The Chronicles of Ostrick ....

[Kaz]

Another cracking report Ossie!

[TheOstrich]

Yep, no refreshments at all at Milborne Port. The village hall had a kitchen, and mugs of tea were being dispensed to the operatic society, but I didn't like to blag my way in just in case I was roped in and made to squawk in the chorus-line ....
The village centre was a bit distant from the playing fields, so I didn't go and explore.

The A303 was pretty bad on Friday apparently, the Croydon-based ground-hopper reported an extra 2 hours on his journey from what he was expecting. Yesterday (Easter Sunday) we went over to SiL's and it was quite quiet. I guess it will be busy again today with returning traffic ...

There is a report in the Times today, Ally, that staycations are on the rise over here; Brits are shunning foreign holidays on the grounds of the falling £ and heavy airport security. Cornwall, Lake District and Scotland are seeing the benefits.

Buckhorn Weston is one of the few local villages that still has a pub, Crommers, the Stapleton Arms; we'll try it out sometime.

[Ally]

That Times reporter needs to pop over to Malaga airport then Ossie...

[TheOstrich]

22/04 – One think I have learnt in the South-West is never assume a kick-off time will be as publicised. Easter Monday afternoon, I rolled into Meadow Lane, Westbury at 1:30 and asked the guys on the gate if I could park up and go have a browse around the town as I had an hour and a half to kill.

“Wouldn’t bother, mate, there’s only two shops and we start at 2:00”
“Since when?!”
“Since Almondsbury suddenly decided they wanted to change the time!”

That wasn’t the only strange conversation. It’s rather an old-fashioned ground with a corrugated tin club-house and brick walling around the pitch rather than rails. The Ostrich propped itself up against the latter, next to another spectator, who eyed the bird suspiciously as it took out its sheet of paper to record notes on the game.

“You’re not doing what I’m doing, are you?”
“Um, well, I’m not a reporter ….”
“Neither am I!”
“Err – I’m just a groundhopper …”
“I’m a referee’s observer!”

Ah, one of the fabled taciturn assessors who usually reduce the man in the middle to an incompetent card-waving wreck. But in fact this chap was quite chatty and I spent a very interesting afternoon in his company. For example, the Almondsbury no.9 stands up to and eyeballs the home keeper. The referee ushers the forward away and allows the keeper to punt the ball downfield.

“Ah, now I’ve got something to talk to him about!”
“Really? Looked pretty innocuous to me ….”
“Yes, but,” showing the Ostrich his notes, “that’s the third time that forward’s done that. The referee should have stepped in at that point, given the goalie a free-kick, and the forward a severe b*llocking!”

We agreed overall, as Westbury finished the game 3-1 winners, that the referee, in his first year in the middle at this level (Western League), had had a reasonable game, but there again, he hadn’t had to cope with anything too controversial. Was sold an Extremely Small steak and kidney pie at the hatch for £1.50.

Wednesday evening, and a tale of two towns. As Gillingham Town voluntarily take a two-step demotion, up the road, the Rockies (Shaftesbury Town) have secured back-to-back promotions and will play in the Wessex Premier next season, their highest ever level. At the same time, the Reserves are also in the hunt for promotion from the Dorset Football League Senior Division. They have six games still to play, which will keep both them and me gainfully occupied until mid-May, and tonight raced into a three goal lead in the first 20 minutes against Poole Borough. The visitors, however, proved quite resilient and actually pulled a goal back, which concentrated the home team’s minds in the second half, and that was the final score, again 3-1. Was sold an Extremely Flaky sausage roll at the hatch for £1.

So to today, and time for an end-of-season spectacular! Working on the principle of “do it now before I get too old”, it was off on the 10.17 train for Exeter, and onwards from there down the east bank of the River Exe to Exmouth. Just £20.55 with a Senior Railcard. Arriving unseasonably early, I wandered off into the town, where I found a shop called Mother Earth advertising “legal cannabis substitutes available here” . However, Ossie was after an entirely different legal high and hit the KFC two doors down!

