As we were staying over in Scotland after the Rangers v Boro game, it gave me the opportunity to go along to the women’s fixture between the same teams the following day.
We had planned to walk some more of the West Highland Way beforehand, but the weather was a bit ropey and we didn’t see much point in heading out in the rain when we could always return at a later date with some more enjoyable conditions.
The game was at the Broadwood Stadium in Cumbernauld. It’s a ground that Rangers Women share with Lowland League side Cumbernauld Colts and League One’s Hamilton Academicals. Hamilton have only just taken residence at Broadwood after being booted out of their previous home at New Douglas Park.
We arrived about half an hour before kick-off, meaning that there was sufficient space in the car park. We could have bought scarves and bucket hats, but did nae bother as they say up there.
Only the main stand was open and there were quite a few spectators wearing Boro colours. The queue for food and drink was too long to join which meant that we missed out on a choice of scotch, macaroni or kebab pies. I sometimes wonder if Scotland is trolling the rest of the world with their culinary inventions, but if they are, a lot of their own population aren’t in on the joke.
Rangers are in the top division in Scotland with the Boro having just been promoted to the third tier in England. The gulf in talent was apparent from the off and Rangers were three up at the break, before extending their lead to six by home time.
It’s difficult in pre-season friendlies to gauge the respective merits of clubs as you don’t always know whether you are watching a weakened team or players who are at different stages of fitness. On this showing though, the Boro have a bit to do if they want back-to-back promotions.
The Boro’s pre-season friendly with Rangers certainly caught the attention of the Boro fanbase with around seven thousand tickets sold for the trip to Ibrox. I looked at accommodation in the city but it seemed so expensive that I initially assumed that it must have been a weekend when both Oasis and Taylor Swift were in town.
My Plan B was to stay north of Glasgow and combine the trip with walking a little further along the West Highland Way. The hotel that we booked in Drymen was having a Murder Mystery Night and so we joined in. I doubt I’d make a detective as I strongly suspected a couple who were there as punters, just like us. It’s lucky I didn’t rugby tackle them to the ground to make a citizen’s arrest. Jen identified the murderer easily enough, reasoning that ‘it’s usually the wife’.
We only had time on the Saturday for a short pre-match walk, but we covered the section between Dumdoyne and Arlehaven in both directions. It was just six miles in total, but it’s enough to keep the progress of the trail ticking over and it’s good to spend a morning out in the countryside.
We passed a distillery that I may visit on a future trip but didn’t see much wildlife. I’d been hoping for deer but had to settle for a robin.
In the afternoon I drove to Ibrox. It’s a stadium that I’d last visited in the summer of ’85. On that occasion my friend Craig and I had travelled up to Edinburgh to see some lads that we had recently met on holiday in France. They were Hearts fans and we went with them to Glasgow to see their team get beat 3-1.
It looks as if there have been some renovations in the past forty years as the few memories that I have of the inside of the ground bear little semblance to what I could see from the lower section of the Broomloan Stand.
Tom and Harry had made the journey north too, but I missed them before the game. As they were in the upper tier I couldn’t meet up with them during the game either.
I was pleased to see Sol Brynn in goal for us. If he is going to be our first team keeper this season, he needs to establish himself as soon as possible. Possible departures Hayden Hackney and Rav van der Berg were missing, supposedly with minor injuries, or perhaps after a phone call from an agent.
The game was more physical than a lot of our players were used to and we struggled to ‘win’ free kicks by going to ground after minimal contact. I’m ok with that. Law McCabe adjusted quite quickly and seemed to relish the opportunity to get stuck in. I’m hoping that when Hackney does go, that he’ll get a decent run alongside Morris.
We went one up from a corner early on and added a second just after half-time. Rangers then made ten subs at once and with a much stronger team brought it back to two each. We were happy to take the draw by the end.
I finally caught up with Harry and Tom for a chat outside before heading back to Drymen with the intention of a further chunk of the West Highland Way the next day.
