Inter Sevilla v AD Ceuta B, Wednesday 30th April 2025, 5pm

May 5, 2025

After staying in Ronda, Jen and I moved on to Seville. I’m familiar with the layout after visiting last year and we stayed on the old town side of the river. It’s a busy time of the year in Seville as it leads up to the Feria. The festivities don’t seem to slack off from the Easter celebrations and, if any excuse were needed, bring people out onto the streets for strolling, eating and drinking.

One of the things that Soph’s beagle Henry does is remember where he once found food on the pavement. He’ll always try to return to that spot confident that if there were food there once, then there’s likely to be food there again. I was a bit like that in Seville. Last year I saw a poster for a record fair and ended up going and buying a load of Spanish vinyl. This year, I couldn’t walk past a lamp post without checking for a record fair poster. At least I didn’t cock my leg.

I also thought about the dog when I saw a whole skinned rabbit in the supermarket. It still had its ears on. One of the treats that we give Henry are dried rabbit ears. I’d never wondered what they tasted like until I realised that I had the chance to find out. Sadly, we were in a hotel room, rather than an apartment, so if I’d wanted to sample a rabbit ear it would have had to have been raw. I can wait.

My first game in Seville was at the Complejo Deportivo Demitrio Pichel which was an hour and forty minute’s walk to the outskirts of the city. I could have driven but having secured a spot in the underground hotel car park, I was loathe to risk losing it. The weather wasn’t too good though and I had to nip into a convenience store to buy an umbrella.

The route took me away from touristy Seville and into areas that won’t ever feature on the city bus tours. I made good time and arrived at the ground with twenty minutes to go to kick off. It was still raining and the uncovered plastic bench seats along the side of the pitch had puddles in then. I had a couple of paper napkins, but a woman who arrived after me resorted to reviewing the receipts in her purse and using the ones she could risk disposing of to dry her seat.

The game was in the fifth-tier Tercera division with Inter Sevilla taking on Ceuta’s B team. The home side were rock bottom of the table and already relegated whilst the visitors, who are based in a Spanish territory at the tip of Morocco, were safely in mid-table. They are a B team, so perhaps promotion isn’t necessarily overly important to them.

Ceuta looked the more professional outfit, particularly in respect of their kit, which was just as you would have expected it to be. Inter’s green shirts were less consistent, with some of them having names and numbers, whilst others had numbers only. There wasn’t even any uniformity between the fonts used for the names, suggesting that players had taken their kit home and got their Mams to customise them.

The highpoint of the first half was the rain easing up after twenty minutes, although a train going past on an adjacent line ran it close. Many people turned away from the lack of action to keep an eye on the high scoring game behind us between six year olds.

Ceuta took the lead from the penalty spot soon after the restart and then added a second on the hour with a cracking half-volley from an acute angle.

Inter got back into it soon afterwards with a goal that went in off the underside of the bar. That always makes a finish look spectacular. It was all in vain though as two away goals in the last ten minutes sealed the win for the visitors. They got on their bus back to Africa and with my umbrella furled I retraced my steps into the city centre.

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CD Campillos v CD Cartama, Sunday 27th April 2025, 11.30am

May 4, 2025

Once I’d discovered the fixture list for the Andalusian First Division, it was an easy task to check out Sunday’s fixtures and select a morning game, three-quarters of an hour’s drive up the road at Campillos. It’s a small quiet town and I doubt that it gets many visitors other than a handful of travelling fans supporting away teams.

After wandering around for a while we called into a café for some coffee and carrot cake and then made our way towards the Campo De Futbol Andres Padilla. There are two stadiums, back-to-back, and our game was on the one with the artificial pitch. A few people were congregated outside the ticket window and we joined them to pay our five-euro admission.

The seventh tier is coming to a conclusion, and this was the penultimate game for each club. Hosts Campillos went into the game a point above the relegation zone, whilst visitors Cartama were in third place and looking to preserve their position in the play-offs. Perhaps the importance of the result contributed to the turnout. I’d have estimated that there were probably around two hundred or so spectators, including a few near us from Cartama.

It didn’t start well for Campillos. They were a goal down inside two minutes, with a second coming after a quarter of an hour. They took it badly and spent much of the first half berating the officials. By the time Cartama added a third just before half-time, the home fans, players and bench had worked themselves into a fury over every perceived injustice. It took the ref a good three or four minutes to reach the dressing room as every man and his perro wanted a word with him and his assistants.

