Four Weddings and a Penalty Shootout

[cromwell]

£20 admission for a Div 2 game!

International despot week! "Tonight's guest is President Robert Mugabe. Tell me Bob, (if you don't mind me calling you Bob, ha ha)..."

Oven gloves for Valentine's day - who said that romance is dead?

Those seagulls sound like travelling criminals from the Whitby area Os, they are notorious chip thieves up there.

Great report Os, as ever.

[Kaz]

See, this is why I love the West Country, despite the bloody weather Its characters I'd love to know the story behind the programmes

[TheOstrich]

24/02 - Looking out of the patio window Tuesday morning, there seemed to be a rather strange green leaf on the lawn, trembling in the wind – suddenly a red-crested head bobbed up from it, glared maniacally around the garden, and I realised I was looking at Woody the Woodpecker, back for his first visit since last autumn . Satisfied with his surroundings, he started pneumatically drilling holes in the lawn, presumably after early spring ants, with all the enthusiasm of a fracking prospector. As I watched, a particularly rotund grey wood pigeon landed on the grass and started to waddle over in Woody’s direction to see what’s what. Woody let him get so far, then the head went up and the pigeon was transfixed by what I can only describe as the Woodpecker Death Stare! The pigeon took the hint and waddled off in a different direction ….

On Wednesday evening, off to watch Yeovil Town Ladies! My third game at Huish Park, and the arrangements have never been the same twice. Tonight the main car park, shut last time, was open, necessitating a skidding U-turn in the Ostrichmobile after I had confidently driven past the opening, heading for the smaller Academy car park round the corner. I’m not sure why I bothered to do that – the Academy car park is in fact a lot closer to the stadium! Then they’d for some unknown reason switched the single turnstile they open for Ladies matches from the south end of the main stand to the north end, leading to a grumbling Ostrich trying to work out how to get into the place. Next, to the tea bar – only to find it shut! After a conversation with a steward, an exasperated Ossie was re-directed to the Alec Stock Suite in the top of the stand, where it transpired they were serving portions of lasagne and chips from a hot trolley for £7 …….

As you approach Huish Park these days, you pass numerous signs declaring it a “Drone Prohibited Area” after a recent game was interrupted by someone flying one over the pitch. Well, the only drone heard tonight was from the Ostrich, up in the seats and replete on lasagne, gently snoozing away a turgid first half. Yeovil, played 9, nul points, were up against second in the table Chelsea who were quite one dimensional from the outset – play it carefully backwards and forwards along the back three, then hoof it up the left wing to the excellent Scottish international Erin Cuthbert, who, leaving her marker trailing in her wake, fizzed a series of crosses across the goalmouth which nobody could latch on to. The target appeared to be Eniola Aluko (she of the recent racial discrimination allegations which cost the England Ladies manager his job), who was pretty much anonymous throughout.

By the time we reached 60 minutes, it was still goalless and I was beginning to contemplate my 6th 0-0 this season; however, everything changed when Chelsea brought Fran Kirby off the bench. A masterclass in how one player can change a game. Within 5 minutes, she’d drilled home the first goal, and powered into the heart of the Yeovil defence to help set up Jonna Anderson for the second. Yeovil couldn’t cope with the change of tactics, and the defeat might have been a heck of a lot heavier but for an outstanding performance by Megan Walsh in goal.

Yeovil played the match with just a single lone attacker in Ella Pusey, who looked increasingly frustrated in the second half, but had tough luck when she did managed to chip over the Chelsea keeper from 15 yards, only to see the ball spin well wide.

The future of Yeovil Ladies, which had been in jeopardy, seems to have been resolved. A fellow spectator told me tonight that they have managed to wangle a “franchise licence” to remain in the WSL1 by coming to some sort of arrangement with the FA, and I’ve now found a BBC Sport article online confirming that. It said in the match programme that they are, by necessity, going full-time next season, so that means they are also having to look for a new Head Coach to replace Jamie Sherwood; he has a full-time job in Wales so can’t continue to manage the Yeovil team. What I don’t know is what’s happened about funding – they were trying to raise something like £300,000 to enable them to turn full-time professional, and parent club Yeovil Town FC are too strapped for cash themselves to contribute anything to them.

For my sins, I’ve now seen all the ladies teams in the top-flight WSL 1 , and just need to tick off Brighton & Hove Albion in WSL2 …..

