Tag Archives: League

All change at Crewe

14 Saturday Jan 2012

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Saturday 14th January 2012 ko 3.00pm

League 2

OXFORD UNITED 0

CREWE ALEXANDRA 1 (Pearson 89)

Att 7, 052 (313 away)

Entry S/T

Programme £3 including Oxford Mail

I remember the first time I watched Crewe. Oxford had just been relegated into what’s now called League 1 and we were playing them that Saturday. I sniffed that this should be an easy win, and was rapidly educated about the Alex manager Dario Gradi and all that he’d achieved on absolutely no budget. Oxford did win that day but the beautiful passing game Crewe played marked my card.

Gradi did get Crewe to the second tier, until a mixture of the Bosman ruling and budgetary restrictions saw the Alex return to the bottom divsion. Dario’s now retired after a 24 year stint as manager, and is now involved at the club’s academy. Its worth noting that Crewe are the only club to participate in the FA Premier Youth League, whose adults have never played in the Premier League.

With Gradi upstairs, its fallen to former Oxford United player, and Nantwich Town manager Steve Davis, to revive the Alex’s fortunes. Judging by the start Oxford made, Davis looked to have his work cut out. Oxford, as befits a team 6 games unbeaten, looked sharp, and James Constable had a goal disallowed for a push in the build-up. Soon after Constable’s goal bound shot was deflected over the bar and at that point you felt that if Oxford had have scored, they’d have won the game at a canter.

The fact they didn’t gave Crewe heart, and as the game progressed, a change of formation allowed them to stifle play, and gradually Oxford’s passing got longer as the space available decreased. It certainly wasn’t reminiscent of the Gradi years, but for the 313 away fans it worked a treat. A Crewe corner was headed wide by Adam Dugdale when he really should have hit the target, but Pittman’s front play for Oxford was still causing the away defence problems, full of feints and mis-moves.

The second half was notably more dull as Crewe were more than happy to settle for a point. But with Oxford frustrated the visitors looked more and more confident. Byron Moore was put through following a clever flick and only a sliding challenge from Michael Duberry prevented a shot on goal. Nick Powell then saw his 25 yard shot just go over the Oxford bar.

From a point early on where Oxford looked like easy winners, the 89th minute saw Crewe take the win. A series of one-twos on the left eventually found Powell. His cross found late subsitute Gregg Pearson, and the on-loan Burton forward touched home.

Peter Leven had a late free kick to gain some sort of salvation for Oxford, but his shot, like his forwards, hit a wall….. For Crewe a welcome away win, but I’ve never seen a Crewe side pass so badly. Maybe with Dario’s retirement, the style will change, but I hope the production line of talent never will.

Test Match

14 Saturday Jan 2012

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Friday 13th January 2012 ko 7.45pm

Wessex League Division One

TEAM SOLENT 3 (Kinge 20 Churms 30 Edwards 74) Edwards missed penalty 74

PETERSFIELD TOWN 1 (Coker 70)

Att 148

Entry & Programme £4

Tea 50p

Pot Noodle £1.50

Test Park, is the Sports Ground of Southampton Solent University, and is to be found on Lower Brownhill Lane, just off Junction 1 of the M271. It’s a modern set-up with some real quirks. The car park is small and the lane narrow, so its well worth arriving early to get a parking spot. There doesn’t appear to be good public transport links either. The team are attached to the University, and seem to attract players doing courses after being released by other football clubs.

The facilities have the feel of a leisure centre, rather than a Step 6 football team. You buy your match ticket at reception, and there’s a large lounge area. Its got ESPN tv, but the bar facilities haven’t been installed yet, so there’s a hot water urn, and sweets for sale. It does the job for now. The ground reflects the fact that its Team Solent’s first season in the Wessex League. The rails and floodlights are in place, as is the turnstile block, but the “Meccano” stand won’t arrive for another few weeks. The ground will have been massively improved, fulfil all ground grading issues, but be almost totally lacking in character. That, I suppose will come with age.

