The Chronicles of Ostrick ....

[Ally]

Great read Ossie!

As someone in these furrin parts wot craves a chocolate bar....what choccy bars were they??!

[Kaz]

Ally Mind you, I want to know as well

Mick has played against Wootten Bassett, not Chippenham though

[TheOstrich]

Yes I'm sure there will be a few clubs I'll be watching this season who Mick has played, at varying levels.

It was a Mars bar and a KitKat from behind the bar. It was a question of hollering and pointing with all the racket from the Vice Presidents Lunch , so I went for two from the first row on display!
One thing I've noticed you have to watch out for, though, is profiteering; I've already run into one soccer club this season - no names, no packdrill - selling mini-size bars for £1 each .....

A minor correction, Wootten Bassett II are reported in today's Rugby Paper as scoring 45, not 43 - I must have missed a conversion!

[Kaz]

[TheOstrich]

12/11 - A grey, murky day with rain in the morning, and a lack of club rugby matches due to the Autumn Internationals, left the Ostrich looking for a reasonably local soccer game, and in the end, our bird plumped for its third visit of the season to Hardings Lane, the home of Gillingham Town FC – it was either that or Shaftesbury Town, where I have yet to make a debut, but slightly more exotic opposition swayed the day. The FA Vase Round 2 match, a national competition for junior clubs, was the cup-tie of choice with the visitors, Exmouth Town, hailing from the South West Peninsula League. It covers Devon and Cornwall, and I’d not seen a team from this league before.

This is really the only ground locally where I don’t need to use the car; Slaughtergate, the rugby club ground, is nearer in distance from home, but down narrow country lanes which would be foolhardy to attempt to walk. Hardings Lane is an easy 25 minute stroll, out of the estate and along the river bank to the bridge, over that and the town centre by-pass to access the (fairly deserted at 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon) High Street, passing the parish church and the bridge over Shreen Water, which was sketched by John Constable, and the original is in the Tate Gallery. Up the main street past the Town Meadow (erstwhile site of the carnival funfair and the town Christmas tree), the Methodist Church (which also hosts a monthly cinema club), the remaining two banks (all the others are centred on nearby Shaftesbury), numerous estate agents, even more numerous charity shops, the hulk of what used to be a big Co-op store before the interior was destroyed by fire a few years ago, apparently, and Lidls. Then into Hardings Lane, up the hill, with the well-sought-after secondary school on the left, and the Riversmeet Leisure Centre on the right. At the far end, the countryside opens out, and in front of you, somewhat incongruously in the middle of a farmer’s field by the railway line, lies the soccer club pitch! The club have the field on a long term lease, and it’s a “proper” ground meeting Step 5 requirements, with a railed pitch with hard-standing around, a rickety-looking wooden-clad main stand seating around 100, and covered standing accommodation on the far side. Scattered in the field around, there are indeed hay bales, but they are a bit to far removed from the action (and a bit too wet today) for the Ostrich to perch on. The clubhouse contains a skittle alley (virtually every public building in Dorset contains a skittle alley ), and the small refreshment hatch dispenses hot food and drinks in mugs (although not today, we had polystyrene cups due to standing FA cup regulations, don’t ask! )

Gillingham Town are a Step 5 Club, and Exmouth Step 6, so one might have expected the home team to triumph, but there were two great levellers at play here – firstly, the romance of a cup tie with the final ultimately played at Wembley, and secondly, the Ostrich Hoodoo . This is a well-documented phenomenon which dictates that Ossie turns into an albatross around the neck of his local teams whenever he sees them playing at home . It certainly happened in Sutton Coldfield, and indeed down here in Dorset, the Gillies had made a great start to the season until I arrived on the scene – at which point their form went completely to pot. Noticeably, so did the form of all the other local teams in the area, and the statistics show that my first 6 soccer and rugby fixtures in Dorset all resulted in away wins!

Gillingham never really mastered the Exmouth Town defence today. They tend to play long balls forward to their two target men, which is all very well if those target men can lay the ball off accurately and create chances for the remaining attackers. Neither happened, and Gillingham failed to bring a Plan B. Exmouth kept them at bay, (increasingly comfortably), took the lead on 27m when a flowing move swept through the home rear-guard and Durham finished it off with a 10 yard strike, and held that lead until full time. So, an unexpected but deserved win for the Devon club, and an Ostrich rueing that its jinx had struck again .

FA Vase Round 2: Gillingham Town 0 Exmouth Town 1
Admission £3, decent 24pp programme £1.50, tea and The Last Hot Pasty In Town £3, attendance 89

Still, one slice of good news locally is that the "Lady Glovers" (Yeovil Town Women FC) have just clinched promotion to Division 1 of the FA Womans' Super League, so I'll be watching a few of their matches next spring and summer; opposition like Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City. No doubt Ossie will get them relegated again!

[Ally]

Great read thanks Ossie and I do enjoy the local history you weave too. Slaughtergate? Stupid question but was there a slaughterhouse there previously..or why is it so called?

Made me laugh with the 'Jonah' effect! In this house it is a long standing joke that Don will be sitting watching a footy match then he might dash to the kitchen for a drink etc and without fail, every single time, always, there will be a goal!!! It's had us in stitches over the years!

Love the sound of the Hot Pasty.

[Kaz]

Ossie, where you live sounds very nice!

Ally, in general anywhere with "slaughter" or "shambles" in a place or street name means there was once a slaughterhouse or butchers' shop there. The Shambles in York was built narrow and with sloping gutters for the blood to run away Apologies for sticking my beak in with the info, but I learnt that when I lived up there

[TheOstrich]

I'm not sure about the origin of this Slaughtergate .....there is Slaughtergate Farm nearby, and this does feature on old local Ordnance Survey maps. The farm and the rugby club grounds nearby are definitely "out of town" .... well, they are on the edge of town now, but that's due to new development over the last 20 years or so, prior to that they would have certainly been well into the countryside.

It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that there was a slaughterhouse there once; there have traditionally been small private slaughterhouses in rural areas, but I'm not aware that there is a functioning one anywhere in the locality these days. Health and safety and all that. Thinking back to when I was working in West Dorset 20 years backalong now, I can only recall one private establishment, down near Bridport.

The other (rather tenuous) origin for the name, of course, which I've already touched on in a previous match report, was the Battle of Slaughtergate, when the long-deceased King Alfred (as claimed by the rugby club) defeated the Danish Hordes on the first team pitch, although archeological research indicates the skirmish actually took place 5 miles away at Penselwood .....

Gillingham has an excellent local museum. I will enquire about Slaughtergate and get back to you ....

[TheOstrich]

OK, so Slaughtergate. Had a chat with a nice lady curator at the Museum this morning.

It appears that it is named after the "battle". Well, not so much a battle, more a sort of small running skirmish. It seems that in 1016, Cnut (the Dane, possibly later King Canute, and BTW that business with trying to halt the waves was rumoured to have taken place at Weymouth Bay) landed at the mouth of the River Frome (Wareham) with a Horde, and set about laying waste to Dorset and Wiltshire. The big battle was at Penselwood (5 miles north up the road from here) and there were subsequent various small skirmishes as the defeated Horde were chased back to the coast, including at the site just out of town that became known as Slaughtergate.

As for a "Slaughter", well that's just 11th century spin-doctoring. There's a long barrow on the opposite side of the road from the rugby club (not now particularly well preserved as the local farmer has little interest in it), but archeologists did do a dig there and uncovered ..... just one body! So don't get excited, nothing really happened, nothing to see, please move along now .....

[Kaz]

Well researched Ossie