It’s fair to say that Hickton’s career to date has been disappointing. After a promising two-year-old debut where he ran on to finish fourth of eight in a five-furlong race at Redcar, he has not challenged for a place since. Despite trying him over a variety of distances and going, he is generally one of the last two horses to finish. We’ve tried most things to change his fortunes including switching trainers and lopping off his nuts.
I could sense a growing feeling in the syndicate that there might not be any improvement to be had and that if we wanted to grace the winners enclosure, then it may have to be with a different horse.
I drove down to Catterick by myself as I was travelling on to Bradford afterwards to watch the Boro. It was heavy rain all of the way down, which whilst not the best conditions for driving are great for a horse with as little pace as Hickton.
I arrived just in time to see the race before ours and it was clear that the ground was as suitable for him as it was ever going to be.
The plan was that Zak would drop him out at the start and then try and pick horses off in the second half of the race. That’s exactly what happened. He stayed last until the half-way mark and then gradually improved his position. He was still going strongly into the final furlong when others were fading and by the time he reached the finish line he had overhauled all but two of the horses. If there had been another hundred yards he might very well have won.
Everyone was very pleased with third, particularly those of us who had got 66/1 just before the off. It was great that Declan’s faith in him was vindicated, and we now have a better idea how to get the best out of the horse. It’s likely that he’ll stay an extra couple of furlongs, but the key to it is holding him up on ground no better than soft. I’ll be hoping that we’ll get plenty more rain in the next few weeks.
Hickton is a horse who needs soft ground and the lack of rain over the early part of the season has meant that he has only ran once this year. That was on the all-weather down at Southall, a month ago. It didn’t work out as he took a bump towards the end and faded from contention.
The heavy rain over the past few days made a return to the turf possible and he was entered in a nine-furlong handicap at Redcar. I thought I’d have a beer or two and so Jen and I took a taxi for the twenty-five-minute journey to the course.
We had an underwhelming buffet in the upstairs Owner’s Restaurant and just about broke even on the pre-Hickton races, courtesy of a single decent priced winner.
There was a fair bit of optimism among the syndicate due to the good to soft ground rating and trainer Declan’s positive assessment of his work on the gallops. Hickton had been backed in to as low as eighteens at one point but went off at twenty-eight to one, which is the price that I’d taken that morning.
The race didn’t go well. He ran strongly from the front again but faded inside the last couple of furlongs, slipping back to finish tenth of the twelve runners.
Zak, the jockey, reckoned that Hickton ran his race the wrong way around, expending far too much energy at the start and then leaving nothing in the tank for the finish. He has an entry for Catterick in three day’s time where the intention will be to drop him out in the back of the field and then let him come from behind to pick his rivals off late on. Let’s hope.
I had some university stuff going on in Colchester, so Jen and I stayed down there for three nights. I don’t really know much about the place other than the Romans rocked up there a while ago. Football-wise, they’ve got a team in the lower reaches of the Football League and I’ve a vague recollection that they once beat Leeds in the Cup. Probably not long after the Romans had gone home.
We stayed on a boat, which was enjoyable. It looked to be permanently moored, which meant that the shower and power worked better than the boat we’d stayed on recently in London. It was interesting to watch the ducks extracting whatever they dig for in the mud as the tides went out.
We went for a wander around a nature reserve, Fingringhoe Wick. Apparently, the name originates from the geography of the area and the protruding pieces of land rather than it being a place where Romans would engage with sex workers.
There were multiple bird hides, some of which were occupied by blokes with cameras big enough to photograph birds before they’d even migrated to the UK. I was hoping for some seals, but didn’t see any.
We’d been told that there were adders at the reserve, but we didn’t see any of them either. We did spot a deer but it quickly legged it. The highlight was probably two squirrels fighting. They grappled in trees until one fell out and the other would jump down to continue the punch up. All it needed for the full bar room brawl experience was for one of them to smash a chair over the other’s head.