Another improvement with time will be how the club copes with 1. a crowd, and 2. the needs of groundhoppers. The procedure of selling tickets at reception at least meant the queue at the turnstile moved slightly quicker, but the real issue was that each ticket issued was having “Adult” and a message allowing free entry to their next home game written on the back of it. It may work when the attendance is 40 or so, on this occasion it produced a massive queue that meant many missed kick-off. I ended up getting the teamsheets photocopied, and the manager admitted that a lot of hoppers had asked for the lineups, and he’d told them to look in the programme. I’ve long since known that clubs don’t understand hoppers, and vice-versa! Mind you the club took heed of the number of phone-calls they’d received, and printed 150 programmes; I would imagine that’s around 6 times more than the normal print run!

One area thought the club has got right though is the playing side. On a bitterly cold evening they had far too much for their visitors. They raced into a two goal lead, before being pegged back before half time. They continued to dominate in the second period, and the winner came when Declan Edwards’ penalty was well saved by John Burnett but the rebound fell kindly to Edwards and he was able to tap home.

Correctly Team Solent are planing for Wessex Premier football. Whilst the hopper-fest tested them closely, they’ll have learned from the experience and I expect they’ll be far better able to cope next time they get a big crowd.

Cantilevered Containers

31 Saturday Dec 2011

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Saturday 31st December 2011 ko 12.00pm

Hellenic League Division One West

NEW COLLEGE SWINDON 0

TYTHERINGTON ROCKS 3 (Chapman 25 Perry 42 Criddle 79)

Att 78

Entry & Programme £3

Tea 60p

Steak Pie £1.50

It has to be said that New College are a difficult side to get a grip on as to what they’re about. Formed in 1994 as a side playing friendlies on Wednesday afternoons (a day typical for student football), they graduated to academy status two years later with a tie up with Swindon Town. That lasted 2 years before the club linked up with Forest Green Rovers, but these days there appears to be no official link-up, but coaching is directed by Paul Bodin, youth team manager at the County Ground. There were a few Swindon Town bench coats in evidence. Continue reading →

The Hard “G”

04 Sunday Dec 2011

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Friday 2nd December 2011 ko 7.45pm

Western League Division One

GILLINGHAM TOWN 11 (Thomson 15 Murray 19 80 Gale 28 41 59 Ben Salem 34 49 Compton 68 Ruston 84 Bentall 87og)

SHREWTON UNITED 1 (Judd 37)

Att 93

Entry £4

Programme £1

Badge £2.50

For those not in the know this wasn’t a trip to the Medway town, rather a trip to a small market town 3 miles over the border from Wiltshire into Dorset. The misnomers don’t stop there either, the town is pronounced with a hard “G”- as in what fish breathe with!  The name implies a “homestead of the family or followers of a man called Gylla”, a model consistent with the occupation of Dorset by the Saxons from the 7th century.

In October 1348, fifty percent of the 2,000 people living in the town died of the Black Death in the space of  four months.

I’d pondered hard about whether to go. I’d had an asthma attack the day before, and from work in Banbury it did represent quite a drive, I wasn’t convinced I’d made kick off! Me being me I arrived at 6.30! Soon after the hoppers arrived…Firstly Lee and Gilly, and Jersey based John Treleven, then Calne based Paul Fergusson. It made for a convivial atmosphere, especially with real ale on tap!

Hardings Lane started life as an Continue reading →

Flier

01 Thursday Dec 2011

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Wednesday 30th November 2011 ko 7.45

Combined Counties League Division One

BEDFONT SPORTS 6 (Watts 12 67 81 90p Kanani 43 Ventour 90)

CB HOUNSLOW 2 (Peters 59p Stewart 86og)

Att 31 (h/c)

Entry & Programme £4

Tea £1

Its almost a groundhopping rite-of-passage that when a visit is paid to Bedfont Town FC you place yourself at the far side and take pictures of planes flying low over the ground as they land at nearby Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 4. Incidentally the ground was used as base by the Unite Union during their dispute with British Airways.

Bedfont Sports play next door, albeit at right angles, and if, anything the potential for the aeroplane shot is even greater, as the planes seem to fly over the top of the clubhouse! Mind you on this occasion the potential was lower as it was dark! Nevertheless a regular occurance was the roar of a transatlantic jet coming into land. Continue reading →

Check-mate

27 Sunday Nov 2011

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Sunday 27th November 2011 ko 10.30am

Upper Thames Valley League Division 2

CHECKENDON EXILES 0

KING & QUEEN WHEATLEY 3 (Thomas 18 Evans 54 80)

Att 6 

Free Entry

The village of Checkendon lies in South Oxfordshire, around 6 miles from Henley-on-Thames. The Henley influence is obvious, you do find yourself in Millionaires Row! The local boozer is a gastropub, and as the game progressed a regular sight in the background were Ocado vans, for those too lazy to actually travel to Waitrose!

