Archive for October, 2019

Hebburn Town v Ryhope Colliery Welfare, Tuesday 27th August 2019, 7.30pm

October 25, 2019

Having broken my Northern League duck for the season it didn’t take long to clock up a second game. Jen and I made our way up the A19 to the Hebburn Sports Ground or as it is currently known, the Energy Check Sports Ground. Whatever the name, it appears to date back to 1899, a good few years before Hebburn Town even existed.

We were there for the Division One clash with Ryhope Colliery Welfare and handed over six pounds each to get in with another couple of quid for a programme that was much more informative and professionally put together than I could have expected at this level. I don’t know how many they sell, but with a crowd of just 249 it can’t be enough to justify the efforts that will have gone into it.

Hebburn were in yellow and black as I suppose a team nicknamed the Hornets probably should be, whilst Ryhope were in purple. The home side had made an excellent start to the season, topping the table with four wins in their first five games. The visitors hadn’t began the campaign too shabbily either and were just above half-way in the table.

It was mainly Hebburn possession and territorial advantage early on, but it took a long ball that was miss-controlled by a Ryhope centre-half into the path of a home striker to break the deadlock. Hebburn were much the better team for the remainder of the the first half but didn’t take any more of their chances.

At half time I wandered around from our seats in the main stand and joined the queue at the food hatch next to the club house. Chips and curry sauce looked to be the best offering and it went down well.

With the nights drawing in the second half was played in near darkness with the Hebburn floodlights little brighter than a landing night light. The substitute board provided more illumination and I’m convinced that the teams were bringing players on just so that they could use the board lighting to see what was going on.

One thing that I did notice despite the gloom was that the officials all seemed very young. I suppose that’s the way it is these days and more to do with getting younger people into officiating rather than a perception due to my age. They managed the game well, with one of the linesman having a very detailed discussion with an unusually polite Ryhope defender over the newly introduced changes to interpreting handball.

From what I was able to see, Hebburn were clearly on top but Ryhope were never really out of it and missed a couple of decent chances to level the score. Deep into injury time, the Hornets sealed the win with a break bringing a second goal. The victory was well deserved and consolidated their position at the top of the table.

 

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Thornaby v Stockton Town, Monday 26th August 2019, 11am

October 23, 2019

I’d had a fair bit to do after getting back to the UK so it was a while before I got around to fitting a game in. A bank holiday Northern League derby was perfect though for getting back into it and so Jen and I made the short trip to Thornaby’s  Teesdale  Park.

It was a long walk in down a back lane. There were a few cars parked by the verges including a couple that had blocked a taxi in. The driver seemed resigned to his fate and I wondered if he was secretly happy to hang around and watch the game.

It was six quid to get in, which Jen thought quite expensive for a match that I’d described to her as being in the ninth tier of English football. I didn’t think it was too bad though. You don’t get much for that sort of cash these days.

There were a few choices for sitting or standing. We could have gone in the main covered stand, or in an open stand behind one of the goals. There were some outdoor tables in the club house that you probably had to get there quite early for and, as ever, the option of just leaning on the perimeter barrier. It was a dry, sunny day though and so we sat on the grassy bank across the pitch from the dug outs.

The keepers caught our attention early on, with the Stockton goalie being described by a kid behind me as a “pound shop Schmeichel”. I was initially impressed that the pre-teen would even know of the former Man United keeper before twigging that it was more likely Peter’s boy that he was referring to.

The other goalie was notable for wearing gloves that went so far up his arms that from a distance Jen thought he had plaster casts on them. When I questioned the likelihood of a goalie turning out in that condition she reminded me that it was a Bank Holiday and suggested that, in view of the other demands on their time, the clubs might very well have been struggling to put teams of fully fit players together.

The ground continued to fill up over the first half with the attendance later being announced as 470. That’s pretty good for a ninth tier game and I suspect  the morning kick-off time probably played  a part.

A moment after a fella nearby had commented how evenly balanced the game had been to date, Stockton took the lead when Kevin Hayes hit a speculative shot from distance that evaded the home keeper. A few minutes later Nathan Mulligan, who I seem to remember was on Boro’s books a while ago, rifled home across the keeper for a two goal half-time lead.