The match became a lot more interesting when Campillos pulled a goal back soon after the restart. They should really have reduced the deficit further, but they missed a couple of easy chances. Cartama went from coasting to timewasting with players dropping to the floor for treatment at every opportunity.

With thirteen minutes remaining, Cartama broke free, and their striker resisted the urge to throw himself to the floor or take the ball to the corner. Instead, he finished well to put his side four one up. At that stage some of the home fans made their way to the exit.

They really should have stayed as Campillos responded with two goals in a minute to get within a goal of their opponents and then spent the remaining fifteen minutes (including added time) pressing for a equaliser. Cartama’s keeper went to ground every time he caught the ball and they regularly delayed goal kicks by a player lining up to take it before trotting away to allow someone else to welly it upfield. I’d have issued far more cards than the ref actually did.

The timewasting worked and the visitors held on to retain their third position in the table. Campillos slipped into the bottom four with just the one game remaining to avoid the drop.

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CD Ronda v Atletico Benamiel CD, Saturday 26th April 2025, 6.15pm

May 3, 2025

Ronda is a pleasant place to stay. It’s busy with busloads of tourists coming in each day from Malaga, but if you can avoid getting caught up in the middle of thirty Germans all following a lady holding a flag on a stick, it’s fine for a stroll about.

Fine that is until the power all goes off. At the time, we’d assumed that it was a local issue, probably caused by high winds. Eight hours later when the first brief restoration of the phone signal occurred, we learned that it was an international issue covering all of Spain and Portugal, plus a bit of France.

I think we take connectivity for granted these days, but twenty hours without electricity where all you could buy was whatever a darkened corner shop might sell you for cash and a complete lack of online updates or even the ability to make an old school telephone call, soon gave an insight into how quickly society might break down if a power outage went on for a few days.

We had limited food in the dead fridge and forty euros in my wallet. I’d let the car get low in fuel though and there wouldn’t have been enough in the tank to get us to our next destination of Seville if we’d been travelling that day. Whilst I’m not going to turn into one of those ‘prepper’ folks, I’m mindful of the possibility of a repeat occurrence and will try to be better prepared. Or at least until it’s all forgotten.

The game that we went to in Ronda, was a couple of days before the outage. It was only a twenty-five-minute walk from where we were staying and so Jen and I didn’t need to use the car. That’s a real benefit when street parking is at a premium and you’ve bagged a handy spot.

The game was Ronda’s final home game of the season, and they were hoping for a big crowd. A van with loudspeakers had been driving around town all morning, advertising free admission. A few hundred people turned up, but I’ve no idea how many spectators usually attend. Some of them looked unfamiliar with their surroundings and what they should be doing, so maybe the marketing worked.

It was a critical game for Ronda, who were sat in the fourth and final play-off spot of the seventh-tier Andalusian First Division. Atletico Benemiel had nothing to play for, sitting in the middle of that eight team section in the table, sandwiched between the four play-off spots and the four relegation positions.

Ronda went a goal up midway through the first half, before Benamiel equalised ten minutes later. It seemed to matter more to the visitors, who picked up multiple bookings and had a fella sent off for instigating a hullabaloo just before the final whistle. For the record, a hullabaloo ranks higher than argy-bargy, which itself is a step up from hand-bags.

The home players slumped to the floor at the end, with the two dropped points meaning that with just one game remaining, their play-off ambitions were no longer in their own hands. Pretty much as I imagined that the Boro players might have done after their similar home draw with Norwich earlier that afternoon. Still, we go again, as the coaches say, and for both Ronda and Boro, there’s hope that it might all work out fine in their respective final fixtures.

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UD Ronda B v CD Athletic Coin B, Saturday 26th April 2025, 10am

May 2, 2025

Jen had a conference to attend in Seville and as I can work from anywhere that I fancy, we decided to have a couple of weeks in Spain. We started off in Ronda, which is a picturesque town above a valley. On the Saturday morning, we took a walk down the hill with the intention of being able to view the town from below. It didn’t quite work as we ended up on the side of town without the spectacular cliffs, but I suppose it meant that we saw some views that don’t make it on to the postcards.

Something that we did see though was a horse exercising. A bloke had taken it from a stable and walked it to a nearby field. He let it off and it galloped around on the grass by itself whilst he smoked a fag and scrolled through his phone. If the horse ever learns the way to the field by itself then I suspect that the fella may well be out of a job.