Checkendon’s most obvious attraction is the Equestrian Centre but I was more taken with the Church of England parish church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul,  a 12th century Norman building. All but one of the windows were replaced later in the Middle Ages with Decorated Gothic and Perpendicular Gothic ones, and the Perpendicular Gothic west tower is also a later addition. Its offered a good backdrop to some of the photos!

About a mile away is Hook End Manor. In the 1960s Alvin Lee of Ten Years After fame sold it to Dave Gilmour. Gilmour recorded parts of Pink Floyd’s 1987 album, ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason’ in a studio at the house. The band’s inflatable pig, first used to promote their “Animals” album a decade earlier was stored in one of the outbuildings.

The Manor was then bought by West Side Productions, who produced both Madness and Morrissey recordings there. In the 1990s, the Manor was purchased by producer Trevor Horn who was responsible for the high tech studio which is still in use today.

The Recreation Ground is shared with the village cricket club, but the only actual shared territory is the changing room, as the football pitch is tucked neatly away at the North-Eastern end of the ground. That helped to shelter me slightly on a blustery morning! Above two hawks circled, looking for prey.

This is an eastern outpost of the mainly Oxford based UTV League, the home team after all, were formerly known as Wallingford Exiles, and the club’s HQ is the Queens Arms in Goring-on-Thames, a town incidentally, that has George Michael as a resident! This factor may have something to do with why the game kicked off late as some the visitors got lost!

Perhaps that’s why it took King & Queen so long to get going. It became clear that Exiles were a side utterly lacking in either goal threat or confdence, this was their sixth game on the trot without scoring, and as the half progressed the frustration began to boil over. A midfielder and his club linesman disagreed over an overside call, and the two had to be seperated at half time, the linesman walking back to the changing rooms in high dudgeon. All King & Queen had to do was maintain a semblance of concentration to record an easy away win, and this they managed with just the odd lapse! Simon Evans’ winner, a thumping 25 yard drive was a good way to cap the victory.

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 →

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 →

Mixed Emotions

27 Thursday Oct 2011

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Tuesday 25th October 2011 ko 7.45pm

League 2

OXFORD UNITED 5 (R Hall 15 67 Constable 71 90 Leven 77)

PLYMOUTH ARGYLE 1 (Walton 55p)

Att 7,802 (722 away)

Entry Season Ticket

Programme £3 (including Oxford Mail)

This blog really isn’t about my regular trips to watch Oxford United home games, but this one really did give a lot to both write and think about.

Before the game flowers were laid behind the goal by the parents of Jack Hatton a fan who recently lost his battle with Leukaemia at the age of just 19. He was a brave lad, and as Peter Rhoades-Brown recalled, Jack told him that although he was in pain, had lost his hair, and felt lousy,it could be a lot worse; he could be a Swindon fan! The club, and the city are fortunate to have Peter, a great ambassador.

The vistors are in all kinds of trouble, with massive debts, unpaid staff and are rock bottom of the league. Non-League football looks almost inevitable. Yet over 700 made the long journey, and sang their hearts out. You could look at the score too and imagine this was an easy home win, it certainly wasn’t. You see Argyle aren’t the the quintessential basket case League 2 club. Yes, they are a team of unknowns with the odd journeyman thrown in for good measure, but they gave this game a real go.

In fact for a long time the difference was Oxford United wunderkind Rob Hall. A native of Aylesbury, he’s a West Ham asset on loan to gain experience. I suspect the experience is doing him good but Oxford a whole heap more! For me he’s the best finisher at the club since Dean Windass. His second, a stunning volley from a cross from the right will live long in the memory. In fact, it was that goal that really broke Plymouth’s resistance, and as the goals rained in I was pleased for my club but sad for my mate Mike Sampson a massive Argyle fan and the rest of their magnificent support.

I suspect that maintaining league status will be too much for Plymouth this season, but I would imagine that those connected with them will be pleased just to see them still in business this time next year.