The rugby ground is virtually on the sea front so I wandered back the promenade and found a bench seat, opened my KFC box, and about a minute later, a large herring gull walked up and started staring at me from a distance of about 10 feet. I put up with this for a while but then, feeling slightly unnerved, I relocated down the pathway to the next bench seat. After a minute or so, the herring gull padded down the pathway, stopped 10 feet away, and started staring again. I've felt safer walking through Birmingham City Centre at night! So I packed up my box, marched ¼ mile round the headland, and sat down on the shingle. I’d just finished eating when a herring gull landed next to me ….

The game this afternoon pitted two teams going in opposite directions. Exmouth are bottom of the table and already relegated. Bishop’s Stortford had to win to secure the title and promotion. They were over the line for their first try inside 1 minute and 15 seconds by my stopwatch, and had secured their four-try bonus point by the 20th minute. 7-33 at the interval, Bishop’s Stortford scored their first try of the second half in 1 minute and 6 seconds! The result, as they say, was never in doubt, and “The Cockles” were duly crushed.

Swans, two egrets and a grey heron spotted from the train on the banks of the Exe estuary, whilst between Gillingham and Exeter I saw 5 small deer (presumably roe deer), a hot air balloon, and more bunnies than you could shake a stick at. Home by 7:15 after an enjoyable excursion.

National 2 South (Level 4): Exmouth RFC 7 Bishop’s Stortford RFC 60
Admission with programme £6, Zinger Box from the KFC £5.89 (chicken fillet garnished with iceberg lettuce and mayo, two chicken wings, small tub of chicken gravy – I crave chicken gravy – small bag of fries and a Diet Pepsi with ice – or rather ice with Diet Pepsi ….), bag of Bassetts Jelly Babies £1 from the stall in the ground, and £2.30 for an Americano to go from the Costa Coffee outlet next to the Oggy Oggy Pasty Shop in Exeter, where I was able to break my journey on the way back, attendance 267.

[Ally]

Oooooh KFC!! I've now promised myself a zinger box when I come over in June!

Had to at the Oggy Oggy Pasty Shop.

That herring gull!

Food aside that was another great read Ossie.

Thank you!

[Kaz]

Another season of brilliant reports Ossie, thank you!

Had to giggle at the diet coke and jelly babies!

[TheOstrich]

First an update on yesterday's attendance. Officially it was 368, not 267 as I counted. I can only assume 100 rugby fans never made it out of the bar .....

An end-of-season bonus .... of sorts ...

23/04 – I really try to like Women’s Super League football, I really do. But there is just something about it which makes me sigh in despair. Maybe it’s being brought up on a diet of Aston Villa Ladies FC, a mediocre Division 2 team who were never going to hit any heights. Maybe it’s the cheer-leading and the razzamatazz that accompanies every game – I memorably recorded two seasons back that the only redeeming feature of one particular Villa Ladies match I attended was the Ostrich high-fiving “Bella the Lion”. Maybe it’s the fact that one season, over about 10 fixtures, I averaged less than 2 goals a game. So I wasn’t particularly looking forward to today’s encounter, but Yeovil Town Ladies were taking on Liverpool Ladies, and the latter were one of only two teams I need to see in Division 1. And off I trundled to Huish Park, the home of Yeovil Town FC, to see the Ladies play their first ever Division 1 game, having secured promotion as Division 2 Champions last summer.

I’ve not been to Huish Park for around 20 years, and they’ve added a new covered stand behind one of the goals since those days. It’s a neat little new-build stadium on the north-western fringes of the town, and reasonably easily accessible by car from the A303. Plenty of parking available, and although I arrived about 12:45 for a 2:00 kick-off, the place was buzzing with children’s soccer tournaments on the outside training pitches, and that is one point very much in favour of WSL soccer – it’s definitely family friendly. BT Sport were present, setting up a live streaming broadcast, and various local radio celebs were doing their bit. I wandered round the ground, having found I’d parked diametrically opposite the only turnstile accepting cash on the day, and settled down in the main stand to read my weekly “Non-League Football” paper, eschewing the opportunity to be professionally photographed with the FA WSL Division 2 Trophy. I have to preserve my street cred, tha' knows ....