Insects were easier to photograph and we got some snaps of butterflies and something that looked like a dragonfly.
On the Thursday evening I drove to the nearby Hawthorns ground, home of Stanway Rovers. They’ve just been promoted to the eighth-tier Isthmian League North. Their opponents were Walsham-le-Willows, a ninth-tier Sussex team that plays in the Premier Division of the Eastern Counties League.
I hadn’t really had much interest in pre-season friendlies in the past, but this year I’ve come to appreciate the way in which it helps gauge the respective strengths of leagues. Providing, of course, that teams take it seriously. So far, that seems to have been the case.
It was a fiver to get in and I wandered around to one of the three four-row shipping container stands on the far side. It looked as if more containers had been used to form the outer wall behind one of the goals and by retaining a section of the container roof it provided cover that was somewhere between a stand and a walkway. As long as the rain came down absolutely vertically, it would probably do its job.
Dog of the day was in the stand next to me. I overheard its owner explaining that it was a cross between a Jack Russell and an American Rat Terrier. Apparently rat terriers can be quite muscular, but this dog just looked like a taller Jack Russell. Ideal, I suppose, for catching rats that are a little above ground level.
The pitch was in poor condition for this time of year, although the lack of rain won’t have helped. It wasn’t level either, with a hump in the centre of the pitch and a corner with an incline up to the corner flag. It looked like something that a bloke with an excavator and a few tonnes of topsoil could have fixed within a week.
The game was tight early on, before Stanway scored two goals in the run up to half-time. The second one was a gem, with the striker flicking it over the advancing keeper’s head with a prolonged contact between ball and foot that would have graced a freestyling competition. I celebrated with a burger that had received extensive online praise, but in reality, was just a burger.
I’d been expecting the floodlights to come on at half-time, but we were an hour or so into the game before anyone turned them on. By that time, it was pretty dark, the sort of gloom that you’d happily play in as a kid, but in the knowledge that it was rapidly approaching ‘next goal the winner’ territory.
Both sides had their chances in what had been a competitive game but there was no further score until we reached the ninety-minute mark. Some slack marking from the visitors allowed Stanway to add a third from a tap in after the keeper had made a decent stop from the initial effort.
With just a month to go until most leagues commence, there are plenty of pre-season games to pick from. I’d initially identified a low-key fixture between Westmoreland League teams on the basis that they generally involve sitting in a camping chair in a field. That meant that Jen and Henry would have been able to come along. However, Henry wasn’t keen to get in the car and so I left them both in the garden instead. They were fine with that.
My delayed departure called for a change of plan to a closer ground. I’d been saving Knaresborough to combine it with a visit to somewhere like Mother Shipton’s Cave, but it was the best fit for that afternoon and we can always pop along to the cave on another occasion.
The Manse Lane ground is on the outskirts of the town. That’s just as well as Knaresborough is a busy place on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
Knaresborough Town are in the ninth-tier Premier Division of the Northern Counties East League. Opponents Blyth Town were promoted last season from the Northern League via the play-offs and will play in the eighth tier Northern Premier League Division One East this season.
It was six quid admission and the bloke on the gate also sold me raffle tickets for a meat draw. I’m not sure what the meat was, but there was a large lump of flesh in a small glass-fronted fridge. I think he assumed I’d travelled ninety-odd miles from Blyth as he told me that if I was worried about taking the meat home in the thirty-degree heat I was welcome to take twenty quid as an alternative prize.
The ground worked well at this level. There was a covered stand with five rows of seats along one side and a small raised covered standing area behind one of the goals. Blyth had brought some fans on a coach and one of them, a young lad, had taken up residence in the standing area with his flag and drum.
There was also a clubhouse with a bar and a raised beer garden outside. If anyone wanted to sit closer to the pitch there were a handful of picnic tables as well.
