"Get yer trousers on, you're picked": Matchgoing 20-26 August

[Uros Predic]

That's London though isn't it, you'd have to leave Bermondsey to watch Fisher, leave Clapton to watch Clapton, leave Forest Hill to watch Forest Hill Park, leave Beckenham to watch Beckenham Town. Even in the league you have to leave Crystal Palace to watch Crystal Palace, leave West Ham to watch West Ham, leave Millwall to watch Millwall.

[Furtho]

That is indeed a great piece, Uros Predic . I've been following Peckham on social media for a while now and they come across very well indeed. Hopefully will be able to get to a game soon enough #MenaceLifeAintEasy

[Southport Zeb]

Saturday - Newhaven 0-4 Jersey Bulls
FA Cup

This game kicked off at 2pm, presumably to give the visitors time to return to Gatwick. The game was close than the score suggests, with it ultimately coming down to the visitors being more ruthless with their chances - this was perhaps most starkly shown by Newhaven having a penalty saved and Jersey scoring theirs. Jersey were perhaps a bit physical for the home fans liking and their fourth goal had a definite handball in the build up. However I doubt those gripes will upset them as they maintain their 100% record in competitive games across their history.

As the name suggests, Fort Road is down the road from Newhaven Fort. It's a strange ground with a large stand that has somehow been constructed so as not to hold very many fans. The rest of the ground makes up with this with banks of seating all over the place - it's almost as if they've misread the ground grading regulations and read the required capacity for the ground as a whole as the number of required seats. Behind one goal is a beach shop/ cafe, meaning this is one of the few grounds where you can buy a bucket and spade.

Sunday - Chichester & Selsey Ladies 1-0 Oxford United Women
Women's National League South

Chichester and Selsey play in the second town in their name, at the ground of Southern Combination side Selsey. The ground is in the centre of the town, next to the cricket club where a carnival was being held meaning that this game was soundtracked by loud pop music.

Not a particularly exciting game, which the home side won with a scrappy goal shortly after half time. Things were not helped by a number of injuries causing the game to be rather stop and start, and ending up with a load of stoppage time.

Tuesday - Peacehaven & Telscombe 3-2 Hassocks

Peacehaven is a town between Brighton and Newhaven, set up following World War I and almost called Anzac-on-Sea. It is the point where the Prime Meridian meets the English Channel, with this marked by a pillar. The football club play at the unimaginatevely named Sports Field, which has a nice variety of stands and views onto the South Downs.

An entertaining game with some excellent finishing. Peacehaven scored the only goal of the first half with Hassocks equalising early in the second half. Scores were level for only a minutes or so, before Peacehaven retook the lead and then added a third. A late goal for Hassocks made it nervy in the closing stages but the home side held on for the win to go joint top of the league.

[irony towers]

they maintain their 100% record in competitive games across their history..

Jersey lost their opening League fixture of the current season, 1-0 at Beckenham Town, in the Combined Counties Premier Division South (Step 5).

[Ray de Galles]

I thought they'd drawn a couple in previous CCL seasons too, though remained unbeaten.

[irony towers]

In 2019/20 they had 27 wins out of 27 in the League and won all their four cup matches. When the 2020/21 season was suspended they had 4 wins out of 4 in the League, as well as a win in their only Vase match, so Beckenham ended the 100% record.

[Third rate Leszno]

I'm not counting this as a game to tick off, but my pup made his non-league dog debut tonight when he spent 25 minutes sniffing his way round the pitch during Maghull v Marshalls in West Cheshire Div 1.

[Southport Zeb]

Crawley Wasps 3-2 Portsmouth Women
Womens National League South

Away from the coast and up to Horley, just north of Gatwick. Crawley play at Horley Town's The New Defence, where the main structure is a clubhouse where the upstairs was hosting a jujitsu practice. Before the match Wasps were doing presentations for their youth teams, so a lot of young players around in full kit, at least until they'd eaten their burgers and left around half time.

The first half was fairly even with Crawley taking the lead from a shot into the corner of the goal but Portsmouth levelled within a couple of minutes, lobbing the keeper. Wasps were the better side in the second half, taking a 3-1 lead before Portsmouth made them sweat in the closing minutes - they pulled a goal back with around five minutes left and then hit the bar shortly after.

[Capybara]

Erith Town 1-2 Sevenoaks Town
FA Cup Preliminary Qualifying Round Replay

I was supposed to be heading north yesterday but problems with trains out of Kings Cross meant I was staying south and had the opportunity to get this extra Cup game in. Sevenoaks scored very early on and added a second before half time. But there was a very strong breeze and in the second half most of the play was down the same end it was in the first. Erith pulled one back and it looked like they could go on and win but struggled to get anything on target. Sevenoaks had a chance to seal it with a breakaway right at the end as Erith pressed forward but couldn’t take it.