Liverpool Ladies arrived in a swanky black executive coach, which was all very nice, but someone had forgotten to load their kit onto it! So instead of playing in the traditional red, they were loaned Yeovil’s yellow and black away strip, and as these had squad numbers and names printed on the back, we had the strange sight of two players on opposing sides, both numbered 11 and both named Lawrence. Yeovil couldn’t get their electronic scoreboard to work until the second half, and that was after we’d had a half-time competition for five spectators to attempt to win a cheque for £5,000 by attempting to hit the crossbar from the centre spot. As if! And no, I didn’t volunteer. Only two of the five chosen contestants actually had a go, and neither kick finished up reaching the penalty area, let alone the goalmouth.

I suspected the game was going to be dire, and I wasn’t mistaken. Liverpool looked fairly nifty going forward, especially their right-winger, Shanice Van de Sanden, but Yeovil were pretty awful throughout, redeemed only by a competent display by keeper Charlotte Haynes, and late in the game, the enthusiastic running of young substitutes Jessie Jones and Sarah Wiltshire. No cohesion, no game plan, too many wild balls. Liverpool were 0-2 up at the break, and there was no way Yeovil were going to come back from that, but the game got a bit controversial after 65m when the man in the middle, Richard Hulme, who is a Football League linesman as well as a referee, denied Yeovil a penalty for a shove in the area, and Liverpool went straight up the other end and scored. That decision didn’t entirely endear him to the home crowd. The away side’s fourth goal followed on 75m and then two minutes later Hulme did manage to award Yeovil a penalty, apparently for a body-check which looked pretty innocuous to most of the folk sitting around me. A case of making up for an earlier mistake? Who knows. Wiltshire put the spot kick away emphatically, but too little and way too late.

Only Chelsea Ladies to go now, thank goodness.

FA WSL Spring Series 2017: Yeovil Ladies 1 Liverpool Ladies 4
Admission £3, programme £2 (32pp glossy, not bad compared with some I’ve seen), cheese pasty £4 (!) which was supposed to be cheese, tomato and basil, but the tomato and basil appeared to have gone the same way as the Liverpool team kit , attendance a very healthy 1,897.

[Kaz]

[cromwell]

The rugby ground is virtually on the sea front so I wandered back the promenade and found a bench seat, opened my KFC box, and about a minute later, a large herring gull walked up and started staring at me from a distance of about 10 feet. I put up with this for a while but then, feeling slightly unnerved, I relocated down the pathway to the next bench seat. After a minute or so, the herring gull padded down the pathway, stopped 10 feet away, and started staring again. I've felt safer walking through Birmingham City Centre at night! So I packed up my box, marched ¼ mile round the headland, and sat down on the shingle. I’d just finished eating when a herring gull landed next to me ….

It was probably the ringleader of a chip rustling gang Ossie! Bad devils, them gulls.

[TheOstrich]

29/04 – …. and so to the final chapter of the Chronicles of Ostrick for the 2016/17 season! I have a few matches in May, but they almost invariably involve Shaftesbury Town Reserves who are still frantically working through a backlog of fixtures, so I shaln’t bother you with those.

This week’s midweek match saw the bird at Gillingham Town Reserves for a game against Wareham Rangers, and the match kicked off at 7:45 under apocalyptic skies, illuminated all colours by the setting sun. When White Sheet Hill, on the horizon disappeared, we knew we were in trouble . The storm arrived on 36m with wind, bucketing rain, and sleet, and as one drenched home official opined on squelching into the bar at half-time, “It’s midweek, we’re mid-table, I’m middle-aged, I’m perishing, I’m soaked – what am I doing here? ”. It was difficult to find a suitable reply. When the referee emerged after the interval, one of his linesmen promptly holed up next to me inside the stand, refusing to budge! Gillingham ran out 5-2 winners on the night, which was a tad harsh on the visitors who played a decent game.

