Travels with my Ostrich ....

[cromwell]

Eight quid to get in?


It's only six pounds to get in the Kop at Leeds.

Oh wait - that was in 1976...

[TheOstrich]

LOL, Crommers, when I started watching Birmingham City, around 1965, I think it was 1/6 adult, 9d kids on the main terraces ......

That £8 at Hednesford's a senior concession in the main (seated) stand. Full price is £13. It's about par for the course for a Step 2 club outside the south-east.

Adult standing on the terraces, full price, is £12, surprisingly not a huge difference to the seats. At least there are still terraces .......... the stadium itself is quite impressive, a relatively new build (1995) with a 6,000 capacity. Be useful if they installed heated seats, though .....

[TheOstrich]

Saturday 17/10 – Vanarama National League (Step 1)
Kidderminster Harriers 0 Southport 1
Admission £11 (stand seat / concession), programme £3, cottage pie £4.50.
Attendance – 1,593

Time to catch up on what has been happening to the hapless Kidderminster Harriers, who we last met back in August when they lost 0-3 to Forest Green Rovers and were 22nd in the table. Well, they quickly hit rock bottom, 24th place, and at the beginning of this month sacked the manager (he “left” according to the press releases ), and they have now appointed a certain Dave Hockaday to the hot seat, a coach with a certain notoriety oop north, having been plucked from obscurity in August 2014 by the notorious owner Massimo Cellino to manage Leeds United, no less. He lasted just 70 days ….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/28976281

Firstly, though, I popped into the Severn Valley Railway station, as is my want, to pick up their latest magazine and was intrigued to find a stall on the concourse selling souvenirs and raising funds for the Peppercorn A1 class 60163 “Tornado”. This engine, which was completed in 2008 was the first main line steam locomotive built since the demise of chuffers on the national rail network, and the project, which took 14 years for inception to completion, was used to showcase British engineering and to keep old skills and tradecraft alive. The Ostrich helped fund the project, over the years, although given the wretched loco cost around £3 million to build, I think all I can say is that there’s a rivet with my name on it somewhere …
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 141208.jpg

The stall was selling an excellent working model of the loco in 1cm gauge, and I fleetingly thought of purchasing one for my own model railway – but not at a cost of £155.00.

“Tornado” itself is indeed visiting the Severn Valley at the moment, but was up at the Bridgnorth end of the line during my sojourn at Kidderminster – the service train I watched arrive around 2:00 was hauled by 46100 “Royal Scot”, another famous locomotive from yesteryear, which had the distinction of being shipped to the USA (for the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago) and Canada in 1933, where it ran over 11,000 miles and “was inspected by 3,021,601 people” (according to its nameplate). One slightly incongruous note today was the sight of this 1920’s technology locomotive having various working parts checked for overheating by a fireman wielding a decidedly 21st century hand-held digi-thermometer!

So to the football! First home game and a big day Harriers’ new manager, and by gum despite all the brave words in the programme, and being robbed by a 94th minute goal of a first win of the season midweek at Altrincham, he’s got a lot of work to do here at Aggborough. More new faces in the squad than you could shake a stick at, and some promising performances by Young and Whitfield (whose first-half swerving shot clipped a post), but there seems little point in playing a 6’ 4” target man up front in Hassan if half the time he struggles to reach the ball / falls over and the other half there’s no-one in range of his nodded headers apart from defenders.

Kidderminster did a lot of attacking down the flanks which initially seemed to suit Southport as they quite cheerfully bottled them up at the corner flags, although the home team did get some crosses in later in the game; mostly ineffective, although one was diverted by Whitfield onto the crossbar. Southport moved around the pitch more efficiently, often in close formation like a Roman phalanx, and on balance looked the better side, but never really looked like scoring until 82m when Bishop, completely unchallenged, headed in Wright’s cross from close range.

But overall, it was a pretty awful spectacle. A bit like watching a couple of kittens squabbling in a basket, all fur and noise and no substance. Your Grandma could have comfortably dealt with most of the attempts on goal. I chatted with the guy in a smart FA tracksuit sitting behind me at half-time, after he’d borrowed my teamsheet before the start, and we’d mutually agreed that the first 45 could best be described as boring. Turned out he was one of Stourbridge’s coaching staff on a spying mission (they host Kiddy in the FA Cup next week). “We’ll give them a good game,” he said non-committaly - but he looked pretty chipper …..

Hockaday said in his programme notes “Our target is to catch at least four teams above us – it is as simple as that.” Losing at home to the team currently 22nd isn’t, therefore, the most promising of starts ….

[Ally]

£11 entry?!

I would've needed the cottage pie to cheer me up after that match Ossie!

[TheOstrich]

£11 entry?! - Actually, that's not bad at this level.

I would've needed the cottage pie to cheer me up after that match Ossie! - more on the cottage pie at a later date ....



Love it, that's brilliant!! :lol:

[Ally]

Cottage pie gate....?

