Actual football teams - Being watched

[DCI Harry Batt]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Kryvbas Gripper Rih wrote:

Mansfield v AFC Wimbledon for me.

What takes you there?

It's only half an hour away from me, so I thought I'd take a game in, especially once Mrs KGR said that she was going to her parents for the weekend with the kids to look after her dad, who is recovering from an operation.

In the away end - know a guy at Football Manager who's going to the game and he's sorted me a ticket via their contacts with the club, so that helps.

Just a sad bastard who likes to go to any game anywhere, really.

Nice one.

The FM lot are nice.

[Sean of the Shed]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Tamworth v Stoneybridge Celtic today, with hopefully not too much injury time so as to give me time to get home without missing too much of the tricky tie facing England in San Marino.

[Gangster Octopus]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Wembley already losing to an unpleasant Hatfield team.

[Gangster Octopus]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Wembley equalise. Shuts the tossers up for a mo.

[Gangster Octopus]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Wembley down to ten.

[Gangster Octopus]

Actual football teams - Being watched

And there's going to be grief by the end of the day. Hertford fans and team are real scum.

[Gangster Octopus]

Actual football teams - Being watched

I'm now sitting on a plastic chair down at the Sudbury end so that I can't see what I believe will be the unnecessariness at the other end.

[Gangster Octopus]

Actual football teams - Being watched

I just stood up for a while, and thirty seconds later the ball hit the chair that I'd been sitting on...

[Gangster Octopus]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Wembley now down to nine.

[Gangster Octopus]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Finishes 1-1. Wembley actually had a good second half. Hertford Town remind me of Kings Langley last season; a bunch of entitlement thugs. I almost want to see the bastards again next season...

[Sean of the Shed]

Actual football teams - Being watched

We were poor against Stalybridge, and probably deserved to lose, but seeing as they spent most of the last 30 minutes wasting as much time as possible, our equaliser in the last of the seven minutes the ref added served them fucking right.

[KingsburySaint]

Actual football teams - Being watched

St Mirren won a (league) match and played well doing it!

I always liked Hertford and Wembley back in the Ryman 2 days. Ware and Edgware on the other hand....

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Attention to detail at Godolphin Atlantic.

[The Fox in the Snow]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Wolves Sporting 0-5 Hinckley

The home side were well on top until Hinckley opened the scoring on around 40 minutes. They didn't turn up in the second half and Hinckley should have scored at least another couple. They played some great attacking stuff, as they usually do. There is so much pace in the Hinckley frontline; opponents struggle to cope at times. Twenty-three goals in the last five matches now.

[Bored Of Education]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Drew 0-0 to home to Dartford who only lost 1-0 to Ebbsfleet who are a point behind us but have a game in hand. Dartford were OK but we made heavy weather of it. Odd substitutions. Still, 8 games unbeaten.

Still hard to concentrate for me as the community buy-out thing rumbles on after the deadline last night. However, got to present a cheque on the pitch at half-time to the supporters' club from the proceeds of our snide t-shirts. Very little applause, it has to be said.

[Furtho]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Pretty awful FA Vase tie between New Bradwell St Peter and Rushden & Higham United and neither team really looked like scoring until six minutes before the end of extra time, when Peters striker Charlie Flanagan kept his composure to score from fifteen yards. Three minutes later Riccardo Archer did the same sort of thing from the same sort of position. So somewhat surprisingly New Bradwell won 2-0, the club's first ever victory in the Vase. Northampton Sileby Rangers await in the curiously named Second Round Qualifying.

[Ray de Galles]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Banstead Athletic 2 Seven Acre & Sidcup 2 (aet)

An FA Vase First Qualifying Round tie that went from mundane to frenetically exciting over the ninety minutes. The visitor's keeper starring with a stunning display which helped them build a 0-2 lead with fifteen minutes left.

The home side then threw everything forward, pulling one back with ten minutes remaining and equalising following a long throw (which brought their keeper up in to the attack) in what Seven Acre & Sidcup's bench claimed was the eighth minute of injury time.

The protests from them at the final whistle lead to what seemed like the entire bench being sent "to the stands", i.e. the other side of the perimeter fence in a corner of the ground. From here they abused the officials non-stop for what was an otherwise uneventful extra time.

The other main point to note was what I thought was quite the colour clash :

[Merlin the happy pig]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Took in Coalville Town 3-2 Romulus, the home team deservedly coming back from going 2-0 down just after half time.
Bristol Rovers vs Oxford United tomorrow.

[Bored Of Education]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Harry Truscott wrote: The other main point to note was what I thought was quite the colour clash :

]

What the....?

[Billy Casper]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Salad 1-2 Salop

A flat performance in front of a flat atmosphere (plant pots were confiscated on entry). Shrewsbury dominated the first ten minutes and looked dangerous, but after they scored it was all Barnsley for the rest of the half. Sam Winnall is not comfortable playing as a lone striker though, and apart from his goal was barely involved.
Shrewsbury played for the draw in the second half (at one point they had three players 'injured' on the ground at the same time) but as it became clear that we had nothing going forward they became more confident. Their goal in injury time by an ex Barnsley youth player was not a surprise.