So to Saturday, a widespread overnight frost, and the usual tedious trawl through various clubs’ Twitter feeds to ascertain who might just possibly be playing. As soon as my first choice, Amesbury Town, was confirmed off (thanks here to the opposition, Cowes Sports from the Isle of Wight, who initiated the tweet, because Amesbury are, frustratingly, one of an increasingly large number of clubs who don’t bother to communicate anything these days), I thought “sod it”, looked on National Rail Enquiries, realised I could still get a train, and took the unprecedented step, for me, of phoning Woking FC in the Step 1 National League.

“Sorry to bother you, just checking, have you got a pitch inspection or anything today?”
(Slightly haughty female voice) “Nobody has said anything to me about a pitch inspection.”
“Great, so no problems with the game being on then? No frozen pitch?”
“The. Sun. Is. Out. And. Shining.”
“Thanks ….”

So, a quick route-march to the station and off on the 11:51, which is a fast one, and takes only an hour and a half to get to Woking. Where indeed, the sun was out and shining , but it was nevertheless bitterly cold, and looking out of the window on the train, plenty of evidence of unfrozen standing water in fields. I walked down past the Coroners Office and Surrey Police headquarters and through Woking Park to the Laithwaite Community Stadium.

Outside the Stadium, unusually, I was frisked by security. Jo, of course, is used to this at Manchester United, but at Woking? Actually, I think they were bored and looking for something to do. I declared I had a litre of milk and the weekly Non-League Paper in my anorak pocket, also that I was packing no drones . They weren’t bothered by any of that, and it was just a simple, cursory pat-down.

Entering the ground, I headed for the Supporters Club Shop where I know they provide team-sheets, but it turned out I was way too early; I hadn’t realised it hadn’t turned two o’clock yet at that point.

A white-haired elderly lady behind the counter fixed me with a gimlet stare:
“Are you the gentleman who phoned up earlier?”
I admitted I was, and thanked her kindly for her assistance. How she knew it was me. I’ve no idea - but I am aware my acquired Daarzet accent has been getting stronger and stronger ……

To the game, and yes, my record-breaking 6th goalless draw of my season duly arrived – that’s in only 40 games, which is atrocious – but this was completely overshadowed by a horrendous injury on 64m to Woking’s Damon Lathrope. It seemed a purely accidental collision and it looked at first as if the opposition Boreham Wood player had come off worst, but it was quickly obvious that the home player was in deep trouble, at least one Wood player looked visibly distressed by the injury, and all but threw up on the pitch. Lathrope was screened off and an ambulance immediately called; the players were taken off by the referee. I assumed a badly broken leg, and Woking's Twitter feed has confirmed that this evening.

Weighing up the inevitable delay with knowing that there was disruption on South Western Railways on the Exeter line this evening due to staff shortages, (I couldn’t afford to miss my train home), I took the decision not to wait for the resumption of the game, and headed off back to the station. That the game eventually finished goal-less was no surprise, as it had been a very poor affair up to the time of the incident. Woking looked pretty ineffectual in attack and Smith in the Boreham Wood goal wasn’t properly tested until the 35th minute. The visitors had the majority of the territorial possession but the standard of their crossing into the box was poor, to put it mildly. Woking looked more workmanlike after the interval and were beginning to create some chances up front, forcing Smith into a couple of acrobatic saves, but all that ended with Lathrope’s injury. Thoughts for the Woking player tonight, and best wishes for his recovery.

Vanarama National League (Step 1): Woking 0 Boreham Wood 0
Admission: £13 at the turnstile, decent programme: £3, refreshments: bacon roll wiv onions £3.50, tea £2.50,
attendance: no idea as of yet, probably around 1,800

[Ally]

I remember last year yomping in the Malaga mountains and hearing my first ever 'real' woodpecker. David and I stood enthralled at it.

re slightly haughty female voice!

Great report (as per my good man)

£13...is that expensive for this league?

Still think £6 is expensive for a bacon roll (ooooh onions) and a cuppa.

Just for good measure.....at La Rosaleda, season 2003-2004 when we first moved to Spain, the height of security was the guardia removing the bottles tops of our plastic bottles to prevent said bottle tops being thrown onto the pitch!

[cromwell]

I hope Lathrope gets good treatment for his injury and is back soon.
£7 seems ok for lasagna and chips,some of the other prices a bit less so.
You are turning into a goalless draw magnet Os! (Thinks, "We could turn this to our advantage at Ladbrokes...")

That ladies game does sound a bit one dimensional tbh, but from what I have seem the standard has improved in recent years.

Another good report. Thanks for posting them, I do enjoy the read.

