This was a game between old and new. Ossett United were formed in 2018 as a merger between Ossett Town and Ossett Albion whilst Sheffield is the world’s oldest football club and dates back to 1857. Apparently, it was just a weekly kickabout amongst themselves as married v singles until nearby Hallam got their act together to provide some opposition. I like that they are just Sheffield with no need for a suffix such as United or Wednesday. Just Sheffield, the Sheffield Football Club.
I parked a few yards away from Ossett’s Ingfield stadium in front of some shops. It was nine pounds, fifty to get in with another couple of quid for the raffle and then a fiver for a coffee and a decent pork pie.
There weren’t any programmes, either paper or digital, despite there being a programme shop that now owed its existence to the backlog of unsold old stock that they had. I suspect that it gets regularly topped up as people clear their lofts. It’s a shame in some ways that programmes seem to be disappearing, but time moves on, and I doubt that there’s much content that isn’t readily available online. There were some team sheets available for a donation and so I took one of them even though I could have looked on Twitter for the team news.
I sat down in the main covered stand behind one of the goals to eat my pie and watch the keeper warm up. The goalie coach seemed to think that it was shooting practice for his own benefit and blasted most of his efforts into the corners where the keeper couldn’t get anywhere near them. They’d have been better off staying in the dressing room.
The ground is a lot older than its current tenants and there were smaller covered standing areas to my left and at the opposite end, with some open terracing in front of the clubhouse on my right.
There was a decent turnout, which was eventually announced as 326. Quite a few of the lads who were wearing Santa hats and stood in front of the club house looked as if they had been on the drink all day. With the fixture taking place on Black Eye Friday, it’s fairly likely that they will have been.
There was plenty of singing, although the most effort went into joining in with the pre-match and half-time music. Unsurprisingly, Fairytale of New York was popular. I suppose a sentimental song is always going to be blasted out when the singer has just died, and you’ve been downing Jaeger bombs since midday.
It was a classic mid-table encounter with visitors Sheffield, in a red and black kit, in fourteenth place in the eighth-tier Northern Premier League, Division One East table. Ossett in light and dark blue kit were one place behind them. I noticed a few home fans were wearing the old yellow and black colours of the defunct Ossett Town.
Sheffield applied the pressure early on, sending ball after ball into the box. It paid off after a quarter of an hour when someone eventually got on the end of one to put them a goal up. A second goal from a header on the half-hour meant that the teams went in at half-time with Sheffield two ahead.
Ossett looked better in the second half and missed a couple of decent chances to get a foothold in the game but were hit on the break and eventually found themselves four-nil down. The evening finished with a last-minute back-post volley for an Ossett consolation that finally gave the local kids something football-related to sing about.
Trail of the Lion King 