Shrewsbury have a fantastic kit.

[imp]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Rot-Weiss Frankfurt 2 Buchonia Flieden 0

Non-league football isn't that different in Germany to England. The small crowds, the shouty managers, the photographer dude with the NASA-style telescope and no friends, two grey and balding men in the press box taking serious notes, the lousy standard occasionally enlightened with a 70-yard pass into space, or a dash of flair brought crashing to the turf to the choral sound of an outraged "Hey!" before the ref has a chance to blow his whistle. Also, the hard-core ideology - a kid in the sausage hut queue behind me complained to his dad how long it was taking. "It's not the Bundesliga," snapped back the educative father. "At least here the football's honest."

And the club boss is bonkers - another aspect of the non-league game to be ticked off the list. Step forward Rot-Weiss President Ottmar Klauß. The match programme contains nothing as useful as team line-ups or even squads, but there's a 700-word column from Klauß about people who use the wrong words. "Unfortunately there's so much nonsense talked, without thought, but certainly not without consequence," he explains. "Every word leaves traces behind in our brains and lays the ground for causes, which are then expressed as effects in our life as experience."

No fucking idea what he's on about? Well, he already explained it in great detail in his second book 'From Concept to Victory' (currently unavailable at amazon.de)*, so if you haven't got it by now, there's probably no hope. What does this have to do with football? It's apparently just like when people say things like 'a draw felt like a victory'. "How stupid is that?" he demands to know. "In cases like this SILENCE is worth more than talking nonsense." Quite, but that doesn't stop him going on and on. I wonder how many letters he wrote to his local paper before blagging the club presidency and using the match programme as his rhetorical conduit.

Ottmar also edits the match programme, which might explain the paranoid tone of the report of the last home game, a 2-0 win over Bayern Alzenau. Here he drops the caps and goes for bold: "Not every game has to be, and not every game will be, a memorable game." Later on in the extensive report he reiterates: "It can't be a first class game every week, and nobody expects that." Why mention it then? "Not always, in fact never, is everyone going to be happy with everything." Okay, okay, calm the fuck down, Otti.

Rot-Weiss scored in the first minute and the eighth minute - two well-taken goals. They have 21 points from seven games. [Looks around, whispers it quietly.] They should definitely have scored more, though.

*Ottmar's first book: 'We are all Elephants, or: How would it be with Heaven on Earth?' was also published by the Sebenia Verlag, which no longer has a web site, and appears to have only ever published books by Ottmar Klauß.

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Godolphin Atlantic 0 v 0 St Austell

Carlsberg South West Peninsula League Premier Division

This weekend is the last of the summer rail timetable, with additional services to exotic holiday destinations. One such beneficiary is Newquay, where its usual six a day, single coach branch shuttles are swapped for through services from Paddington, Manchester and, for the masochists, Dundee. The 0458 Swansea – Paddington was had from Swindon to Reading, for the first London – Newquay of the day.


Joining me for a rare outing was my dad. For reasons unexplained he has recently taken an interest in white horses; not the actual ones, but the ones carved into hillsides. He has a book detailing their location and history, with the railway to the West of England giving prime viewing to five of them. This was my favourite at Westbury.

The famous stretch of line on the route is after Exeter where it runs along the waterfront, first of all the Exe estuary……

….looking across to Exmouth…….

…..then the recently re-built sea wall at Dawlish and Teignmouth…

…..and down the Teign estuary.

Around Ivybridge the line skirts the south fringes of Dartmoor.

Before the shipwrecks of the Plym estuary.

On the other side of Plymouth, the naval yards of Devonport.

Before the dramatic crossing of the Tamar on the famous Royal Albert Bridge…..

…..into Cornwall.

Just to confirm that.

Cornwall has the most viaducts per mile of railway of any English county, mostly over quaint inlets.

At textbook country junction station of Par, we head off the main line onto the Newquay branch, my dad informing me the last time he had used the station was in the 1940s.

Immediately passing Blaize Park, home of St Blazey FC, who, having gained sponsorship from the Eden Project, were previously dominant in Cornish football. My dad looks on whistfully, perhaps having an inkling of what Newquay might offer.

After an hour long 20 mph stagger along the branch, we arrived in Newquay with its trademark palm trees…..

…..although the buildings must challenge for the ugliest station in Britain?

The main town sits high above the beach….

….with some dramatic structures…..

….and some not so dramatic.

This pretty much set the scene for the town, consisting of fun pubs/sports bars, tattoo shops and e-cigarette shops. It’s like a theme park for stag do’s. The fixed wheel bike has been replaced by the hula hoop in the play thing for surfers-who-don’t-actually-go-surfing.

Only one guide pub, which was one of the three Whetherspoons…..

….for a Cornish ale brewed in Cornwall, not Staffordshire like Doombar.

Next on the seaside tick list, some scenic fish and chips.

It was time to head to the football, with some novel advertising on one of the beaches…

…and then a very Father Ted-esque desolate crazy golf course…..