[Kaz]

[TheOstrich]

Saturday 24/10 – National League 2 North (Level 4)
Luctonians RUFC 8 Macclesfield RUFC 26
Admission £10 (including programme), coffee £1.50, small but tasty pasty at half-time £2.
Attendance – I’d say around 350

Late October and with the onset of winter (and early kick-offs because most rugby union clubs don’t have floodlit first team pitches), it’s time to start the Ostrich's assault on the five remaining teams I need to see in this division, and consider the vexed question of the Macclesfield Blues, number 20 on this season’s hit-list. I had wondered about travelling to see them play Sandal at home in November, killing two birds with one stone, but I’m not sure I want to drive 60-odd miles up a road-work strewn M6 followed by an overland hike through unfamiliar territory in Cheshire – this is only a hobby, after all, and sometimes discretion must take the better part of valour! So, a quick re-jig of the Ostrich’s master fixture list, and it was off to deepest Herefordshire today to a ground I first visited at the tail-end of last season; we’ll catch up with Sandal at a later date.

Setting off at 10:30 for a 2:15 kick-off, a lengthy journey ensued through on-and-off rain with heavy traffic and numerous slow stretches on the M42(S) and M5(S), followed by even slow farm vehicles between Droitwich and Great Whitley, and in the Tenbury Wells area. A burst of heavy rain heralded my arrival at Kingsland, and with a corporate hospitality dinner in full swing in the clubhouse, there was nowhere for the weary bird to perch, so I repaired back to the shelter of the car with my coffee to await the start of the game.

Kingsland is a straggly village around three miles west of Leominster, with more than a few nice bungalows on the market (in fact Mrs O and I did have a look at them on Rightmove backalong), but possibly not that many amenities. There’s a gert big Morrisons supermarket at nearby Barons Cross, just outside Leominster, and I suspect everyone for miles around gravitates there for shopping. The rugby ground is on the edge of Kingsland, opposite a rather imposing monument dating from 1799 and commemorating the rather obscure, but nevertheless “obstinate, bloody, and decisive” Battle of Mortimers Cross, from the Wars on the Roses.
http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Detai ... &id=150047
Click on “read official list description” for the full wording of the monument, if you’re interested.

The sports complex is known as Mortimer Park, and Luctonians are the “old boys” of nearby Lucton School, although like the vast majority of old boys rugby clubs, it’s now open to all. The School is an independent girls ‘n boys establishment, age range 0-18, day or boarding, and comes with its own equestrian centre; if you want to send your nipper there, the annual fees are a cool £29,955 for Year 7+ boarders ….

This was my second visit to Mortimer Park and I do think that this rugby ground is one of the most attractive in the Midlands; from the small elevated stand you have sweeping views down the River Lugg valley towards the Welsh border – today, as the rain front passed through, a washed blue sky appeared as a band behind the green hills and gradually extended towards the ground during the first half, the sun eventually breaking through. I noted that since I was last here back in April, they have cleared an area behind the cricket pavilion at the far end of the complex for a projected £110,000 new changing room block, having secured a £70,000 Sport England grant. This Streetview shot will give you a flavour of the location, but doesn't really do it justice (if you pan round, you'll see the monument in situ):
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.25318 ... 56!6m1!1e1

So, to the match! This featured bottom of the table Luctonians vs second placed Macclesfield Blues, and the first half can only be described as dour. Or possibly dire. Both sides played a tactical kicking game; Lucs looked to stifle Macclesfield at every opportunity, and succeeded bar one blip on 26m when Marwick rumbled through for an unconverted try. 0-5 at the break; 0-0 would have been more appropriate.

Luctonians had missed a moderately easy first half penalty, and then missed another just after the restart. If these had been scored, we might have been in for an interesting tussle. But on 51m, Lucs’ Jones was sin-binned and Macclesfield’s Franky Barker exploited a glaring gap in the home defence which Lewis Barker converted. Macclesfield went down to 14 men when Finnemore was perhaps harshly yellow carded for what the referee and assistant adjudged to be an off-the-ground tackle, and Lucs finally got on the scoreboard via a Silver penalty. 3-12.

Lucs’ Monkley was then sin-binned for yapping at the referee straight after that official had cautioned both captains about back-chatting , and Macclesfield made the game safe with two further converted tries on 63 and 69m. Luctonians scored a late consolation with an unconverted pushover try touched down by Dan Smith.

Not a game to live long in the memory, I think. Smooth journey back to Birmingham until I arrived on the M6(S) at Spaghetti to find my northbound exit route closed off – that unfortunately diverted me southwards onto the Aston Expressway, just in time to hit all the traffic trying to depart Villa Park …..

[Ally]

Oh gosh Ossie that was quite a long day, wasn't it?

Having been party to traffic jams on the Aston Expressway I feel your pain.

And those Villa fans wouldn't have been happy yesterday either! (Neither was my eldest son)

Thanks for another great read Os. x

[Kaz]

One of my brothers in law is a Villa fan

Ossie, that did all sound a bit of a trek, that view is something though!