The second half was largely as even as the first had been and for a while it looked as if that brief spell just before the break had cost Thornaby. However, as the game drew towards its conclusion Kevin Hayes appeared to miss-hit a cross that wrong-footed the Thornaby keeper and dropped behind him into the net. The scorer looked more sheepish than the goalie did. At the death and with people heading off to their barbecues, Mikey Roberts broke through for the visitors and hit the cleanest finish of the game for Stockton’s fourth.

It wasn’t really a game where there seemed to be four goals difference between the teams, but Stockton were just that bit more clinical when it mattered .

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Philadelphia Union v Orlando City, Saturday 6th July 2019, 7pm

October 9, 2019

After the thunderstorm affected game in Nashville we continued to drive north, staying for a couple of nights in Salem, Virginia before getting up to Chester, Pennsylvania the night before catching the boat from New York back to Southampton.

I don’t imagine Chester is on many tour itineraries but we were there for the Philadelphia Union game. If I’d had a bit more time I’d probably have had a look at the Rocky statute, although I doubt I’d have ran up the steps to it. As it was, we checked into our hotel in the rain and when it cleared drove down to the Talen Energy Stadium.

It was thirty dollars to park the car and that wasn’t even at the stadium, just some gravel wasteland a couple of hundred yards away. Despite the threat of rain there was some tailgating going on, tailgating in the American sense that is of eating and drinking in the car park, rather than the English meaning of just driving too closely behind someone else.

We didn’t bother. As I was driving I couldn’t drink and so milling around next to my hire car didn’t seem all that attractive a proposition. Instead we headed around to the stadium, picked up our tickets from the collection point and, after a cursory bag search, made our way inside.

I’d booked our tickets a few weeks earlier for fifty five dollars a pop with the booking fees. We had seats down the side, but towards the end. One noticeable aspect was the width of the seat. They were much wider than those at the Boro, where I’m generally squeezed up against the fans either side of me.

The width of the seats might have had some correlation to the availability of stuff to eat in the concourse. It was more like a food court than a football ground. I had something called a Goop Dog which was a hot dog sat on a bed of bacon and onions and topped with a layer of cheesy sauce. With a coke it came to fifteen dollars and so it’s easy to see why people may prefer to eat their own snacks in the car park.

Back in our seats there wasn’t much going on. I’d checked the line-ups and Orlando had the ex-Man United player, Nani, on the bench, whilst Union had the dodgy Jamaican keeper that I’d seen three days earlier starting for them. I didn’t see either of them though as the players weren’t bothering to warm up. Perhaps they had done it earlier.

As the stadium clock reached the scheduled start time of seven o’clock there was still no sign of the players. What we got instead was a severe weather warning announcement asking everyone to leave their seats and take refuge in the concourse. About half of the two -thirds full stadium took notice and headed indoors. Some took advantage of the empty seats to move under cover, whilst others, ourselves included, just stayed where we were.

After the game in Nashville I felt I was a veteran of these situations and judged the darkening skies to be more inclement than severe. Besides, I’ve stood in the pouring rain watching the Boro at Oldham in the past and at the end of the game gone home with a waterlogged sheepskin coat that weighed more than I did. That’s severe.

We sat in our seats for the next hour and a quarter watching the lightning in the distance. At no point did it seem anything like as near as it had been at the Nashville game. A fella in front of us had some sort of storm tracking app on his phone that he was scrutinising as if he were a Formula One engineer deciding when to pull his driver in for new tyres.

At a quarter past eight the game was called off. I’d already checked the terms and conditions on the back of my ticket which stated that no refund would be given if the game were to be rescheduled sometime within the next year.

It was later announced that the game would be rescheduled for 4.30pm the following day, exactly one hour after we were due to board the boat to England. Great, that’s a hundred and ten dollars down the Swanee. We made it back to the car before the rain started and then were stuck in our thirty dollar car park for an hour whilst the traffic cleared.

It was a disappointing end to what had been an excellent few weeks in the States. We’d driven the Blue Ridge Highway, watched three baseball games and a football match, hiked in the Smokies and on the Appalachian Trail, startled a bear at close range, tracked a snake and boiled eighty pounds of crawfish in an oil drum. I can put up with a postponed game after that lot.

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