Our hike didn’t really work out well as we realised we had taken a path that led only to someone’s front door. On retracing our steps, we learned that we were now on the other side of Ronda, close to the supermarket that we’d called into on arrival. Jen pointed out some floodlights nearby and since we were unlikely to ever reach the cliffs that we’d intended to, we revised our route and headed for what I’d hoped to be a stadium.

As we got close I heard a few shouts and the sound of a whistle. Result. There’s nothing like stumbling across a bonus game. My pleasure dimmed a little when I realised that it was actually the New Sports City stadium which is where we intended to watch a seventh-tier game that evening.

We saw some of the action from the woods outside and realised that it was a youth game. Some digging around online revealed that it was an under fifteen fixture. These are termed Cadete B games in Spain with Cadete A being the next age group up, under sixteen.

One of the Ronda clubs, UD, were taking on Athletic Coin in a regional game. It was three euros to get in, which seemed steep to me for a kids fixture. Most of the crowd were parents and younger kids, who were there for their own games and training sessions, straight after the current match.

Our arrival was at around the hour mark and the score was level at one each at that point. We saw a couple of away goals from Coin as they took the points. It’s always nice to have a sit down for half an hour on a hike and when you can spend that time watching football even better. Stumbling across a bonus game also meant that we’d have no difficulty in finding the stadium when we returned that evening for the senior fixture.

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Gosforth Bohemians v West Moor and Jesmond, Wednesday 23rd April 2025, 6.30pm

May 1, 2025

I like to include something other than the match itself in these posts. Mainly to convince both of my readers that I’m leading a wildly interesting life, but also because there’s no real reason why anyone would have much of an interest in outdated football reports from lower-league games. And rightly so.

However, Jen and I had only returned from Sheffield the day before this game and had done little other than drink in the back garden. Best I can do then is add a picture of Soph’s dogs who had spent the night at our place.

This particular outdated report is from the eleventh tier Northern Alliance League, albeit their Premier Division. I selected it because we had a dawn flight from Newcastle Airport the next morning and Gosforth’s Benson Park ground was only a ten-minute drive from our airport hotel. The Northern Alliance is a feeder league to the Northern League, but neither Gosforth Bohemians or West Moor and Jesmond are challenging for promotion. Neither are threatened by relegation either, so there wasn’t much that either side had to play for.

Gosforth is quite posh. The houses around the ground all had nice gardens and the only noise from nearby was the sound of tennis balls being hit back and forward at the club behind one of the goals. I’m not sure about West Moor, but, despite never having knowingly been there, I’ve always considered Jesmond to be posh too.

Gosforth were in red and white hooped tops. It seemed more like a rugby shirt than a football kit. West Moor and Jesmond were in blue.

Despite it being free to get in, there were only about ten spectators, including Jen and I. I’m not even sure that all of them were there for the game. I think a woman who was sat at a picnic table may have been waiting for someone to finish their tennis session whilst the bloke with the black spaniel looked as if he regularly walked his dog around the edge of the field whether there was a match taking place or not.

The fixture had an end of season air to it with nothing much happening for the first half-hour. The visitors took the lead at that stage with an outside of the foot sliced finish which, if it were intended, was very impressive indeed. The opener spurred West Moor on and they added a second before the break with what was also a decent finish.

Play was a lot more expansive after the restart, or perhaps it was just that everyone simply got tired of defending. Either way, the goals flowed, and we finished up in rapidly fading light with a five-two away win.

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Sheffield Wednesday v Middlesbrough, Monday 21st April 2025, 3pm

April 30, 2025

Three wins. After the victory in add-time over Plymouth on Good Friday, a play-off spot was still within our own hands. All we had to do was win our final three fixtures, starting with a Hillsborough trip. Sheff Wed had lost five home games on the trot going into the game and so an away win seemed feasible.

Jen and I were staying over in Sheffield for a couple of nights in a hotel that was just a fifteen-minute walk from the ground. I’d been to see a lower-league cup final in Mexborough in the morning and as it was all done and dusted within ninety minutes, I was back in the hotel with plenty of time to walk to Hillsborough.

The Boro were unchanged, although we’d added another centre-half to the bench with Lenihan joining Fry and Edmundson. I doubt that he was fully fit, but Carrick has a habit of including injured players to keep them involved.

