I’d done the Uni stuff that was of interest to me in Chelmsford and so skipped the final session of the day. That meant that I had time to call in at Barnston on the way home to see some action in the eleventh tier Essex and Suffolk Border League Premier Division. It’s a game that I very much doubt I’d have known about before the advent of the Futbology App.
It was free entry to the High Easter ground and I was able to get into the car park outside the clubhouse. There were around twenty people watching, most of them with a pint in their hand. I started off leaning against the perimeter fence along one side and gradually worked my way around the pitch. There weren’t any seated areas.
Barnston were in blue with Lawford Lads in white and light blue. The standard was well below the equivalent Wearside league with lots of fat lads stumbling around and falling over as if they’d had a pre-match pint or three. Despite, or maybe because of the lack of talent on show, there was plenty of stick dished out to teammates, opposition, and the ref alike. I don’t think I’d appreciate criticism from someone who struggled to run ten yards without tripping over his own feet.
For what it’s worth, Barnston took the lead in the first half and then added two more after the break for a three-nil victory.
For the past four years I’ve been doing some college stuff in Chelmsford and so usually head down there for some chit-chat every few months. Whilst I’ve still not managed to see Chelmsford City play, I usually try and tag a game onto the weekend either on the way down or when coming back.
On this occasion I targeted a Friday night FA Trophy Qualification game in Potters Bar, which although around an hour’s drive from Chelmsford, made it an easy journey the following morning for those ten o’clock starts that are the norm in the academic world.
The other attraction of that game was the opportunity to stay at the Comet Hotel in Hatfield. It’s somewhere that I’d last stayed back in 1981 after leaving home as a sixteen year old following a house party that resulted in all sorts of damage including a toilet bowl with a sheared off front section.
It’s all a long story, that if I got into, I’d be here all day. Anyway, those of you who were around in those days will know how it all panned out. Pun intended. Suffice to say, the nerd in me found the idea of revisiting the Comet Hotel forty-two years on an interesting prospect.
It was of less interest to the receptionist, whose eyes glazed over as she came to regret asking me if I’d stayed with them before. I cut the tale short there as well and headed for the match at the LA Construction Stadium.
I’d not had time to eat before leaving the hotel and so called into a chippy on the row of shops outside the ground. It was nearly twelve quid for fish and chips. How can that be? They were southern style as well, with the skin left on the fish. Dirty bastards. We should start selling jellied eels up our way and top them with breadcrumbs and bechamel sauce to see how they like that.
It was thirteen quid in for a game between sides in the seventh tier. Something which I should have been more outraged about than the fish and chips, but as Mogga would say, it is what it is. I took a seat in a three-row covered stand along one side. There was another one a little further along as well as three covered standing areas in other parts of the ground. I like it when grounds evolve like that, with an additional space to sit or stand appearing every few years, perhaps as ground improvement requirements after promotion.
Potters Bar Town had a lot of debutants, suggesting that either they weren’t prioritising the FA Trophy or perhaps they were suffering from an injury crisis. At this level it’s also possible that there had been a management change and the outgoing boss had taken his players with him like a pied piper. They were in a maroon kit with Berkhamsted in white and black, so imagine Hearts v Darlo.
The ref seemed familiar, but I soon concluded that was because he was a dead ringer for that posh army major who was rattling Lady Di back in the day.
It started badly for the home side when a Berkhamsted striker who was miles offside and ambling back towards his own half had the good fortune to be played onside by a Potters Bar defender who inexplicably headed the ball towards his keeper. The attacker swivelled and whacked it past the goalie who, on his debut, must have been wondering just what shitshow he had got himself into.
It turned out ok in the end though with Potters Bar taking control and running out four-one winners. I headed back to the Comet Hotel, where nothing except part of the building façade seemed to be as I remembered it. Maybe I’ll come back in another forty-two year’s time. I doubt it though.
After the wins against Southampton and Watford, I was hoping that we could continue the run against play-off placed Cardiff. Alistair was available to come along with Harry and I and we were there early enough for him to have a go on one of the game consoles in the Generation Red area of the ground where we sit.
I watched him for a while, playing Manchester United against Manchester United. It was the same players on either side and therefore a fairly well-matched contest. So much so that it ended up nil-nil. Thankfully he didn’t opt for a replay, and we were able to let some other kid have a crack at it.
