Tag Archives: northern counties east

T’Derby

09 Monday Apr 2012

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Saturday 7th April 2012 ko 10.30am

Northern Counties East League Premier Division

MALTBY MAIN 3 (Folyton-Brown 9 Branagan 58 Gladwin 79)

PARKGATE 1 (Wragg 41og)

Att 253

Entry & Programme Hop Ticket

Badge £3

A slightly earlier start than on the Friday, reflecting the slightly greater miles covered today. As I sat at the hotel watching once again watching a gaggle of hoppers taking full advantage of a buffet breakfast, I began to feel sorry for any club hosting the morning game, but then there are the others who stay at room-only locations.

We headed down the M1 to the the metropolitan borough of Rotherham, and the town of Maltby, at its eastern edge. The area is dominated by the coal mining industry, and unlike most of the towns we’ve visited the local colliery is still working, no pit wheel sunk into concrete as a quasi-gravestone here. There’s nothing pretty about Maltby, this is an unashamedly industrial town and Muglet Lane reflects this.

As I stepped off the coach I inhaled, the ground is breathtakingly ugly, but in that I found a kind of beauty. The floodlights topped with barbed wire, the stand built with girders. I’ve not seen anything like it, and the longer I lingered, the more I loved the place. A lovely friendly club too, Derek wasn’t feeling well so the club let him sit in the hospitality area so he could watch the game from the warm.

I helped the club sort out the lineups for the hoppers and settled down for my usual 20 minutes or so before it was time to do the crowd count. On paper this looked like an away banker with Main struggling, but with Parkgate being a mere 8 miles away the other side of the M18 this was a local derby with real bite.

It was first blood to Main after Parkgate’s Danny Major attempted to head a through ball back into the hands of Jamie Bailey but the full back didn’t manage to get enough behind the header and striker Tom Folyton-Brown nipped in to slot home confidently in the 10th minute.
Parkgate equalised as a Danny Cardwell corner was headed into his own net by Jonathan Wragg whilst under pressure from Matt Griffin in the 41st minute.
It was a truly astonishing goal that swung the tie towards Main. A looping cross from the left found forward Rob Brannigan on the edge of the area and his bicycle kick went high into the top corner of Jamie Bailey’s goal.
Parkgate had the majority of the possession as Maltby only threatened through the occasional counter attack but a good display of goalkeeping by Andrew Carney thwarted all their efforts.
Maltby made the game safe in the 79th minute as a counter-attack was clinically finished by Craig Gladwin.

A three points that I suspect was of more use to the home side than the away. After directing a local pressman who wanted to speak to someone who’d been to lots of grounds to Jens from Dusseldorf (5,500 and counting), I found Derek, thanked the club and made for the coach.


The Idle Working Men’s Club

08 Sunday Apr 2012

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Friday 6th April 2012 ko 1.45pm

Northern Counties East League Premier Division

THACKLEY 1 (Mallinson 84)

LONG EATON UNITED 1 (Chambers 26)

Att 327

Entry & Programme Hop Ticket

Badge £3

Copy of Jack Charlton’s autobiography £3

Team Sheet 20p

It really was a very shot drive across Bradford to Thackley, in fact we had enough time to call in at the Idle Working Men’s Club! The name is a simple pun as the club is in the district of, yes Idle!

Despite the Bradford address Dennyfield has a rural feel to it, it even has a stables at one end! The club once again had read their notes, and were ready for the descending hoppers! This time the food of choice was a delicious chilli-con-carne with rice which seemed to be very popular. The club ran a bookstall in aid of “Help for Heroes” which I thought was a nice touch, and again the club’s big day went like clockwork.

I took a few minutes to have a look around. I soon found well-loved hopper Derek Coope having a doze in the clubhouse. No hop is quite the same without Deadly, a retired professor of mathematics. He’s not in the best of health these days, and I doubt his doctor would approve of him going groundhopping but its obvious what a lift these weekends give him. What he probably doesn’t know if how much his presence lifts everyone else!