We started well with Azaz finishing off a neat passing move after ten minutes and then Hackney winning a pen midway through the half. After Conway’s injury time spot-kick winner against Plymouth I had high hopes of him putting us two up. Unfortunately, the keeper guessed correctly on this occasion and kept Wednesday in the game.

We struggled in the second half, and it was no surprise when Wednesday equalised. Carrick tried a short-term reshuffle, moving Howson into midfield and pushing Hackney up into the ten role. That didn’t achieve anything and with a minute to go a failure to clear a cross enabled Sheff Wed to score a deserved winner. Conway had a chance in added time to snatch a point but hit the bar from close range.

It was another poor performance on a day when play-off rivals Bristol City and Coventry both lost. Ironically those results meant that we were in no worse a position than we had been when we kicked off. With two games remaining, two wins will be sufficient to reach the play-offs. Two wins. Surely that can’t be beyond us?

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AFP Pewter Pot v Westville, Monday 21st April 2025, 11am

April 29, 2025

My initial intention hadn’t been to go to the Boro’s away fixture at Sheffield Wednesday. However, I saw that a cup final was taking place in Mexborough, just half an hour’s drive from Hillsborough on the morning of the Boro’s game. A meaningful game at a venue with an interesting history was enough to tip the balance, and so we headed down to Sheffield for a couple of nights.

Jan and I broke the journey by stopping at Wharncliffe Woods, just north of Sheffield. We picked walking trails at random, although with a loose intention of making our way to a reservoir that we’d seen on a signboard in the car park. We didn’t manage to find it but spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering around. There wasn’t much in the way of wildlife, just some butterflies and a tethered Shetland pony.

The next morning, I drove past Hillsborough and on to Mexborough, where I parked on a side street close to the Fireparts Ground at Hampden Road. The game was the final of the Montague Cup, a competition that had been in existence since the 1896-97 season and is held to be the oldest football final still played at its original venue. It traditionally takes place on an Easter Monday.

This year’s final was between AFP Pewter Pot of the Mexborough Sunday League and Westville, a Sunday League side from Rotherham.

I paid my three quid admission and was given a free programme. The ground had a covered stand along one side, with terracing along the remainder of that side and at both ends. The side opposite the main stand was open as the pitch adjoined a cricket field.

In the corner was an old pavilion which I suspected dated from at least the time of the first Montague Cup final.

As I’d arrived well before kick-off, I was able to take a seat in the main stand. There was rain in the air, and I was keen to stay dry. The previous couple of years had seen crowds of around sixteen to eighteen hundred, but the lack of Bank Holiday sunshine meant that only thirteen hundred or so spectators turned up for this one. Even so, that must be a thrill for lads who normally play in front of between twenty and thirty people.

There was a mix of families, young lads on the beer, old blokes and weirdos like me. People were still making their way in late in the first half, possibly having found that all the parking had been taken in the surrounding streets.

Westville were the better side and went a goal up ten minutes before the break. The looked to have sealed it with a second twenty minutes from time. There was late drama though when Pewter Pot scored with a minute remaining. They piled on the pressure and thought that they had equalised in added time, only to be thwarted by the lino’s flag.

There was some argy-bargy at full-time and as I had a game to watch at Hillsborough I left them to it and cleared off before Westville lifted the cup.

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Murton Colliery v Seaham Island Social Club, Sunday 20th April 2025, 10.30am

April 27, 2025

With the Boro’s Easter fixtures taking place on Good Friday and Easter Monday, I’d normally have filled the Saturday gap with a lower-league fixture. However, Saturday was also the date for Stockton Calling and so we went to that instead.

As ever, it was worth the visit and it’s always good to discover new bands. Highlights this year were Sister Madds from Glasgow and a Liverpool band, Casino. No doubt we’ll be going along to see them again playing their own shows.

As I hadn’t been to a Saturday game, I nipped up the A19 on Sunday morning to the Murton Welfare ground for a fixture in the Premier Division of the Peterlee and District Sunday League. Murton Colliery were taking on Seaham Island Social Club in a clash between second v third in the table.

Murton Welfare is only twenty minutes or so up the A19. I’d turned up there a couple of years ago for a game only to find out that it had been postponed. It’s got a covered stand with benches in, a raised standing area and a toilet. All very impressive features at Sunday League level.

There were maybe thirty or so spectators and a few dogs including a pair of shih tzus and two sausage dogs. I passed three lads behind one of the goals who were taking the piss out of their absent mate, who apparently spends a fortune on fake tan but rarely brushes his teeth.