I watched the first half from the covered seated stand where the benefit of shade was cancelled out by the lack of a breeze. I shared the area with a couple of old blokes, a family with a baby that looked no more than a few weeks old and some lads out on the beer who soon left to get another pint each. The highlight though was a small dog inside of a handbag.
Both sides kept it tight for the first half-hour before Blyth scored twice in quick succession. They added a third on the stroke of half-time.
I wandered around to the food hut and bought a hot pork pie before watching the second half from different vantage points on the rail. Knaresborough pulled a goal back before a well-taken finish to a one on one with the keeper restored Blyth’s three goal advantage. That’s how it ended up.
The pre-season rounds of fixtures are well underway, and I’d picked a match just on the other side of the Tyne-Tunnel at Killingworth. Again, I’d not been up to very much before the game as the dog is still recovering from his ACL op, but he’s happy enough in the garden, particularly if I’ve got him a bone from Blackwell’s. Hopefully the surgery will fix his knee, but I can’t help but think about the former Boro player, Matty Bates, who snapped his cruciate ligament five times. No doubt from jumping up on the settee when he wasn’t supposed to.
Killingworth, of the 12th tier Northern Alliance Division One, were hosting Bedlington Terriers who were one step above them in the 11th tier Premier Division of the same league. Bedlington were demoted last year from the Northern League for failing to meet ground requirements. I was at a game at their Dr Pit Welfare ground a couple of years ago and it seemed ok to me, but I understand that it might have been the floodlights that were the issue.
There wasn’t anyone collecting gate money, so I wandered into the clubhouse and spent it on a very good bacon sandwich instead. There were a lot of people in there watching the Lionesses on the telly and many of them moved outside as kick-off approached to see some live football.
It would have been a good game to have brough Henry along to if he had been fit. There were a couple of staffies, three labs, a greyhound and a scottie dog. Highlight though, was a dog that had the shape and curly hair of a Bedlington Terrier, but was around three times the size. It was as if it had been crossed with a polar bear.
Bedlington struggled in the first half. It’s not surprising really as they had only managed to retain three of their Northern League team from last year. Their keeper kept them in the game but they went in at the break three one behind.
The visitors gelled a bit more in the second half and had the best of the chances. They pulled a goal back at the death, but Killingworth hung on for a three-two win.
I usually try and combine a game with doing something else, although sometimes for this blog I’ll cheat a bit and rattle on about something that I did a few days earlier. I’ve not been up to much at all though lately as the dog has just had a ruptured cruciate ligament repaired and so we’ve been pretty much stuck in the house whilst he recuperates.
So, the best I can mention is that I called into a garden centre on the way to the game at Selby and bought some plants. I don’t really pay much attention to what the plants are, other than trying to buy the ones that are attractive to bees. We have some living inside a wall in the back garden and lavender goes down well with them.
It was six quid to get in at Selby Town’s Fairfax Plant Hire Stadium. Once inside, I bought a strip of raffle tickets and had a go on a blind card despite not knowing what the prizes were. There weren’t any programmes, but there was a book on sale celebrating Selby Town’s centenary. I was briefly tempted to buy one but didn’t want to lug it around for the next two hours.
The ground dates back to the 1950s and had some covered seating behind one of the goals and two covered standing areas at the other end. Most people stood along the rail on the side with the dressing rooms. The dugouts were opposite.
There were four divisions between the teams with Selby in the tenth tier Division One of the Northern Counties East League and Scarborough up in the sixth tier National League North.
Selby were in red, with Scarborough in their recently released yellow and blue kit. It was so new that they hadn’t had time to add numbers to their shirts, which might well have caused difficulties if the ref wanted to book someone. There were also lots of the new Scarborough kits among the crowd. I’d estimate that maybe half of the 358 in attendance were supporting the visitors.