The ground would grace a much higher level. There’s hard standing behind both goals and a large stand at the half way line. On the other side there’s a open terrace which the club are fundraising to convert to a second stand. Beyond the near goal there’s an intriguing tower structure. It turned out we were actually standing on top of a railway and the “Tower” is in fact a ventilation shaft!

The game for all the world looked a home banker as Long Eaton are struggling to maintain Premier Division status so when Danny Chambers fired United into the lead from a corner, and the visitors looked strong in defence a minor upset looked on the cards. I had my cup of tea with the officials at half time, none of which seemed unduly worried, apart from the vexed issue of consuming the delicious but hot soup and be out for the second half!

That seemed to be following a similar path to the first. Thackley attacked and Long Eaton defended, it wasn’t a wonderful spectacle but I found it gripping in a “Will they, won’t they” way. Thackley did equalise, Matt Morgan’s through ball into the box was seized on by John Mallinson, who from the tightest of angles on the right managed to find the net. That was the very least Thackley deserved, but it did leave one person slightly disappointed, Long Eaton resident Chris Berezai! Not sure the accent is quite Derbyshire though!

Here we go again!

08 Sunday Apr 2012

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Thursday 5th April 2012 ko 7.45pm

Northern Counties East League Division One

YORKSHIRE AMATEUR 1 (Craig Heard 45)

HEMSWORTH MINERS WELFARE 3 (Crapper 11 Williams 19 48)

Att 179

Entry & Programme Hop Ticket

Badge £3

“Leeds Pale” Bitter £2.50/pint

This was a long day! From Long Eaton, Chris and I set off for Staveley Miners Welfare to pick up 3 sets of programmes for the inaugural NCEL hop. From there it was further up the M1 to the Cedar Court Hotel in Wakefield, our HQ for the weekend. There we were joined by League Committee member Karl Blackburn with the other sets of programmes. It took around 90 minutes to put together the 100 or so programme packs for those who’d pre booked their tickets.

By that time it was around 1.30, so Chris and I started the shuttle runs to the various rail stations of Wakefield to pick up the public transport using hoppers. Included in that throng was the towering presence of Ari, the chairman of the Scarborough FC Norwegian supporters club, which has 60 members!

After a strong coffee, it was soon 5.45 and our coach, driven by Godfrey arrived. It took around an hour to reach Leeds and Bracken Edge, home of our first club Yorkshire Amateur. On the way we had a phone call from Central Midlands League Bonanza organiser Rob Hornby to wish us luck. Considering that there’s friction between the CMFL and the NCEL it was a wonderful gesture from a class act.

From there on in it was a bit of a blur for an hour, as programme packs were distributed, friends reaquainted and officials met. It was a bit of a relief when we could all go and watch some football!

The “Ammers” are club with real history. They were founded in November 1918 but only began playing matches in 1919. In those early days, the club’s fixtures largely consisted of playing friendlies at Elland Road following the demise of Leeds City FC, on the orders of the Football Association, after irregularities were discovered in their accounts. However, in 1920 the club decided that the ground was not suitable for their needs and sold the lease to the newly formed Leeds United AFC for the sum of £250! They moved to their present headquarters at Bracken Edge in 1922 after using several other grounds, including sharing with Harrogate Town.  in 1932 a record crowd of 3,569 paid gate receipts of £160 to see the 5-2 Amateur Cup Quarter Final replay victory over Wimbledon. This was after a 2-2 draw at Plough Lane before a crowd of 12,000. The “Ammers” had demolished the holders, Wycombe Wanderers, 4-0 in the previous round but lost to Marine in the semi final.

Since then life has been a struggle, living in the shadow of the far bigger professional clubs in the area, but is a remarkably spick and span ground that sadly these days sees gates in the teens. For all that, the clubhouse has been refurbished and the club worked incredibly hard serving up hot food and specially purchased real ale to the hoppers.

On the pitch sad to say, Amateur were no match for their visitors from mid-way between Barnsley and Pontefract proved to be far too strong for their hosts. Ryan Williams was the pick of the players on show collecting a brace, but the scoreline could easily have been crueller on the hosts.