….before the floodlights were viewed through an abandoned fun pub.

Eventually we reached our destination.

Godolphin Atlantic started as a pub team in 1980, and have risen up the various leagues to become an equal with the more established Newquay Town FC.

Ground is located just off it’s namesake road opposite the pub.

And so to the game.

Into the ground….

…with the main signage tucked away in the corner of the car park.

The ground is hemmed in very tightly on all sides by houses, and was previously just a pitch and basic changing rooms.

The only cover used to be an extension from the changing rooms…..

….but a rather unusual stand has now been built, named after a couple who set up the club and who’s sons were playing in the game.

It is a very unusual construction, a metal work frame shrouded by an air raid shelter. Still, makes a welcome change from the usual Atcost offering.

Also new were dugouts with those posh bucket seats…..

….but rather than being padded, Audi sponsored leather Recarro’s, these were solid plastic.

Befitting the rather modest ground, was an equally modest collection of agricultural junk.

A very reasonable refreshment van seemed an odd location for advertising horse stables.

Non-league football brings non-league sponsored car deals.

Godolphin have the rather strange nickname of the ‘G-Army’ which appeared in various location around the ground.

Proof that spell checking won’t always help with correct signage. Note the ball mark above the sign, just to make the point.

The far end of the ground looks out over the Atlantic. I am glad I was here in late summer and not February.

A new thing for this season is the warm up being so noisy, that on getting near to the ground, you think the game has already started. Godolphin had an extravagant array of cones, but still it consisted of lethargic kicks between bored players chatting about cars.

Another thing for this season is over choreographed pre-match hand-shakes.

And to the game. With sponsorship from the adjacent brewery (notice a theme here) St Austell won the league last season and got to the semi-finals of the FA Vase. They appear to have a different sponsor and team this year, being 5th, one place above Godolphin. Due to having no clubhouse, I watched all 90 minutes, but can’t really remember any of it. There was some crossing….

….some pointing…..

….some running up the steep slope to the corner…..

….a corner….

….from which two players collided, and the Godolphin attacker demanded a penalty and the referee needed to ‘toughen up’…...

….which he did by promptly booking him.

This was the closest we got to a goal, a deflected shot which went just wide. A fairly entertaining game finished 0-0 but with only two shots on target.

So back to the station…

…. for the last London service for 8 months. The HSTs run none stop on the branch, through the bucolically named stations of Quintrell Downs, St Columb, Roche, Bugle and Luxulyan.

However, at Goonbarrow we were brought to a halt by the semaphore signalling….

…. As we had to cross the 0632 Dundee – Newquay at the passing loop, which exposes the archaic operations in the West.

The signaller takes the single line tokens off each of the drivers, exchanging them over….

…before heading back to the box….

…to insert them into the token machines, which unlocks the lever frame to change the points and signals for both trains to proceed. Good use for two 125mph trains.

Carrying on, the sun was setting over the China clay slag heaps, a scene which could only be bettered…

….if a mobile home park appeared.

By now the sun was setting as we crossed Tregoss Moor.

With the last rays nicely illuminating the rail and road crossings back into Devon and on to civilisation.

[Southport Zeb]

Actual football teams - Being watched

I drove up to Penrith and then headed to Alston, following the route to be used later in the week by the Tour of Britain cyclists up to Hartside. Every little village along the way was decorated with yellow bikes and bunting. From the cobbled streets of Alston I headed along attractive Weardale to Wolsingham and the Britain's oldest agricultural show - founded in 1763, this years was the 236th running.

Wolsingham has all the typical agricultural show events. I watched the sheep getting judged and was pleased to select (having no idea of what the criteria are) the same winner as the judge in the Texel sheep class. The vintage car display oddly included a 1986 Vauxhall Corsa. As we were in the North East it was no surprise to see hundreds of entrants in the fancy pigeon classes. The egg classes appeared to be being judged by an eight year old boy. The falconry display didn't go particularly well, with both falcons flying off as soon as they were let out, with the falconer determining that one of them must have gone to a nearby field as hundreds of crows had suddenly taken off from that direction.

From Wolsingham I went through Crook and on to the hamlet of Waterhouses, where Esh Winning play; Esh Winning itself being a little further up the road towards Durham. The ground is rather quirky with lots of small areas of cover, notably four shelters along the opposite side to the clubhouse which have been converted from supermarket trolley shelters.

The game wasn't particularly high on quality with Hull side Hall Road Rangers appearing to be comfortably on top when they went 2-0 lead. However at this point Rangers totally switched off and allowed Esh to get back into it. At 2-1 Rangers should have had a third but their forward managed to shoot over the bar from a few yards out. Inevitably Esh came back and forced extra time before Hall Road finally woke up again and found a winner against the tiring hosts.

[My Name Is Ian]

Actual football teams - Being watched

Haaaaaaaaang on. There's a train from Newquay to Dundee?

[EIM]

Actual football teams - Being watched

BB&F has just dropped a Coast x Great British Railway Journeys collab there. The hot look for AW15.