The Chronicles of Ostrick ....

[cromwell]

Sounds like a good game Os. £5 to get in? We used to be able to go and see George Formby, have a meal out and get the tram home, and still have change from a ten bob note!

[Kaz]

Suspect you're right Ossie, about the young ref being fast-tracked. Not heard of him myself but will ask Mick if he knows of him I would have loved Harry to come over here to go to Hartpury for his Sports B Tech, as the facilities are world class up there, but he's very happy at Brooklands

[Kaz]

Oh and as an aside, the son of my good friend Jacqui from Weightwatchers, Luke, is at the moment the Media Manager for the Welsh national team. He's just been offered the same role for the Lions!

[TheOstrich]

Level 5 rugby, Crommers, so the equivalent of the National League (Conference as was) in soccer, and you'd be paying £10 - £15 for that; £11 from memory for a seat at Kidderminster. I think my £5 at Bournemouth might have been an old codgers rate as I'm pretty sure I saw £7 quoted for non-member admission on the wall of the payment hut - if it was a concession, that's unusual in rugby union, they don't normally give oldie rates. Or perhaps they were just feeling generous!

First time I went to Birmingham City as a 15 yo lad, it was 9d on the turnstile ....

Yes, a very good game, and headlined in The Rugby Paper today as the shock result of the day in that division.

Oh and as an aside, the son of my good friend Jacqui from Weightwatchers, Luke, is at the moment the Media Manager for the Welsh national team. He's just been offered the same role for the Lions!

Well done him, Kaz. Being media manager for the Lions will be a heck of a responsibility ....

[Kaz]

It will and he's only a young man too

[JoM]

9d for a 15 year old? I'm just back from Old Trafford and for Joe, he's 16, it's cost £21. Up until this season though he's been on under 16s tickets at £13 which, for a Premier League game, I don't think is too bad.
However, my ticket was £40.
Probably just as well, for the sake of the bank balance, that tickets aren't so easy to come by this season.

In true Ossie tradition I'll list the food we had. We walked from the city centre to the ground and happened to pass a newly opened Home Bargains so spent £2.68 on a bag of Tangfastics, a Twix, a roll of XXX Mints, a roll of Refreshers, a bottle of Tango and two bottles of water.
Joe had to drink his Tango as we walked as only clear liquids are allowed through the turnstiles. He said he wouldn't bother with water as we could buy a drink from inside. Yes Joe. Pay £3 for a bottle in the ground or 19p in Home Bargains?? He got water. The only problem is with taking bottles in is that bottle lids aren't allowed but that's easily remedied by removing it before you reach the security check and sticking it in your waist band, rebels that we are.

Security was quite lax. Since the Paris attacks security has been tightened and bags are checked on the road approaching the ground, before you go in the souvenir shop and again before you go through the turnstiles, and at that point there's a body pat down too. At each entrance there's a female steward who will search and pat down female supporters and for some reason they're always far more thorough than the men, checking inside hoods and the one at our entrance today was even asking for coats to be removed whilst the men in the next queue were being patted down and allowed through, coats still on their backs.
Anyway, the woman had a long queue and the male steward next to her had no one so he called one woman from the queue over to him, checked her bag, had her hold her coat open and then she was allowed in. I just thought sod it so walked over to him. Same again. Had my bag checked (for the third time by then), held my coat open, he attached a tag to my bag to say it had been checked and in I went.

[TheOstrich]

9d for a 15 year old? I'm just back from Old Trafford and for Joe, he's 16, it's cost £21. Up until this season though he's been on under 16s tickets at £13 which, for a Premier League game, I don't think is too bad.
However, my ticket was £40.

That 9d was back in 1965, Jo. Adults were 1/6d ... Actually, I thought Premier League tickets were a lot more expensive than those prices you paid, I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd said £60 + for an adult ticket .....

