect was aided when a league I work with offered two Club Wembley seats, and I pondered how to get to the national stadium with the Jubilee, and Metropolitan tube lines closed for planned engineering work.

Continue reading →

Erasmus

21 Friday Nov 2014

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Wednesday 19th November 2014 ko 19.30

Western League Division One

WARMINSTER TOWN 0

RADSTOCK TOWN 2 (Metcalf 45 Harvey 45)

Att 110

Entry £5

Programme £1

Sausage & Chips £1.50

When the rains come you drive to football with the risk that when you reach your destination the game will be off. You can mitigate the risk by phoning ahead, and Twitter is a godsend to the groundhopper, but you never quite know until you turn the corner and see the floodlights shining through the trees. Continue reading →

Priorities

20 Thursday Nov 2014

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Tuesday 18th November 2014 ko 19.30

FA Youth Cup 2nd Round

OXFORD UNITED 3 (Graham 14 45 George 20p)

swindon town 2 (McCormack 83 Oulridge 85)

Att 727

Entry £5

Programme 50p

If, perchance you are an Oxford United fan there is a prescribed order when it comes to local rivals. In strict order it goes like this,

 
  1. Swindon Town
  2. Swindon Town Reserves
  3. Swindon Town Youth team
  4. Swindon Town Ladies,

and so on…

Continue reading →

Rattle & Hum

16 Sunday Nov 2014

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Saturday 16th November 2014 ko 14.00

Gwent County League Division One

NEWPORT CORINTHIANS 1 (Perszewski 5) Perszewski sent off 28 (violent conduct) Berry missed penalty 37

ABERGAVENNY TOWN 4 (Morgan 10 17 C Norman 18 Jenkins 45)

Att c30

Industrial areas have a sound all of their own. Whether its the hum of the steelworks, or the buzz of overhead cables, or the distant thunder of a goods train there’s a personality to be found here. And let’s be honest, I picked Coronation Park solely because of the transporter bridge behind. You have Dave Collins to thank for this piece, and if you don’t know Dave, and you really should, he’s the publisher of the excellent magazine Welsh Football, and a recent magazine had a quite wonderful picture on the front cover, several versions of which you’ll see at the end of this text. Me being me, I forgot which team I needed to visit, so that’s another reason to be grateful to Mr Collins! Continue reading →

Reds & Blues

07 Friday Nov 2014

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Wednesday 5th November 2014 k0 19.30

Welsh League Division 3

CARDIFF GRANGE HARLEQUINS 2 (Cawley 15 Dabusso 52)

BRIDGEND STREET 3 (Penekett 37 Kane 55 Dunfold 75)

Att c33

Entry £3

Programme- None. The club puts a downloadable version on the results section of their website, but the website hasn’t been updated for a while.

It’s a long time since I first encountered the Grangetown-based team, taking a 7-0 drubbing away at Plas Kynaston Lane, then home to Cefn Druids in January 2006. That was during Quins one season in the Welsh Premier League, an unhappy experience for them, their chances of survival stymied by a major sponsor pulling out just before the start of the season. A year or two later I went to see them at their home at Leckwith Stadium, and even now there are still echoes from that time. Continue reading →

Stiff Little Fingers

06 Thursday Nov 2014

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Tuesday 4th November 2014 ko 19.30

Western League Division One

RADSTOCK TOWN 4 (Carter 6 Harvey 26 Hardiman 89 Metcalf 90)

WINCANTON TOWN 2 (Jordan 68 Chant 90)

Att 61

Entry £6

Programme £1

Perhaps its just my ignorance, but until I visited nearby Welton Rovers, you can see their lights as you travel south from Bath, I didn’t associate Somerset with coal mining. That was genuinely my error, the pits were started in the late 18th century and at one point were owned by the Waldegrave family, you may remember MP William Waldegrave, but the last pit finally closed in 1973. The clues are still there, be it the “Miners” nickname of the football club, or the rows of terraces miners’ cottagers as you climb the hill towards the Southfields Recreation Ground. Continue reading →

Blood swept Lands and Seas of Red

31 Friday Oct 2014

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Let’s start with the facts, this is the moat of the Tower of London, gradually filled with 888,246 ceramic poppies each representing one British military fatality during the First World War.

The Poppies were designed by Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, and over the last few months the moat has gradually filled with a sea of red. In time the poppies will be sold, with 6 charities benefitting, but what is it like to visit? What does it look like, and more importantly how does it make you feel? Continue reading →

Malted Milk

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Tuesday 28th October 2014 ko 19.45

Midland League Division One

UTTOXETER TOWN 3 (Curley 15 85 Redshaw 80)

ATHERSTONE TOWN 1 (Storey 49)

Att 227

Entry £3

Programme £1

The Staffordshire town is reckoned to have had 79 different spellings of its name since its mention in the Domesday Book as “Wotocheshede” Perhaps now you know Uttoxeter now for its racecourse, or for Fox’s Malted Milk biscuits, or even Samuel Johnson’s penance. Dr Johnson’s father ran a bookstall on Uttoxeter market, and young Samuel once refused to help out on the stall. When Johnson was older, he stood in the rain (without a hat) as a penance for his failure to assist. Now Uttoxeter has another reason to be famous, its football team. Continue reading →