But beggars cannot be choosers, so off up the B road past Mere and a misty White Sheet Hill to Maiden Bradley, with its 12 century Post Office and Shop (I didn’t know the Co-op had been going that long
), and onwards past the fringes of the Longleat Estate to the SpecialEffect Stadium, Badgers Hill, Frome, to see Frome Sports take on Peasedown Miners Welfare. Frome Sports are nominally Frome Town FC’s reserves team, but nominally is the key word here, as I was told the Sports team had been given the opportunity to train weekday evenings with the first team squad, but at the end of the day, they couldn’t particularly be bothered. Nevertheless, they wear the red strip of the parent club and play on their first team pitch.Peasedown St John lies a few miles from Bath and within the now-defunct Somerset coalfields. There were half a dozen collieries within a couple of miles of the village, but the last of the coalmines closed in the 1970’s; now it’s a dormitory village for commuters to Bath and Bristol. Back in the 1930’s, Roald Dahl used to live in the area and had a job selling kerosene to the locals, he mentions Peasedown St John in his autobiography. And according to Wiki, the actor Peter Alexander who plays someone called Phil Pearce in Emmerdale, grew up in the village. The soccer club, which was founded around 1900, has recently reverted to the “Miners Welfare” name from “Athletic” in order to honour the history of the area.
Frome Town’s SpecialEffect Stadium, the club’s home since 1904, is quite charming in a higgledy sort of way, with plenty of portakabins, obscure brick buildings, agricultural stands, and a huge white-washed social club dominating one end of the pitch, with a large function room and a couple of other bars. They’re currently in the process of raising £30k to replace and upgrade the floodlights, and have nearly reached that target.
The game itself was eminently watchable, and a 1-1 draw was probably a fair result, although Peasedown looked the more dangerous side up front, and possessed a 17-stone goalkeeper
at the back who looked unhurried, unflappable, and pulled off a series of excellent saves and blocks. Frome Sports showed touches of the side that scored 6 in the 11-goal thriller I saw on Christmas Eve at Castle Cary, but the opposition were a much tougher nut to crack today.Somerset County League Division 1 East (Step 8): Frome Town Sports 1 Peasedown Miners Welfare 1
Admission free, no programme, packet of cheese ‘n onion crisps and a cuppa coffee from the clubhouse £1.80, attendance 39, most of whom were supporting Peasedown!
. Full marks to the lads for enterprise, but a resounding raspberry 
for hiking their prices, presumably as a result of their new-found fame – a 10% increase to bring a simple bacon bap to £3.00 is slightly eyebrow-raising. I bought Master O and myself one each to celebrate his arrival, but I wouldn’t make the place a regular venue at that sort of cost.
Cockrams, the football ground, was wreathed in rolling murk; you couldn’t see the Tesco fuel station on the other side of the conifer fence, and both goals were only just about visible from the middle of the pitch. The Ostrich accosted the referee and linesman during their warm-up, wished them good luck for the game, and requested they try not to abandon it until the second half so a least it would then count in the bird’s records! 
. A deserved win for the Rockies who are currently 5th in the table, but still some way off a promotion place. It will be interesting to see where they finish up .....