[Artificial Hipster]

Wells Town 3-3 Stalham Town
Anglian Combination Division One

Without wishing to overly romanticise things, Tuesday nights don't get much better than watching grassroots football under floodlights, especially when the game is as entertaining as this was - it ebbed and flowed like the tide in the harbour behind the flood defences running the length of one side of the pitch.

The home side, spurred on by a healthy crowd, started the brighter and at times in the first half I thought they were going to run away with the match. The key moment for me came around the half hour mark when a fingertip save by the Stalham goalie from a 25 yarder kept the score at 1-0 and went a long way to atone to his earlier error - only parrying a shot which he should have held - which had led to Wells taking an early lead. The resulting corner was easily dealt with and within a minute a rare Stalham attack saw a deep cross from the right hooked brilliantly on the half volley into the back of the net from just inside the box for the leveller.

For a few minutes Wells appeared stunned by events and struggled to get a hold of the ball but they eventually regained control of the game and took the lead again just before the break, a low cross being brought under control and passed into the corner with the keeper having no chance this time. With the wind at their backs in the second half I expected Wells to dominate again and indeed the first 10 minutes saw wave upon wave of attacks down both flanks with only the final ball lacking. From nowhere though it was Stalham who scored the next goal and from the half way line it was which the goal scorer ran, evading tackle after tackle and finally drilling home from just inside the box.

Stunned again, this time it took a lot longer for Wells to regain their composure and by the time they did so they were behind for the first time in the match. I can't remember the goal but if 2 out of 3 aint bad I'm more than happy with 5 out of 6. What I can say about it is that it appeared to be the precursor to an alarming outbreak of cramp which suddenly began afflicting Stalham players all over the pitch. The remedy when it eventually came turned out to be another goal, this time in their own net - finally a Wells cross reached its intended target and the header was conclusive.

The frantic finale which I was expecting failed to materialise, both sides seeming happy to settle for a point. Having briefly toyed with the idea of going to watch Wisbech in the Northern Premier League - the fact it would have been my second out of town new build in a matter of days put me off - I was beyond delighted I'd settled on my original pick.

[Uros Predic]

Llandudno Albion 1-0 Nantlle Vale
Ardal Northwest

My first taste of football in Wales' new third tier; also a first game watched on a 3G surface in a long while, at Llandudno FC's Maesdu Park. It's hard to tell if it was due to the surface or the step up a tier, but this game was quicker paced than any others I've seen this season, with seemingly less room for players to move the ball on the deck.

I didn't really warm to Albion (in red), their centre-halves were moaning sods for a start, but it was mainly because they began time-wasting as soon as they took the lead from a 15th minute penalty. The referee could've easily added 7 or 8 minutes on at the end of the second half, but felt 2 was enough, thereby disappointingly endorsing Albion's tactic. Nantlle Vale had a string of good chances at the end of the first half, but the best they managed was a clip of the crossbar. Albion could've added another in the second half, but twice crosses were just missed by players arriving in the 6-yard box. The second half was given a distinct smell of raspberry thanks to a bloke vaping 30 yards down the touchline from me, emitting clouds of such volume that every time the visitors right-back came forwards it looked like he was emerging onto the stage on Stars In Their Eyes.

Beyond that, the most entertaining aspect to watch was the language split, with Nantlle Vale all first-language Welsh speakers, and Llandudno all English. I thought it might help Nantlle Vale a bit, but didn't really seem to make a difference.

[Giggler]

Wigan 0-0 Bolton (Wigan win 5-4 on pens)

I was unsure whether to go to this one, as my last visit here, things were pretty toxic between the 2 sets of fans. Our much loved co owner had made a plea for calm beforehand which was slightly undermined by a row over James McClean, his agent and Ian Evatt.

In the end, apart from a brief bit of posturing from both sets in the approximately 50/50 crowd, the night passed by relatively peacefully.

The two teams made a total of 15 changes from their weekend line ups and it showed, with neither settling into any kind of rhythm. A few hefty challenges on Afolayan, one of the few flair players on show, went unpunished for too long and resulted in him having a much quieter 2nd half.

Wigan probably shaded it in all honesty, with them having a few attempts on goal, whereas Bolton only really looked a threat when they brought 3 regulars on with around 20 minutes left.

Keiran Lee, a great player but one who could happily leave a herd of cattle unharmed as he passed by with a banjo, missed his penalty which let Wigan off the hook after missing theirs. Then the luckless and already low in confidence, Nathan Delfouenso cleared the crossbar with his effort.

It's not a long journey to Wigan but im still glad LC games are going straight to penalties after 90 minutes.

Do you remember the Bury game in 2014? I got home at about ten to midnight after that went to ET and we'd had to park miles away.

