It's Murder, On The Orient Express ....

[TheOstrich]

Great read Os! Do the teams adhere to the rules in the Evo-stick league?

<Groan>

[JoM]

Great read Os! Do the teams adhere to the rules in the Evo-stick league?

The old gits - yes, a lot of teams have "supporters" whose main reason for attending matches seems to be to have a good moan. Back in the pre-superleague days I was a regular watching Wakefield Trinity and there was one older gentleman who used to spend most of the match shouting abuse at Billy Conway, Trinity's hooker. Useless this, dwarf that (he wasn't the biggest player), give the ball to someone who can do something with it, etc etc.

One time Trinity attacked and were tackled just short of the line. Conway went to acting half back at the play the ball, which was a signal for a fresh burst of vituperation from his number one non-fan. He was in mid rant when Conway took the ball, sold a sweet dummy which wrong footed the defence and crossed for a try! Sunned, our friend was left silenced with his mouth wide open mid rant and his friends around him all falling about laughing! Boy, did he get his leg pulled!

We were at a match a few weeks ago, me and Joe, and I hadn't been able to get us tickets together (same row but three seats between us) and usually if that happens I keep checking online closer to the game and if a pair together come up I phone the ticket office and they'll swap them. Anyway, on that occasion I hadn't found any so I was telling Joe and he said "Good, I won't have to listen to you moaning"

(As it happened he sat next to me while we waited for the game to start, saying he'd move when the person whose seat it was turned up but no one did so he stayed there).

[TheOstrich]

when the person whose seat it was turned up but no one did so he stayed there).

Jo, in your experience, is there a lot of that at Old Trafford - people (presumably season ticket holders) simply not turning up?

I have been told that season ticket holders get counted in the official attendance, even if they are a no-show …...

[JoM]

No, it's not something you normally see there at Premier League matches, not even on a wet Wednesday night in Feb, but on that day the seat the other side of me was empty too (and this was a long-standing ST ticket holder because he had his special name plaque on his seat) and someone else, a friend of the people behind us, moved to sit there and there were a couple of empty seats on the row in front.

[TheOstrich]

20/10 - This week’s blog was going to see the “Big Reveal" – the reason why the Ostrich chose the “Murder on the Orient Express” theme for the current season. Our Ossie had originally planned to travel up the East End by train and tube this last Saturday, to attend Leyton Orient vs Havant and Waterlooville – but of course the current rail strikes put paid to that.

So yesterday morning, the bird emerged garbed in a full protective radiation suit, because the venue for the afternoon’s entertainment was much closer to home – Somerton, the self-styled ancient capital of Wessex and the Radon hot-spot of the county of Somerset!

Radon is a colourless, odourless radioactive gas formed by the radioactive decay of the small amounts of uranium that occur naturally in all rocks and soils. The amount of radon is measured in becquerels per cubic metre of air and the average level in UK homes is said to be 20 Bq m-3. For levels below 100 Bq m-3, risk remains relatively low and not a cause for concern. However, the risk of Ossie’s beak starting to glow yellow increases as the radon level increases - Devon and Cornwall are the worst places for this, but Somerset also has its problem areas.

In fact, many years ago, when we lived in Crewkerne, we were asked to take part in a household survey which involved some secretive Government laboratory sending us two small flying saucers , one of which we had to place upstairs and the other downstairs, and keep them for three months before posting them back to the Aldermaston Nuclear Research Facility or somewhere. The results were interesting, our neighbours recorded 114 Bq, but our house showed 140 Bq and both of us received “advice”, the threshold for “action” being 200 Bq. The advice, if I recall correctly, basically meant not opening your windows , as any form of air draft might cause the radon to rise from the rocks underneath and into the house; if action had been needed, we would have had to fit a £2,000 radon pump! All worth bearing in mind if you’re moving house in the South West, I guess – and a flying saucer test kit costs you £50 these days; we had ours for free!

