Saturday 13/02/16 – Midlands 5 West (North) @ 14:15
Warley RUFC 0 Greyhound RUFC 0 abandoned on 72m after injury to player
Admission free, no programme.
Refreshments: 3 ham buns, £1 each, add yer own onion ....
Attendance: 17
The Ostrich’s blog this season, as befits an African bird, has been all about pyramids, in both soccer and rugby union. Those of you that have been fortunate enough to travel to Egypt will have marvelled at the Pyramids of Giza (or Geezer, if you’re a Cockney on a package holiday, I guess
), and your eye will have been drawn to the symmetry of the structure and the pinnacle stone, the capstone or “pyramidion” as it is termed. But what of those humble building blocks on the bottom layer which support the whole structure? Time for the Ostrich to visit Warley RUFC, currently the very bottom of the lowest division, Midlands Five West (North), and find out!Warley’s ground is in Tat Bank Road, Langley Green, in the heart of the Black Country, and lies between the Titford Canal (constructed in 1836, an arm of the Birmingham Canal Navigation, and you can just about trundle your narrowboat down it (the locks are only 7 foot wide) but you’d finish up having to turn it around in a lagoon lying under a raised section of the M5 motorway), and a huge aluminium recycling plant. Just across the canal is the Grade 2 listed, derelict Langley Maltings factory, destroyed by arson in 2009. A bit different from the usual leafy, rural locations the Ostrich is used to!
http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2015 ... on-attack/
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.49563 ... 56!6m1!1e1
Lest you now have an impression of the Ostrich madly paddling his barge down the outside lane of the motorway
, I have to advise that Warley’s ground is, in fact, only about 200 yards from Langley Green station on the Snow Hill > Stourbridge Junction line, with 2 stopping trains each way per hour. Additionally, there are no less than three bus routes from Birmingham City centre which will deposit you either right outside the ground or very close to it, and that was my mode of transport today. The clubhouse / bar is very small but they were providing hot pork rolls and soup from the kitchen, and the Warley RUFC trophy section contained a number of cups, old boots, and a mounted garden trowel
which was apparently the Roger Jackson Memorial Trophy or similar. 
Warley started the game last in the table with just 6 league points, while Greyhound, (club motto: “It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog!”) were up from Hereford - they play by the Racecourse there - and were in 4th place out of 7. I spent some time chatting with the Dogs’ lady medical officer in the first half, and they sound like quite a thriving, go-ahead club.
The game was always watchable with Greyhound taking most of the territory but a tenacious Warley defence successfully kept them at bay. A player from each side was sinbinned just before the interval for trading punches, and there was indeed a slight edge to some of the encounters, but nothing too untoward. Warley missed a first-half long range-penalty attempt, but the Dogs had two easier kicks in the second half, G.9 and G.20 firing wide. By that time, I was willing both sides on to achieve an epic and unforeseen no-score draw, and was duly rewarded when play was concluded following an injury to a home player late in the game.
This was the first occasion in nearly 50 years of watching rugby union that I’ve seen a score-less draw. It’s an extremely rare event – one for the Ostrich’s record books!
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