There was a better outcome on the real pitch. After a quiet first half Cardiff had the chance to go ahead when hitting the woodwork, before Jones tapped in a cross from close range for us. We scored a second goal towards the end when Latte-Lath broke at pace, checked his run with a trip and then recovered to finish with the coolness of someone who hadn’t just fell over his own feet in front of twenty-odd thousand people.
That was enough to clinch the points and move us up from the edge of the relegation area to the dizzy heights of sixteenth place in the table.
Vicarage Road is one of two Championship grounds that I’d not yet been to and so when I found myself back in the UK it was an easy decision to head south for a couple of nights. I had thought about staying in London but as I’ve never knowingly been to Watford thought we might as well see what it had to offer.
There’s a busy town centre where we ate and drank in a Spanish bar on the Friday night. They served draught Estrella Galica which took me back to my Ferrol days, although I suspect that it’s probably now brewed in Tadcaster or somewhere.
London has its attractions though and on the Saturday morning we took a Metropolitan Line train into the city for the Paul McCartney photo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It was the final weekend before it moved on to the US.
It was worth a visit to see the two hundred and fifty or so photos that he taken around the world in 1963 and ’64. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing or hearing new Beatles stuff.
We were staying in the Watford Travelodge and so it was only a fifteen minute or so walk to Vicarage Road. I was able to just follow the crowd through the backstreets to the ground. I was hoping that we might have turned the corner after our poor early season form, with wins in the League Cup against Bradford and over recently relegated Southampton in the League.
It was an end-to-end game that could have gone either way. Riley McGree scored twice for us in the opening twelve minutes, before Watford quickly pulled one back. When Watford levelled in the second half my expectations of taking anything from the game were minimal. I was wrong though, with Josh Coburn beating their keeper in a one-on-one and then the bar coming to our rescue in added time.
The win lifted us out of the relegation area on goal difference and Jen and I celebrated in a Romanian restaurant. It was decorated in a way that our house may end up one day if we don’t tone down impulse eBay purchases. I think we might have been the only non-Romanians in there but from what I can remember of the rest of the evening it was as enjoyable as the match had been.
It’s easy to lose track of the Durham teams. I’ve seen Durham City getting mauled a few times in the last couple of years as they dropped down the leagues, but I think that it’s the first time I’d seen either of these sides.
From what I gather, United are the Durham University team whilst Corinthians have been around for five years or so and in that time have managed to merge with another recently formed Durham side.
The game was at Maiden Castle, which has pitches for cricket and hockey as well as football. Newcastle used to train there in the Keegan era and Durham Women currently play their home fixtures on the main pitch.
I was there for an eleventh-tier Wearside League Premier Division fixture, along with about forty other people. A lot of them seemed to be students and either fringe players or friends of the university team. They all had that ‘posh boy’ haircut where it’s a little messy and has never been touched by clippers.
I watched the opening stages from the main stand until the constant yapping from those around me drove me away. In the absence of any catering facilities, they were sorting out a delivery of food from MacDonalds, a task that seemed far more complicated than it needed to be. Just have your fucking tea before you go out or when you get home.
It took a while for the game to come to life with the students eventually taking the lead with a shot from distance with twenty minutes to go. In added time it looked as though Corinthians had snatched a point with a long range shot of their own, but United went straight down the other end, regained the lead and clinched the victory.
As I had a bit of spare time Jen and I decided to have a few days in Italy. We picked the small seaside town of Lido di Jesolo, which is just outside of Venice. It was great, just as you’d expect an Italian coastal resort to be as the summer season draws to an end. It wasn’t a completely random choice though as we were in town to see Paul Weller at the Palazzo del Turismo.
It’s a year since we saw him play a couple of venues in the UK and so we were overdue a catch-up. As anticipated, the show went well in a smallish all-seater venue. We were close to the front of the banked seating and within handy striking distance of a well-managed bar. It all went very well and we got to hear an as-yet unreleased song from what promises to be a new album for 2024. I liked Fat Pop better than anything else he’s done for the past couple of decades and if the new one is anywhere near as good, I’ll be very pleased.