[TheOstrich]

£13 admission's about par for the course in that League, Ally. Woking being close to London, it wouldn't have surprised me if it had been a quid or two higher.

And yes, the food is expensive, although let's face it, you'd pay £2.20 or £2.30 these days for a regular Americano in Costa Coffee. But tea and coffee at football matches, of course, isn't exactly the best quality brew. I knew it was a little bit expensive inside the ground having already visited there this season, so I did call in at the M&S Simply Food outside Woking railway station both going to and coming back from the ground. A simple bacon & egg sarnie and a 1 litre carton of milk on the way back cost £3.90 .... nothing's cheap these days.

Lathrope has had the necessary operation and is currently stable in hospital, Crommers, per Woking's twitter feed. He has all my thoughts, as I broke my leg and ankle playing soccer back in the 1970's, and in those days it was around 5 days in hospital and 12 weeks on crutches. I never played "competitive" football again after that ......

Yes, the lasagne & chips wasn't bad value, especially on a cold frosty evening. You know, for all I moan on sometimes about the ladies game, halfway through the first half at Woking, I was musing that the entertainment factor at that Yeovil v Chelsea Ladies game was actually a fair bit better than the match I was witnessing. Very poor quality game at Woking on Saturday.

Don't talk to me about goal-less draws. If I'd stayed local, Amesbury Town having been called off, my Plan B, which went ahead, would have been Wells City v Chipping Sodbury Town in the Western League. Result: 0-0.

[victor]

at La Rosaleda, season 2003-2004 when we first moved to Spain, the height of security was the guardia removing the bottles tops of our plastic bottles to prevent said bottle tops being thrown onto the pitch!

Ally the reason behind the bottle top removal is that if a topless bottle is thrown the contents will mostly spill out--with a top left on it's quite a heavy weapon.

Many years ago i used to work "on the gate" at Yeovil ,on one occasion a "fan" was stopped coming in carrying a flask ,which when shaken rattled as it contained 3 knives !!

[Ally]

Errr...thanks for the explanation Vic!

You've missed the point somewhat.

[Kaz]

Another great read Ossie!

[TheOstrich]

10/03 - With Mrs O quite stir-crazy after being holed up in the snow for three days , we had a run out last Wednesday to Pimperne, for a meal at The Anvil pub. And very nice it was too, well recommended. The village of Pimperne is not far off the Shaftesbury to Blandford Forum road, and the pub itself lies on the A354 Salisbury road. We opted for the two course lunch special, and started with pate on toast for Mrs O and a Tuscan bean and tomato soup for the Ostrich, the latter served with two hunks of warm, crusty bread to die for! Mrs O followed with a sweet chilli glazed beef stir fry, while Ossie plumped for the chargrilled chicken breasts in a mustardy sauce, shredded cabbage and fluffy roast potatoes. £29.50 with drinks. An excellent half-day out, and back home over the top of Cranborne Chase, pursued by the Mother of all hail-storms which had blown up spectacularly whilst we were in the pub . We just managed to keep in front of it, and avoided the worst.

http://anvilpimperne.co.uk/

So to Saturday, and with the early rain clearing, a warm sunny day, choice of three matches within walking distance of the target railway station, what could possibly go wrong? Plenty ….

Plan A: Exeter University RFC v Drybrook – arriving at Topsham station (it’s on the Exeter to Exmouth line) in good time, I wandered into the village centre for some grub. I was quite tempted by a fresh crab sandwich, “as supplied by Exmouth Boats”, until I saw they were asking £7.85 for it , so settled on a large scotch egg and litre of milk from nearby Arthurs Butchery and Delicatessen (£2.54) instead. Ossie was relieved, as he had had visions of his tail fevers being plucked out by an angry crustacean! I then headed a mile or so up the Exeter Road to the sports campus of the University of Exeter for my chosen game. On arrival, I found the place strangely deserted so I located the main rugby pitch and noted one small patch of stand water on it, but nothing serious enough, I felt, to have affected the game. So, wandering back to the pavilion, I chanced upon a door which was open, and on entering, found I’d gate-crashed a team talk being given to a group of University Freshers! I apologised profusely and enquired about the Drybook match. Nobody seemed to know what was happening, but someone did venture that the game might have been relocated to Duckes Meadow, somewhere back in Exeter itself, due to the state of the pitch here at their Topsham Sports Ground. Well, it looked fine to me. Pussies!