In true Ossie tradition I'll list the food we had. We walked from the city centre to the ground and happened to pass a newly opened Home Bargains so spent £2.68 on a bag of Tangfastics, a Twix, a roll of XXX Mints, a roll of Refreshers, a bottle of Tango and two bottles of water..

£2.68? Good grief!! And I thought I was stingy!!!

Security was quite lax.....

I can't recall when I was last "patted down" at a game. Didn't happen at West Brom v Gateshead in the FA Cup a couple of seasons back, as I recall. I think possibly it might have been at Yeovil v QPR, again in the FA Cup but 20 years ago now, when the police searched everyone and I had a bag of tangerines confiscated .....

[JoM]

Fancy taking your tangerines!

I'd been saying for years that I was amazed that there hadn't been a terrorist attack on a stadium. There were no checks at all at Old Trafford up until a couple of years ago and then it was just a quick glance in your bag. We were at a match the day after the Paris attacks and we were actually in Manchester, we'd just got off the train, when a text came through saying that the game was still going ahead (it was a pretty high profile game, David Beckham was playing in a fundraiser for UNICEF) and urging everyone attending to arrive early due to extra security but no bags were going to be allowed in. I had my bag with me and nowhere to leave it but it was allowed in after being checked.
Now as you walk towards the stadium there's a line of security across the road outside with portable scanners and they also check bags, and the pat down is done at the turnstiles along with another bag check.

Believe me it can be a lot more expensive, it just depends where you sit. We favour sitting in the East Stand or the Stretford End so it's cheaper there but I think it's £53 for the most expensive ticket and these prices are after the member discount of £5, but without membership it's virtually impossible to get a ticket on general sale unless it's the early stages of the league cup.

[Ally]

I've enjoyed reading about ticket prices for UK football grounds.

When we moved to Spain (2003) we bought season tickets for Malaga's La Rosaleda. I still have my original pass and it cost the princely sum of €209!!!

The twins' cost less as they were only 10 years old and Don's was €255!

It's still cheap to buy a season ticket and the womens tickets are still cheaper than the mens...good old sexism is alive and well here!

We watched Beckham play for Real Madrid when they travelled to Rosaleda (we actually saw him on the team coach as we waited at traffic lights. I went all girly! blush)

The atmosphere too for the Sevilla - Malaga derby was worth the ticket price alone!

Conor knows of poeple who will pay more for a Real Madrid-Barca ticket than the price of a season ticket!

[TheOstrich]

17/12 – Rugby union leagues tend to consist of only around 14 teams on average, compared with something like 22 teams in soccer leagues, so this means that there is usually a long three-week break in rugby fixtures over the Christmas period. Today saw the last competitive games of 2016, with hostilities resuming on 7th January next year, so, given reasonably mild if murky conditions, it was off to Castle Road, Salisbury, in the shadow of the ancient Old Sarum hill fort, to watch the home side take on Ivybridge RFC, up from Plymouth way.

I had passed the ground a few weeks back when visiting Salisbury’s football club, so decided the most straightforward approach was a dash along the fringes of the Salisbury Plain on the A303 to Amesbury, then south on the A345 directly to the rugby ground itself, thus avoiding the centre of Salisbury. Not many miles outside Gillingham, heading north up the B road to Mere and the A303, I slowed to allow three horse-riders to cross the road in front of me – and one of them was conspicuously using a mobile phone! Now I wonder – is that a traffic offence? To steer your mount with the reins in one hand and an Apple iPhone in the other? Interesting thought ….

Otherwise, traffic was relatively light, and there were none of the usual delays around Stonehenge, which does have certain notoriety to this effect. Quite a lot of people seemed to be milling around the stones, which you can see pretty clearly from the main road, but I know there has been a fair bit of criticism of the way English Heritage have “developed” the site, building a new visitor centre with the consequential felling of more than a few trees to enhance the car-park facilities. The whole “experience”, angry letters to local papers seem to suggest, is a bit of a financial rip-off anyway.