I’d checked for nearby games and whilst there was an option to see second-tier Venezia in an old stadium that I’d like to visit someday, I was less keen to put up with the city crowds and the transport arse on for a late evening kick-off. In the end I settled on a fixture at Mestre, a suburb on the outskirts that appeared to serve mainly as a car park for those visiting the sights on the lagoon.
The match was at the Stadio Francesco Baracca in the fourth-tier Serie D. Mestre were taking on Montecchio Maggiore.
It was a fifteen-minute walk from where I’d parked up and whilst there wasn’t a steady steam of fans heading towards the ground, there were enough people who looked like they were going to the football to give me confidence that there was likely to be a game taking place.
My first attempt to find the entrance took me to around the heavily graffitied stadium to a point where I could only head away from the stands. I doubled back and tried the other way, eventually arriving at a gate where there were a handful of fellas, mainly dressed in black, drinking from cans and greeting others as they turned up.
I spotted a small kiosk that presumably sold tickets and as I made my way towards it, an old bloke intercepted me and offered the use of a spare season card that he had with him. He very generously refused to take any money.
Once inside I had the choice of joining the black-shirted fans behind the goal or a more sedate and shaded experience in the main covered stand. I opted for the latter. The ground is a hundred years old and prior to that served as a horseracing track. It would have been a tight circuit, unless some of the nearby buildings now cover some of the old route.
One feature that I wasn’t too keen on was the enormous fence between the fans and the pitch. I can appreciate that in Italy there’s a tendency to lob everything from coins to scooters at the opposition players and fans, but come on, this is fourth tier seating for old blokes.
Not a lot happened in the first half, with the highlight being some song that utilised the ‘Yellow Submarine’ tune. I find it amazing how many football songs, worldwide, are derived from English pop songs of the sixties.
We had to wait until seven minutes from time for Mestre to break the deadlock. A scrappy goal created enough elation for all the home subs to dash across the pitch and join the pile on. Four minutes later, and with the visitors pushing forward, a second goal on the break clinched the points for Mestre.
I’d bought tickets for the Nations League game between England and Scotland women’s teams a couple of months earlier, despite thinking that it would be unlikely that I’d be able to get along to the Stadium of Light. They were cheap enough to take a chance on though at a tenner for me and a fiver for Harry and I’d hoped that if I had been still working away then someone else might be able to take him.
As it happened, I was free to go. All I needed to do was to work out where we could park. My initial plan had been to leave the car in Pallion and take a forty-five minute nostalgic walk from my Nanna’s old house. I had an early morning flight the next morning though and as I didn’t want to be getting home around midnight, I thought I’d better look for something closer.
To cut an already dull story short, the car park I’d earmarked was full. We had to double back in heavy traffic to find some street parking and with some pretty pacey walking took our seats seconds before kick-off.
The game had been trailed as a sell-out but there were quite a few empty seats, perhaps those people who were still working away or couldn’t find anywhere at all to park. As ever at the England women games it was a decent atmosphere. By decent I mean friendly with plenty of families present rather than the toxic atmosphere that you’d get at an England v Scotland men’s clash.
It wasn’t a vintage England performance with all the goals coming in an eight-minute spell just before half-time. England had looked the most likely to score and once the first one had gone in, they quickly added a second.
Scotland finished the half on a high though and pulled one back in added time. It might have all gone wrong in the second half as Scotland hit the bar and Mary Earps made some decent saves but England hung on for the points.
This game was in the eleventh-tier Wearside League Premier Division and a short drive up from Teesside. After parking up, I struggled to find the entrance after walking the wrong way around the ground and then had to double back between some garages before eventually spotting the gates.
There was a plaque outside the ground commemorating former Sunderland player Bobby Gurney, whom I’d never heard of, despite him being Sunderland’s record goal scorer.
A bloke just inside the entrance took my three quid entrance money for his bucket. There were limited refreshments available, but I was able to get a coffee and their last packet of crisps. The fella who sold them to me bemoaned the lack of stock and reckoned that every time he returned from holiday it was always the same story.
There was a crowd or around forty or so, which I thought decent considering that Man Utd v Bayern Munich was on the telly.
It was fairly tight in the first half, but with lots of niggly fouls. The Silksworth left back was giving the ref plenty of stick, but in return received coaching from the elderly lino. As the defender got tight on his man the lino would urge “don’t foul, don’t foul” and then reward him with a “good lad” whenever the gobby left-back refrained from lunging in.
