Tag Archives: goals

Perspectives

01 Thursday Dec 2011

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Tuesday 29th November 2011 ko 7.45pm

Wessex League Premier Division

LAVERSTOCK & FORD 1 (Wykes 58)

WINCHESTER CITY 4 (Smeeton 54 Allen 74 81 Dunford 82)

Att c50

Entry £5

Programme £1

The small town of Laverstock lies on the River Bourne, a mile opposite the city of Salisbury. Although it predates it more famous neighbour, its clear that the city has completely dwarfed this rural settlement.

The Dell lies in Church Road, and reveals both the club’s ambitions and limitations. Its at one corner of a large area of common land, and as late as 2004 the club were playing in the Hampshire League, on a roped off pitch. The pitch has now been rotated through 90 degrees leaving a large net previously behind a goal rather redundant. A homeowner behind has hung bird-feeders on it! The club are rather proud of what they’ve done to the ground, with the lights, 100-plus seats, and hard standing on all 4 sides. The two quirky bits are the fact that the seats are via two prefabricated stands set across one corner, and the burger bar, built as a block with the dugouts at the half way line. Neither are ideal but still do their respective jobs. The club are pleased to have made it this far, and maintained their status. Continue reading →

Menagerie

25 Friday Nov 2011

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Tuesday 22nd November 2011 ko 7.45pm

Spartan South Midlands League Premier Cup 2nd Round

HAREFIELD UNITED 2 (Reader 42 Majeed 51)

LONDON TIGERS 0

Att 40

Entry & Programme £6

Tea £1

Back in May the move from Banbury to Oxford, involved a distance of a mere 31 miles, but it did alter massively my potential destinations for midweek gamea. This fixture is now only 40 miles from home!

Harefield is sometimes described as the nearest village to London, and it has an odd mix of village and suburbia about it. Its most famous for the hospital where Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub FRS, consultant cardiothoracic surgeon carried out the first live lobe lung transplant and went on to perform more transplants than any other surgeon in the world. By the end of the 1980s Harefield Hospital was the world’s leading transplant centre. A lesser known fact is that three Victoria Cross winners hail from the village.

Preston Park is on the right as you enter the village from Hillingdon, and is a good example of a lower division Isthmian ground. There’s a low seated stand, and opposite is a quirky covered enclosure; perhaps the reason why the club left the Isthmian on ground grading issues is because there’s no cover behind either goal.

It was a pleasant surprise to catch up with Pinner-based hopper Les Bull, and we both enjoyed the announcer trying to add razzmatazz to a cold damp game in front of 40 patrons. The visitors are a real “United Nations” team, having started out as a charity project to help disadvantaged children in Paddington. From there they entered the Middlesex League playing out of Kingsbury Town. When that club folded Tigers were allowed to take their place in the Spartan South Midlands League and became Kingsbury London Tigers. Now they’ve moved to the old Viking Greenford ground, and dropped the Kingsbury prefix although pitch problems have meant that as I write they’ve yet to play a home game!

While off the field the Tigers have problems, on this occasion they had a far simpler one, namely that in 90 minutes of play they failed to muster even one shot on target! Just one decent shot that hit the crossbar, during the second half, so it was left to the Hares’ striker Jack Reader to score one and set up Aban Majeed for the second, to settle a fairly forgetable game.

Black Bullets

20 Sunday Nov 2011

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Saturday 19th November 2011 ko 3.00pm

FA Vase 2nd Round

CONSETT AFC 4 (Walton 44 45 Mackay 69 84)

RAMSBOTTOM UNITED 2 (Drew 48 Flannery 83)

Att 133

Entry £5

Programme £1

Raffle £1

Badge £3

Pie, Peas and Chips £2.80

Tea 50p

My attendance here was for the most straightforward of reasons, the ground will be knocked down at the end of the season, and it’s known to be a cracker. I took Chris Berezai, newly back from a holiday in Egypt along for the ride. We are both fans of the FA Vase, and let’s face it who’s going to turn down the chance to visit a ground like Belle Vue Park? Continue reading →

Stone Lions

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

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Tuesday 14th November 2011 ko 7.30pm

Andover Open Cup 1st Round

ANDOVER LIONS 6 (Augustus 25 Nassoori 41 Reynolds 69 Spencer 77 87 Chesters 82)

WYKEHAM GERRI’S 0

Att 43 (h/c)

Entry FREE

Nothing for sale

With the demise of Southern League Andover FC in July, a phoenix club has sprung up a few hundred yards down the road from the old club’s Portway ground at the Charlton Leisure Centre. And yes, once again its an athletics stadium, with absolutely no cover, or even a cafe. A warm drink would have been handy on a cold night! A few hoppers turned up and around 5 turned tail, pub-bound when they realised the rumour of a programme didn’t materialise.