Now last weekend, I watched Bishop’s Stortford RFC cruise to an emphatic victory at Exmouth, recording a 5-point win and thus clinching rugby union’s National 2 North title. This Saturday, a similar scenario – Wellington FC needed to beat Radstock Town to take the Western League Division 1 title; second place Hengrove Athletic could pip them to it if they won at Westbury and Wellington lost or drew this their final game.

I’d seen Radstock play at Wincanton last September; it was a 0-0 draw, so this was a chance for them to redeem themselves! Whatever the result today, they would finish 5th in the table, so they really didn’t have anything at stake. The omens for the game were not good; these title-deciders are often tense, nervous affairs, and when I set off from home heading north, I didn’t like the portent of a cloud of dark, satanic vultures apparently wheeling ponderously in the sky over Mere way . I did a double-take, adjusted my glasses, and more correctly identified the ominous “birds” as a group of 20 or so microlights and hang-gliders!

Radstock is at the heart of the old Somerset coal mining area; indeed, the team are nicknamed “The Miners”. They’ve spent most of their recent life in the Western League, mainly in Division 1 but a couple of spells in the Premier Division. The ground, Southfield Recreation Ground, is signposted off the A362 Frome road, and perches on the side of a hill at the back of a small housing estate. The clubhouse is brick and stucco, the elderly stand of corrugated construction. I decided not to sit in the latter as the stanchions, combined with the neighbouring floodlight pylons, made it difficult to see all the pitch easily. There was plenty of parking but I was advised to locate the Ostrichmobile fairly close to the exit if I wanted to make a quick getaway.

Settling down in the bar, I read through the Radstock Town match-day programme which was strangely, and rather intriguingly, entitled “Sounds of the Sea”. I enquired, given we were a long way inland, why this should be. “It’s a long story; it’s to do with a song we used to sing in the old days,” I was told, “there’s one guy who knows about it, and I’ll send him over to you when I see him.” Nobody ever came . I’ve looked on Google and I can’t locate any ditty with that title apart from a 1972 effort by a duo called Renaissance, and having YouTubed that, I can hardly see any football connection. So it remains a mystery.

The game was rather odd. On a hard and bumpy pitch, chances were few; Wellington showed no real urgency to secure the result they needed, and Radstock were quite content to defend throughout the first half. Wellington’s centre-half and captain, Tom Ellis, possessed a prodigious long-range throw-in which he frequently launched into the home side’s penalty area, but Radstock coped with that quite happily. In fact Radstock seemed more intent on whinging at the referee than attacking their visitors, and the man-in-the-middle rather let them get away with it, merely lecturing and warning rather that yellow-carding a few of the miscreants, as I felt he should have done. At half-time, I could see this game finishing goal-less, but Wellington eventually got the breakthrough after 58m with a clinical 20 yard strike, and Ellis sealed it with an emphatic downwards header from a free-kick swung into the 6 yard box. All academic in the event, as Hengrove could only draw, and Wellington celebrated as the final whistle was blown. They did in fact have the League Cup there to present to the victors, but I decided to make a quick escape for the return journey.

It’s been an interesting first season for the Ostrich down here in the South-West. Many new venues and teams, and a “goals per game” average considerably higher than anything I’ve achieved in the Midlands. So, that’s it until next August. I haven’t even got any summer Rugby League games to watch. I may be reduced to ferret-racing ….

Western League Division 1 (Step 6): Radstock Town 0 Wellington 2
Admission £3, programme £1 (44pp glossy, very good for this level), apple J2O and cheese ‘n onion crisps £2.70 from the bar, excellent bacon bap with three rashers and a cuppa tea from the “Miners Pit Stop” hatch £3.25, attendance 91.