As I stood behind the benches, I noticed a sub who couldn’t have been far short of my age. I was hoping to see how he performed but unfortunately, he didn’t get a run out.

Seaham went a goal up early on and then added a second ten minutes before half time. I must have smiled or something when the second went in as a fella inquired as to whether I was an away fan. Perhaps an unfamiliar face is noteworthy in Murton.

The first half was pretty much one-way traffic, and the visitors could easily have been five or six up by the break. The second half was more evenly contested. Murton pulled one back on the hour and then the sides traded goals for an eventual four-two away win.

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Middlesbrough v Plymouth, Friday 18th April 2025, 3pm

April 26, 2025

Four wins needed. After the defeat at Millwall, we pretty much had to win our final four fixtures if we were to make the play-offs. I’d come out of the New Den accepting that we weren’t capable of doing that, but getting on for a week later, some of my usual positivity was returning. We’ve won four games on the trot before, so why not again?

It has been a good week for doing stuff. Jen and I had been to a talk about murder given by a retired detective, and we’d seen John Bramwell in a pub in Durham. It was our third Bramwell gig in the past three weeks and we’ve at least two more scheduled for later in the year.

On paper, you’d think a home fixture against bottom of the table opposition should be a near-certain three points, but it’s a tight league this season and Plymouth could easily stay up with two or three wins from their final four games. Despite centre-backs Fry and Edmundson being fit enough for the bench, Howson kept his place at the heart of the defence, whilst Forss got the nod over Burgzorg on the right of the three behind Conway.

Boro controlled the game with three-quarters of the possession and made three passes for every one that Plymouth completed. We took the lead when Azaz tapped home a Conway dink over the keeper that came back out off the inside of the post. Plymouth were level within minutes after another instance of playing out from the back going wrong and if Travers hadn’t pulled off a couple of good saves we’d have gone in behind at the break.

We didn’t really look like scoring in the second half, but Plymouth’s timewasting led to eight minutes of added time and as we entered the final stages a light touch on Conway’s back earned us a penalty. He took it himself and picked the right side to roll it home. A lot of the Boro fans had already left by that point, but Harry and I celebrated, not really believing our luck and reflecting upon how moments like that make it all worthwhile. Three wins needed.

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Oxford v Cambridge, Sunday 13th April 2025, 2.30pm

April 16, 2025

There were a few options for a football game today, but none of the fixtures or grounds were particularly appealing, so Jen and I went for a walk along the Thames instead. We’d picked an idea day for it as the Boat Race was taking place.

I’ve not really got much of an interest in rowing, despite having what I’d consider to be the ideal body shape of short legs and a long torso. I’m not sure I’d appreciate having callouses on my hands though. I dated a girl from Carlton when I was twenty who rowed for a club on the Tees, and it was like being tossed off by a scaffolder. Or so I imagine. Albeit rarely.

The four-mile course runs from Putney to Mortlake and so we took a tube to Richmond, with the plan of walking six miles along the Thames Path before reaching the race route in time to walk the course whilst watching the action and take the total distance up to around ten miles.

The early part of the walk took us around the edge of Kew Gardens on the southside towpath. Unfortunately, there had been some subsidence, and we had to cross the river and follow a detour that took us down Brentford High Street. There were some interesting sections where boats were either moored, being repaired or simply rotting away, but I think that it’s probably one of the less scenic parts of the Thames path.

We reached the Chiswick Bridge finish line around half an hour before the first of the afternoon’s races began. Whilst we’d hardly seen anyone else on the previous six miles, both banks of the river were getting busy. We stopped for what was billed as ‘German Sausage’ but was really just a hot dog. The pubs along the route were packed, but there were also plenty of quiet areas where people had brought a picnic and were able to sit quietly with nobody within fifty yards either side.

I got talking to a bloke who was supporting Oxford. I’m not really sure why he felt the need for an allegiance, as it strikes me as the sort of event that you can just let drift over you without the need for any tension. Maybe he liked a bet.

As we walked towards Putney, the boats went past at twenty-minute intervals. First was the women’s race then each of the reserve crews and finally the men’s boats. Each time Cambridge were well clear of their rivals, spoiling the day of their Chiswick Bridge supporter.

We finished the evening off with a Withered Hand gig upstairs in a pub. It went well, with plenty of early stuff and only the best tracks from the second and third albums. His new songs were well-received as was the support act, Darren Hayman. All in all, a good day.

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