Now Exeter University’s South West 1 West (Level 6) side, which I was trying to watch, has no internet presence, as far as I can see, and very difficult to find any information on - it is completely overshadowed by the University’s mid-week BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport) teams, which have their own championships. I only managed to track the Saturday side down to the Topsham Sports Ground (Exeter University have about three or four locations where they play rugby) thanks to an entry on Drybrook’s Facebook page, so to actually get there and then be blind-sided has not exactly enamoured me to them ….

Plan B: Soccer, and South West Peninsula League Division 1 East: University of Exeter v Liverton United. I walked a bit further up the Exeter Road, under the M5 bridge, to where I thought their ground was, having looked on Google Maps, only to arrive at the home of Devon & Exeter League’s Topsham Town FC – and no game was scheduled there for today. The University of Exeter team, I subsequently learnt, play on the same Topsham Sports Ground campus as the rugby – but today’s fixture had been postponed anyway!!

Which left Plan C - and thankfully no problem at Bonfire Field! I walked back into the village to Topsham RFC’s ground to find two teams warming up. Their ground is only a ½ mile trot from the station, but I must have walked close on two miles by that point. One foot-sore Ostrich! This small establishment has just the two pitches. The roof of the clubhouse, a modernish wooden-clad construction, which runs down three-quarters of the length of the first team pitch touchline, has a long overhang, so plenty of shelter if the weather is poor. The clubhouse also has the most grandiose and spacious gents loos I've encountered in a long time , but the bar area itself is rather spartan and dark. The first team pitch is railed on each side, and the only other furniture is a rather whizzy electronic scoreboard, possibly on wheels, featuring a minute-counter which, unusually at these lower levels of club rugby, someone was starting and stopping by a remote zapper whenever the referee called a time-out, rather than just letting it tick on.

There are only 8 teams in the Devon League Division 1, and this was a crunch match between the top two. And as this was also Topsham’s last game of the season, they needed to win it emphatically. I spent the match alongside a “referee’s observer”, a very experienced Welshman who told me he’d helped mentor the current international referee Nigel Owens in the early stages of his career, and that he didn’t usually observe games at this low level, but had been diverted from a higher league game today to watch one Alistair Clark, a 21 year old, in action in the middle of the park, and the latter certainly had a good game, including penalising Topsham for timewasting at one point! That’s very rare, and something I can’t recall seeing before. He was also quite strict about “chat-back” and penalised the teams 10 yards territory on at least three occasions, but there was one incident in the second half where my colleague thought the referee had been shoved by one of the opposition players – I didn’t see the incident clearly so can’t say – and that should have resulted in a sending off. A discussion point for the after-game de-briefing ….

The home side took an early lead with a 7th minute penalty, and certainly looked “up for it”, pressurising South Molton at every opportunity and using the speed of their full-back on the flanks to attack. An absorbing first half that remained 3-0 until the 32nd minute, when South Molton suddenly got the break-through with a penalty and converted try in a quick 3 minute spell. On the stroke of half-time, however, Topsham came back with a converted try of their own, and the game was nicely poised at 10-10 at the interval.

The second half saw Topsham slightly lose their concentration and discipline. South Molton were ahead 13-15 after 48m but Topsham regained the lead on 56m when their No.14 managed to squeeze round the outside of the defence for an unconverted try (the conversion unluckily hitting the near post and rebounding back onto the field), and after that it was a question of stamina and desperately keeping the visitors at bay. This they succeeded in doing, and the icing on the cake was a converted try scored with the last play of the match – the conversion this time hitting the post and deflecting over the bar – to deny South Moulton a losing bonus point. That leaves Topsham on top of the table tonight with 59 pts and South Molton, with one game to play, on 55 pts, so today’s result was probably not quite good enough for the home side to win the League.

Not exactly a festival of rugby but a fascinating match, nevertheless.

A leisurely journey home, accompanied by an onion bhaji sandwich from the Co-op in Topsham (reduced to £1.50) – I kid you not – ingredients were listed as cauliflower and sweet potato puree, mango chutney, pickled beetroot, and carrot in onion seed bread. Rather peculiar! I also managed to pick up a paper-back I wanted in W H Smith’s in Exeter while changing trains, and a final count of 21 swans and 1 white egret spotted on the meandering River Axe outside Axminster.

Tribute Devon 1 (Level 9): Topsham RUFC 25 South Molton RUFC 15
Admission: free, paperwork: none
Refreshments: from the clubhouse, 80p Mars bar. Pasties were off, apparently.
Attendance: 68