Somerton rugby club play at the Eirian Williams Memorial Pitch which forms part of the town’s multi-purpose Recreation Ground, but whilst the club gives the address as Gassons Lane, the entrance to the rugby ground car park is actually a turning off the main B3153 Langport road, right on the edge of town. The Sports and Social Club building, which appears to be hub of the complex, is a long ¼ mile hike from the pitch, away in a far corner, (and it’s an even longer ¼ mile hike back again, once you’ve walked there and found it closed and shuttered up! ). That walk takes you past Somerton FC’s two soccer pitches, where the reserves were entertaining Winchcombe Reserves yesterday - as I found out when a wayward clearance came over the boundary hedge and the ball thumped off the roof of my car!

The rugby club only has the one pitch, which has wooden railings down each touchline. The grass looked a bit furrowed in places; these furrows seemed to be evenly-spaced and run diagonally across the pitch, so I presume they resulted from some drainage scheme. There’s a portacabin in one corner which doubles as (small) club shop and storage area, and in there, I shook paws with the club’s mascot (you’ll see him on the bottom row of the team line-up on their Twitter masthead …..
https://twitter.com/somertonrfc

The changing rooms are housed in a container complex by the car park. They also have a number of portable training floodlights, and a portable electronic scoreboard, which was wheeled out and appeared to be operated by magic . Or possibly remotely from a handset. Enterprisingly, they also erected, before the start, a large marquee cover on one touchline from which beverages, crisps and chocolate were sold, the tea urn appearing to be powered by a diesel generator which chugged up every time they wanted to bring it to the boil! The marquee provided some spectator shelter from the increasing rain showers as the afternoon progressed, but, being open-sided, there was no respite from the bitterly cold, driving wind which eventually forced me back to the car, which I’d conveniently parked behind one end where I had a full view of the game in reasonable warmth.

Somerton started the day 4th in the 12 team league, whilst Wiveliscombe’s seconds were 11th with no league wins and just three bonus points to their name. The home side, celebrating the 20th anniversary of their formation, were quickly on the attack and 21-0 up in 17 minutes. Wiveliscombe came more into the game after that, but Somerton were ruthlessly hunting them down every time they got the ball, and 26-5 at the interval was a fair reflection of play.

The weather steadily deteriorated after the break as the rain set in, and this affected the standard of play, but Somerton added three further tries before coasting into the last five minutes with the score at 45-5. However, Wiveliscombe then had the temerity to score from a break through the middle, and that roused the home team to reply with two further tries of their own in the final three minutes! A decent game given the dreadful conditions.

Tribute Somerset 2 South (Level 10): Somerton RFC 55 Wiveliscombe II RFC 12
Admission: free, no programme
Refreshments: tea 50p and home-made slabs of Rocky Road £1 each. I had one at the match, and took two home to share with Mrs O.
Attendance: 43

[Ally]

Cheers Ossie.

I forgot about Rocky Road....now my boys are all grown up and flown the nest it doesn't occur to me to make these types of treats.

[Kaz]

It's too sweet for me, but Mick and B like it Another great read Ossie, thank you xxxx

[cromwell]

Rugby in winter! The steam rising from the pack, the full nack with frozen feet and the bliss of the post match hot shower!
Great read Os, thanks.

[TheOstrich]

03/11 - Deciding from the write-up that the new psychological crime thriller “Dark Heart” was too gruesome for the tastes of Mrs O and myself , I made a last minute decision on Wednesday to wander over to Westbury for an evening game in the Western League’s equivalent of the “League Cup”. The trophy is named after a former Chairman of the league, Les Phillips, who passed away in 1988 – a real character, apparently, who did much to keep the league afloat financially by arranging sponsorship deals with both Rothmans (presumably the cigarette manufacturers) and Great Mills (DIY stores). The attraction of this Halloween match was in the opposition, Odd Down, not a team I’d seen play before.

Odd Down like to be known as Odd Down (Bath). I’m not entirely sure why; after all, there is only one Odd Down anywhere in the country that I can find, so I’m unsure who they worry they might be mistaken for. Possibly Huddersfield. Odd Down is indeed a small community on the edge of southern Bath - it hosts part of the Wansdyke medieval earthwork, which is an At-Risk Ancient Monument, being in an “unsatisfactory condition” apparently due to gardening ….. (!). Odd Down also sports a massive Park and Ride serving the City, which is soon to introduce a swingeing congestion charge scheme, effectively ruling out all vehicles from its polluted centre other than, as far as I can see, rickshaws and tandems.