[Foot of Astaire's]

Do you remember the Bury game in 2014? I got home at about ten to midnight after that went to ET and we'd had to park miles away.

I do. That must be some sort of record!

Probably for the Shakers thread but what do you make of today's Forever Bury announcement? Cause for optimism or another false dawn?

[Billy Casper]

Barnsley u23s 0-7 (seven) Charlton Athletic

The first team won't be looking nervously over their shoulders to see if anyone will replace them.

We've currently got a slew of u23s playing in teams across Europe to gain experience (think Poundland Chelsea) so I'd like to think this was our B team.

Before John Stones ever played a game for the first team for us there were whispers that he was decent, so when he made his debut in a friendly I made the decision to watch him closely. As the first half went on I mentally ticked off the things he was good at. Fast? Yes. Positioning? Yes. Tackling? Yes. Vision? Yes. At half time it dawned on me that he could do everything really well and he could turn out to be a right player.

Anyway, on Tuesday we had a central defender who was slow, had no positional sense couldn't tackle, head the ball or pass. There wasn't a single aspect of the game he was good at. Even worse, he wore number 10. Our coach shouted at the team that they were an embarrassment when the fifth went in, and then sat silently in the dugout until the final whistle.

Yeah, not great.

[Baptiste]

I don’t know what it is, possibly the rugged hills and masts but this picture looks very continental on first viewing. Very nice.

Selby Town 3 - 3 Retford
Selby dominated without doing anything, then Retford suddenly scored twice either side of the half hour mark and the home side stuttered into half time. They came out early for the second half and scored within a minute, then were given a fairly dubious penalty when a man lying on the floor tried to head a ball and claimed he’d been booted in the head in the process, but the fact he got up without treatment suggested otherwise. The inevitable third goal arrived after the hour, and Selby passed up 2 or 3 chances to put the game to bed. Retford then bought on the big guy I remembered from watching them last year (and I mean big). He powered a header onto the outside of post and bar from the edge of the box, the ref somehow gave a corner, from which the keeper flapped the ball into his own net from. And that was that.

[jameswba]

Zilina 0 Jablonec 3 (ECL - 1-8 on agg)

Last time I was at a late August European qualifier three yeas ago (Trencin vs Larnaca), I sweated in 30-degree heat. Last night, I needed three layers of clothes and the floodlights had to be close to full-power to pierce the gloom of what felt like a miserable late October night.

On the pitch, Jablonec gave almost the perfect demonstration of how to approach a second leg when you already have a big lead from the first. From the start, they pressed high, took throw-ins and free-kicks quickly and gave Zilina no chance to get their own game going. They went 1-0 up after 30 minutes and then gradually squeezed the life out of the game before, rather cruelly, adding two more goals in the last five minutes. Zilina's wingers tend to get the run of the pitch in Slovak league games, but here they barely figured at all.

The night, indeed the whole tie, reflects pretty harshly on the relative strengths of Slovak and Czech football. On the bright side for Slovakia, Jablonec's starting XI featured ten Czechs, but perhaps their best performer was midfielder Jakub Povazanaec, a Slovak.

3,122 attended including, for the first time this season, Zilina's little band of ultras. They had put out a social media message ahead of the game urging people to buy tickets, because 'you'd be angry with yourself if we pulled off a miracle and you'd missed it'. Not much sense of reality there. Or self-awareness. The ultras themselves had been absent from the earlier round ties, and the three early-season league games. I guess we have to assume they'd at least complied with the Covid regulations.

[Southport Zeb]

Tottenham Hotspur 3-0 Pacos de Ferreira
Europa Conference League

Ticked off the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with this qualifier for the Europa Conference League. All tickets were £20 - I was in the bottom tier of the east stand, where it would normally be looking at about four times that. Given the size of the ground, it seemed surprisingly compact.

Having lost the first leg, Tottenham put out a fairly strong side with the most notable thing being Harry Kane getting his first start of the season. Those present appeared to have forgiven him for his summer shenanigans, although scoring twice in the first half can't have hurt.

[Merlin the happy pig]

Greenock Morton 2-3 Queen of the South. Last Saturday.

[Merlin the happy pig]

BIIK Shymkent 0-1 Glasgow City. Also last Saturday.

[Merlin the happy pig]

FC Stratford 3-1 Stonehouse Town

[seand]

It was almost like the good old days.... I sorta managed 4 games in 4 days over the weekend. Thursday was Shamrock Rovers v Flora Tallinn in the Europa Conference thing, 50% capacity test event. Awful performance by Rovers to feck up a golden chance of making the groups. Friday was Dundalk v non-league St Mochtas in the FAI Cup, just 500 allowed, but that was almost enough to satisfy demand, sadly, given where Dundalk are at these days. Sat and Sun was the kids U14 and U12 matches, I'll spare you the details!