I remembered the entrance to the rugby ground was just inside Salisbury’s 30 mph boundary, and managed to find a spot in the crowded car-park, despite being over an hour early. Transpired there was a VP’s Christmas Lunch in full swing, and non-members such as myself were relegated to a side room with a small bar, minimal other facilities, and some sort of Mariah Carey Seasonal Special video on the wide-screen which quickly drove me back outside again. The next problem was finding the first team pitch, which turned out to be ¼ mile or so round the back of a hedge and down a hill. Again, it was pretty minimalist affair with nothing but a small marquee for cover (containing two round bar-patio tables and three plastic chairs), an even smaller bar facility in a metal shed at the far end of the pitch (which thankfully sold hot drinks as well) and two scoreboards! But you could stand on a raised grassy bank along the touchline, and that afforded an excellent view of the game.

Salisbury RFC have achieved back to back promotions in the last two seasons, but life at Level 5 appears a bit too hard for them. They are one off the bottom of the table and currently 12 points away from safety. Ivybridge were 4th and still in the mix for a promotion play-off spot. However, this is the same league as the match I saw last Saturday in which Bournemouth pulled off a shock win against one of Ivybridge’s rivals, so I was hoping that I might bring Salisbury some luck and a second shock result today.

The game got off to a cracking start with both sides trading tries and after the first quarter, we were level at 14-14. The next major incident came on 25m when Ivybridge hoisted a ball into touch and it landed on top of the canvas roof of the marquee, thus dislodging a quantity of accumulated rainwater which landed squarely on the hapless Ostrich, who was sitting in a purloined plastic chair, unfortunately directly underneath the awning!

Straight after the half-time interval, the home side took a 21-14 lead, resulting in Ivybridge laying siege to the Salisbury try-line, but despite having a player sin-binned less than a minute after he had come on as a replacement, they managed to hold Ivybridge at bay, a quick break brought them a further try, and on 65m they notched a penalty to make the score 29-14, a healthy lead. Tempers got a bit frayed, and Salisbury were tackling like demons as Ivybridge tried to surge forward – at one point a Salisbury player even “took out” one of his own team-mates in a melee!

But Ivybridge were playing a canny game. For me, the turning point came on 73m when they elected to kick a penalty, rather than find touch and set up position for a possible try. At 24-17, they were then back within two scores of the home team. And Salisbury finally imploded, giving up two converted tries in the 78th minute and deep into stoppage time. Ivybridge had completely turned the game around and nicked a 29-31 victory with virtually the last play of the game. Heartbreak for Salisbury who deserved much better, but luck has not been running their way of late, and today’s home defeat will make it very difficult for them to get out of the relegation mire. A shame, because I found them a friendly club and very welcoming to this visitor.

Then to cap it all, on the way home, in the middle of the countryside, at roughly the same place where I’d encountered the horse-riders and the mobile phone, in the head-lights, a stray dog, possibly a light-coloured Labrador type, suddenly ran out from nowhere and galloped down the road in front of me. I braked hard to a virtual stand, praying the guy in the car behind wouldn’t rear-end me and waited for the impact with the dog - but wasn’t aware of any. I then saw the dog alongside me going in the other direction. Relieved I hadn’t apparently hit him, I drove on, but once home, I checked and found a large mud-mark on the front bumper of the newly-washed car, so there must have been some sort of minor impact. No damage to the vehicle, but knowing “the law”, I reported it to Dorset Police on the 101 non-emergency number. They took details and gave me an incident number. Certainly not my fault as the dog was running loose, and I don’t think there was any injury to it anyway. But not a nice experience.

National 3 South West (Level 5) : Salisbury RFC 29 Ivybridge RFC 31
Admission £5, glossy 56pp programme included with admission (rather a lot of adverts, mind you. but plenty of action photographs from prior games), Crunchie bar £1, coffee from the outside bar £1, attendance a raucous but ultimately disappointed 231.