As organiser, I’d have liked to have seen a few more at the game, but given the appalling traffic on the M1 and on a working day, I’m probably just being hard to please. On the way out of the first ground on each hop, I’ve got into the habit of quietly listening to hoppers’ impressions of what they’ve just seen. They were all positive, so I allowed myself to breathe, and after returning to the hotel, we found a local boozer, with acting Fareham Town FC secretary Paul “Splodge” Proctor, and relaxed.

Unhappy Glappy

18 Sunday Mar 2012

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Saturday 17th March 2012 ko 7.30pm

Central Midlands League North Division

GLAPWELL 0

PARKHOUSE 2 (Clay 23 Wain 73)

Att 201

Entry & Programme Hop Ticket

Badge £2.50

The final game saw the hop at a club returning to the CMFL after rising as far as the Northern Premier League.

Still in North Derbyshire Glapwell is most famous for its colliery which closed in the 1970’s. Its most famous employee was current Bolsover (around 3 miles away) MP Dennis Skinner. Apparently he often tells the story of turning up back at the pit to work his shift after being elected as an MP as he still considered himself a miner, and being an MP not a proper job.

The village is listed in the Domesday Book. In 1086, the book notes that Serb holds this for William Peverall, “In Clapwell, Liefric had one carucate of land to the geld. There is land for as two ploughs. There eight villans have 6 ploughs… Serb now holds it.”

I found it hard to see the place as a colliery village, as there’s something rather quiet and rural about the place. Hall Corner was easily the best appointed of the grounds on the Bonanza, a testament to the club’s rise and fall. The club won the CMFL in 1994 and won their way through both divisions of the Northern Counties East to reach the Northern Premier League. That’s reflected in cover on 2 sides and 137 seats at the ground plus a club shop and burger bar. Despite this, Hall Corner was not deemed suitable for the NPL and for the 2010–11 season, the club had an agreement with Mansfield Town F.C. which allowed the club to play their home games at Mansfield’s ground, Field Mill. Disaster struck in December as Mansfield were locked out of the ground by their landlord Keith Haslam, and so the Glapwell reluctantly returned to Hall Corner. At the end of the season the club resigned from the NPL over ground grading issues and returned to the CMFL, opting not to enter the higher status Northern Counties East.

There was a little nugget of news about the opposition too. Clay Cross based Parkhouse are set to change their name to Clay Cross Town so as to better reflect the suburb of Chesterfield in which they play. Perhaps I should have bought one of their badges, I’d have a little piece of history.

In a scrappy game of few chances it was the visitors’ quality in the final third that was the difference with Glapwell struggling to register a meaningful shot on target.
After a cagey opening where Parkhouse went close on a couple of occasions, they took the lead on 23 minutes in fortuitous circumstances.  Ant Lynam’s through ball was headed back into the middle of the box by Michael Wain. Lee Clay’s shot was blocked by keeper Jamie Davies, but the rebound hit Clay and agonisingly the ball trickled in.
Glapwell were guilty of gifting away possession and they created very few clear-cut chances throughout the game. Parkhouse could have doubled their lead just after the break but full back Luke Beatson headed over the bar when it looked a good deal easier to score.
Glapwell had a half chance just before the hour when Jordan Johnson’s free kick was headed over by Jay Whalley. Thet followed that up when Kye Martey controlled well, before playing in Callum Green, whose low effort just slid past the post from around 18 yards out.
Alex Marsh then volleyed into the side netting for Glapwell, but the game was won for the visitors on 72 minutes when Wain beat Davies with a powerful effort from an acute angle from the right.
Clay then netted again for Parkhouse, but it was disallowed for offside while the closest Glapwell were to scoring in then remainder of the game was when Adam Jones curled a free-kick just over the bar from the edge of the area. It all looked rather laboured for Glapwell, who now find themselves second from bottom of the table, with just the unfortunate Welbeck Welfare (22 games ,0 points) below them. Hopefully this will be the nadir for this hard-working club’s fortunes, as a further relegation would I fear be fatal to them.

And so another hop finished, with goodbyes and best wishes. I finally caught up with Margerete and Jens from Germany, and made sure I found Rob Hornby to both thank him and congratulate him on another wonderful Bonanza. So now its on to the next one!