Andover now play their football in the Continue reading →

Deco

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

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Monday 14th November 2011 ko 7.45pm

Isthmian League Alan Boon Cup 3rd Round

ENFIELD TOWN 0

AFC SUDBURY 2 (Docker 19 Dare 73)

Att 152

Entry £8

Programme £1

Pint of Coffee £1

This new ground is in fact an old ground! Its fame until now is that it’s the athletics stadium where Sebastian Coe trained en route to Olympic gold. And yes, folks I’m well aware that athletics and football are uneasy bedfellows!

The short history of Enfield Town is a troubled one. Continue reading →

The Right Way

12 Saturday Nov 2011

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Saturday 12th October 2011 ko 10.30am

Midland Combination U21 League East/North Division

WOODBOURNE SPORTS 4 (Shemwell 20 Thomas 51 Mullings 56 Carter 87)

STAPENHILL 2 (Weir 39 Crawshaw 58)

Att 10 (h/c)

Entry FREE

Programme-NO

Tea-in-a-mug 50p

The Burrows is not to be confused with Earlswood Town’s ground, that lies a good 2 miles away. This is very much a community facility, with the clubhouse being a community centre, complete with skittles alley. Just head down Rumbush Lane and its easy to find.

And what a friendly club Woodbourne is! Genuinely pleased to see two visitors they really couldn’t do too much to help me, with the lineups and information on the club. The club used to Continue reading →

Turktown

10 Thursday Nov 2011

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Monday 7th November 2011 ko 7.45pm

Russell Cotes Cup 2nd Round

GOSPORT BOROUGH 3 (Norton 75 E Martin 90p 120)

FAREHAM TOWN 3 (Tambling 20 77 Kessack 100) Pittman sent off 102 (2nd booking)

Gosport won 5-4 on (sudden death) penalties

att c200

Entry £6

Teamsheet FREE

Badge sold out

Bobby Robson autobiography £3

Tea 70p

Cheeseburger £2.10

Chips £1 (with inferior chilli sauce to that at Cams Alders)

So, why attend a game in an obscure cup competition and find yourself listening to the home team’s rested star player on 5live as you park up at the ground (Steve Claridge)? Because the two clubs are around 4.5 miles apart, and there’s history…..

Fareham fans refer to the fact that much of this south coast town was built by Turkish prisoners-of-war following the First World War. Certainly there’s a massive difference in atmosphere as you cross from one town to the other. Fareham is, as their fans sing is full of car parks and estate agents, while the main sight in Gosport is the massive Continue reading →

Solace

05 Saturday Nov 2011

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Saturday 5th November 2011 ko 1.30pm

United Counties League Cup 1st Round

BUCKINGHAM TOWN 0

PETERBOROUGH NORTHERN STAR 3 (Staffieri 31 61 Medwynter 57)

Att 51 (h/c)

Entry & Programme £4

Tea 60p

In 1997 Buckingham Town were playing Southern League football at their home, Ford Meadow, in the heart of the pretty Buckinghamshire Town. I saw them a few years later, playing in the UCL Premier, and loved their old stand with railway sleepers as a terrace to bolt the seats to. When a subsituted player used the showers the spectators kept warm through the steam creeping through the gaps in the sleepers!

All of that has gone, Town were evicted during the summer by landlords hell-bent on building houses on land that routinely floods, and the club are now in UCL Division 1,  based at Continue reading →

The Netting

02 Wednesday Nov 2011

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Tuesday 1st November 2011 ko 7.45pm

Wessex League Premier Division

ALRESFORD TOWN 3 (Saleh 11 32 Llewellyn 40)

FAREHAM TOWN 2 (Tattersall 32 Doswell 81)

Att 59 (h/c)

Entry £5

Programme £1

Tea £1

Cheese & Onion Roll £1.50

Now those of you know I need absolutely no excuse to go a watch a game, but for this one I had no lack of reasons. For one, it involved Fareham which means the presence of Mr Fareham himself, the one and only Splodge! Also present was Callum Smith who very quietly is building up a seriously impressive ground count. His love life is always worth a listen to also! Continue reading →

Talking Points

30 Sunday Oct 2011

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Sunday 30th October 2011 ko 10.30am

Upper Thames Valley League Division Two

YELLOW EAGLES 3 (Little 19 40 Simpson 49)

SUTTON WANDERERS 1 (Richards 73)

Att 6 (h/c)

Entry FREE

Nothing for sale.

Its been 30 years since I last visited the Horspath Road Athletics Stadium, just outside Oxford city’s limits. I was right back as the 26th Oxford won the 1981 Headington District Cubs 11-a-side football tournament. I still have the medal but sadly it was the only award I ever won!

The two pitches used that day have long since gone, swallowed up by the landscaping for the new improved Continue reading →