This cup tie matched rampant top-of-the-table Westbury with a rather ordinary middle-of-the-road side, and what we got was not a thrashing but a completely unexpected result - a salutary lesson to all programme editors that making comments like “I think this season represents a very good chance to win our first ever [insert name of cup here]” is very much tempting fate!

We kicked off and Odd Down promptly lit the afterburners, whizzing round the field like a team possessed. Westbury looked completely rattled at times and found it difficult to make any headway - towards the end of the first half, the home management team were calling for more composure and less whinging . Odd Down had already taken the lead with a close range effort from Williams (13m) and what had initially threatened to be a 100mph game of aerial hoofball had mercifully subsided into something a bit more entertaining.

Odd Down’s second goal looked like it was scored directly from a corner (68m), Westbury’s no.5 received a straight red for a head-down shoulder barge nine minutes later, and Odd Down completed the scoring with a soft penalty shortly thereafter. Deserved win for the Bath side, and a night Westbury will want to forget!

To complete the spooky Halloween theme, travelling home at night through the Deverills, a ghostly white apparition suddenly appeared in the headlights, lifted off a fence post, and disappeared over a hedge. Thinking about it, it’s many years since I’ve seen a barn owl in the wild ….

Les Phillips Cup Round 1: Westbury United 0 Odd Down (Bath) 3
Admission £4 concession.
Refreshments: No hot food available tonight, so just tea inna mug £1.
Attendance: 64, including a number of footballing “anoraks” from “oop north”, judging by the conversation.

To Saturday, and since I last visited the Specsavers County Ground, home of the Dorset FA and Hamworthy United FC back in February, they have completed the extension to the clubhouse, relayed and extended the patio smoking area, posted signs up saying they are in consultation with Poole District Council to ban smoking even from that , and either put in (or refurbished) a proper turnstile block next to the old entrance; it was in use today and I’ve not been aware of it before. In anticipation of a large crowd (which didn’t materialise), I arrived early to secure parking, being a bit limited on-site, caught the last 5 minutes of some U-13s game between Dorset and Wiltshire on the 3G artificial pitch, and then adjourned to the bar for the reasonably entertaining AFC Bournemouth v Manchester United showing on the widescreen.

Today’s visitors were Falmouth Town for an FA Vase cup tie, who had apparently travelled up yesterday and stayed in the area overnight. On the pitch, they were a slight disappointment given their hyped-up credentials – currently 2nd in the reclusive South West Peninsula League Premier Division, scoring an average of over 3 goals a game so far this season, and 0-6 demolishers of Bridport FC in West Dorset in the last round. Hamworthy, who aren’t having a particularly good season this year by their own standards, certainly handled them efficiently in a goalless first half that didn’t generate a lot of action, although the home side’s Chris Senior did have to hook one bouncing ball off the line. And a slightly whistle-happy referee didn’t help matters either.

Falmouth eventually opened the scoring on 62m when Jordon Annear neatly tucked a cross in at the near post. I’ve had to confirm that he was the scorer off Twitter, because Falmouth’s shirt design incorporates numbers which are displayed in outline, rather than block, and being grey on yellow , were consequentially difficult to identify.

My initial reaction was that Hamworthy wouldn’t have the wherewithal to get back into the game, but two judicious substitutions on 72m, introducing Dan Cann and River Smith up front, changed all that. Walker scrambled the equaliser on 86m, which might have been helped in by the away keeper and / or a defender, to take us into 30 minutes’ extra time, and by that point Hamworthy were beginning to stamp their authority on the game. Cann made it 2-1 on 94m, the ball seemingly taking a heavy deflection past the keeper, and a Walker penalty on 111m after Smith had been brought down in the area sealed the result.

A good, workmanlike victory at the end of the day for the Hammers in a game that, for me, never quite hit the heights.

FA Vase Round 2: Hamworthy United 3 Falmouth Town 1 (after extra time, 1-1 at 90m).
Admission £5 including programme.
Refreshments: Freshly-cooked chips (which meant they were (a) too hot and (b) somewhat underdone) £2, plus a passable chicken and mushroom pie £3 from the kitchen.
Attendance: 139

[cromwell]

Odd Down. What place names we have in this country!
The refreshments do seem to vary as to availability, price and quality but I bet most of the stuff you'd find at professional grounds.
Great read Os.