Whilst there’s usually a tenuous Boro connection if you look hard enough, this one didn’t need me to dig too deeply. Jonathan Greening, who was one of Steve McClaren’s first signings, is the Scarborough manager. The fans around me weren’t initially sure that he was there, speculating that he might be on holiday. I wandered around to the dugouts and recognised him despite him having moved on from his Jesus hairstyle to a buzz cut.
Ste Walker started up front for Scarborough. He played eleven times for the Boro as a kid, but at one point looked to have drifted away from the professional game. It’s good to see him making a living from football.
Most of the chances went Scarborough’s way but Selby defended well and it was goalless at the break. I joined a lengthy queue for a pie that was billed as steak and pepper. I could definitely taste the pepper, but didn’t notice any steak in there. Slurry and pepper might have been a better description.
Ste Walker was replaced at half-time along with five of his teammates. Refreshing the line-up worked for Scarborough and they went ahead just before the hour. That first goal gave them a bit more confidence and they rattled in another four without reply before the full-time whistle.
I’m sometimes unsure when a new season starts. The women’s Euros, for example, is that 2024-25 or 2025-26? Pre-season friendlies are a good indication though and as that’s how this game was designated it marked my change from last season to this.
In 2024-25 I got to fifty-three games. That’s relatively low for recent seasons, but I did spend a lot of the season in a remote region of Saudi Arabia. As I’m now working from home, with the odd trip to Sweden, I’ve got high expectations for the next twelve months and by the time the season concludes with the World Cup, I’ll be surprised if I haven’t seen at least a hundred games with maybe sixty new grounds.
This friendly was a home fixture for Percy Main Amateurs at their Purvis Park ground. Visitors North Shields are based just a mile away and so it was an easy trip for their fans. There’s a little more distance between the clubs league-wise, with the hosts playing in the eleventh tier Premier Division of the Northern Alliance League. North Shields are in the ninth-tier Northern League Division one.
It was an easy enough drive north and as I’d paid for a few journeys through the Tyne-Tunnel in advance I’d didn’t have the stress that comes from having to remember to go online before midnight the next day to pay the toll.
I think I most associate the area just beyond the tunnel with Wet ‘n Wild. It’s a mainly indoors water park that I took my kids to a few times in the late nineties. I don’t think that it had ever been cleaned or maintained since it opened and by the time my kids grew out of it you couldn’t swim five yards without encountering cracked tiles, fungus or discarded Elastoplasts. Anyone who pissed in the water was probably improving its quality. A quick check online revealed that it has since closed and been demolished.
It was three quid admission to Purvis Park. There had been some programmes available, but they sold out before I arrived. There was a decent crowd of 365 for the visit of North Shields and I think a lot of them were visiting fans looking to pay their respects to one of their players, Curtis Coppen, who had died ten days earlier. There was a minute’s applause for Curtis before kick-off.
Purvis Park is an odd little ground. There’s a covered stand with tables and chairs, plus a row of single chairs in front of the clubhouse. If you want to see the game though you need to find a spot on the rail that runs around three sides of the pitch. There’s no access to the end behind one of the goals, unless you are the fella given the job of retrieving the ball from the nettles after a wayward shot.
North Shields were much the better side and were three up after twenty-five minutes. I popped into the clubhouse at that point and joined the queue for some food. It’s as well I did as they were just about sold out. I was able to get the last bun for a chip butty. Anyone who chose to wait until half-time will have been limited to chocolate bars.
I hadn’t missed any goals and it remained three-nil at the break. There were plenty of subs in the second half, but they were well managed and didn’t detract from a competitive game. Whilst there were frequent chances, mainly for North Shields, there were no further goals and it finished three-nil to the visitors.
On a groundhopping note, it was my six hundredth ground. That’s a milestone that I’d been hoping to get to before my sixtieth birthday. As it was, I managed it in my sixtieth year, which is almost the same thing if you say it quickly. I’d like to think that I can get up to a thousand before I’m seventy.
Trail of the Lion King 