Midway through the second half, the ref decided that there had to be a limit to the criticism he was getting and sinbinned a visiting midfielder for suggesting to him that the Silksworth player writhing around on the floor “has had your pants down”.
By this time Silksworth had equalised Bishop Auckland’s first half opener and they took advantage of the momentum to add two more for a three-one victory.
After catching a few minutes of a fifteenth-tier game on the field outside I made my way into the Riverside Sports Complex. There was a T20 game going on next door in Durham’s cricket ground, but with a fairly steady light rain it didn’t seem to have attracted many spectators.
It was a fiver to get in and, somewhat unusually these days, I was given a paper ticket. The bloke on the door asked me if I’d been before and when I replied that I hadn’t he directed me upstairs to a lounge where I was able to get a coffee. The fella before me in the queue managed to carry a pint in one hand with a wriggling toddler in the other. Never an easy task.
The fixture was in the second division of the Northern League and featured Chester-Le-Street United, in a gold and black kit against Billingham Town who were playing in blue with a white band.
The home side were only founded in 2020. Billingham Town are a lot longer established and are probably best known for having transferred Gary Pallister to the Boro in exchange for a pork pie and a Strawberry Cornetto.
I watched the first half from the balcony outside of the lounge. This provided an elevated view across the running track. If I’d wanted to be a bit closer, then there was the option of a small, covered stand behind the goal to my left.
I overheard someone mention that one of the home centre-halves was former Hartlepool player Michael Nelson. I looked him up and he’d played as high as the Championship with Norwich and Scunthorpe as well as winning the Scottish League Cup with Kilmarnock. He was also forty-three, which impressed me no end.
It was scrappy early on with neither side having a shot on target in the opening half-hour. Billingham Town went ahead shortly before half-time with a penalty that the fella just drove straight down the middle of the goal.
That was my cue to head inside for steak pie, chips and gravy and then go downstairs to watch the rest of the game from pitch-side.
It was steady-away for most of the second half until a floaty cross eluded the visiting keeper and was nodded home with twenty minutes to go to level the scores. Chester-Le-Street may as well not have bothered though as Town went straight down the other end to restore their lead. They added another on the break ten minutes from time before a consolation from the home side with the last kick of the game concluded matters for a three-two away win.
I hadn’t expected to be back in the UK so quickly, but visa issues meant that it’s likely that my time in Saudi Arabia is done, at least for the time being. For what it’s worth I found the Saudi people to be incredibly friendly and the country to be modernising at pace. From a groundhopping point of view, I got to tick off ten of their grounds that I’d not ever expected to and across different divisions. Whilst the standard of football is patchy at the moment the fans are passionate about the game and with the world’s playing talent following the money it can only get better.
Prior to heading up to Chester-le-Street, Isla and I called into a couple of stables as part of the National Horse Racing Week. One of them was very well-organised with activities. At the other one, it transpired that the open day was actually six days earlier. Nevertheless, the trainer’s mother very kindly gave us a private tour.
The game that I’d earmarked for the afternoon was at the Riverside Sports Complex at Chester-le-Street. It’s right next to Durham’s cricket ground. I parked up and after what seemed like an eternity downloading the parking app and entering all of my details I wandered towards the entrance.
To my right I spotted some football action on one of four grass pitches and in the hope of adding a bonus tick to my list of grounds made my way over.
It turns out that there was a game going on. I had to speak to two different fellas to find out the teams, with each of them only knowing their own team and not their opponents. Nevertheless, we got there in the end and I established that Waldridge Park, in blue, were taking on Newbiggin Reserves, who were wearing a white kit.
A bit of further research revealed that the fixture was in the fifteenth-tier North East Combination League Premier Division, which sits just below the bottom rung of the better-known Northern Alliance League. I love the idea that organised Saturday afternoon football exists to this extent and beyond.
There were about twenty-five minutes remaining when I rocked up and the visitors were leading eight-one. I stayed long enough to see one of the Newbiggin players send a free-kick from just outside the box into orbit, but when you are seven goals to the good nobody is going to criticise you for that.
I left them after a few minutes to head to the game I’d originally intended to go to but was able to keep an eye on the remaining tier-fifteen proceedings from the main stand. Newbiggin added two more goals for a ten-one rout.
Trail of the Lion King 