It's Murder, On The Orient Express ....

[TheOstrich]

02/02 – The snow storm which hit south west England on Thursday evening didn’t entirely follow the script laid out for it by the BBC weather forecasters, and stalled over Dorset and Wiltshire for most of Friday . There wasn’t a large quantity of snow – only 2–3 cms - but it was persistent and a healthy breeze ensured the wind-chill factor put the ambient temperature well below freezing on Friday night. All the Saturday soccer matches in the area were quickly called off, but over in the west of the county, Sherborne RFC were happily tweeting “game on” …..

In theory, this was supposed to be a “reserve” weekend for grass-roots rugby clubs – the start of the 6 Nations Championship so no league fixtures scheduled. I had noted that fact when forward-planning my season’s fixtures, but I always forget that these “reserve” weekends are also held back to accommodate National RFU Club Cup competition games. And Sherborne, currently running away with Level 7’s Southern Counties South league, had an Intermediate Cup semi-final tie against Windsor, who are currently running away with Southern Counties North …..

To ensure the game went ahead, Sherborne appealed for volunteers to assemble at 10:00 to start the clear the lying snow from the pitch. And as pictures on their twitter feed showed, at least 50 turned up and by 11:00 they’d made a jolly good fist of it.
https://twitter.com/sherborne_rugby

Now according to the match-day programme, these two teams have history . They met up last year also in a Cup game, which was played at Windsor on a bitterly cold day in pouring rain. And even now, they haven’t forgotten that they followed the directions of a Windsor RFC official who ensured they parked their coach in the muddiest, wettest part of the car-park, which was only going to get muddier and wetter . To quote the programme: “Our pre-match warm up was dominated by how we would get the bus out …..” Sherborne lost that game 12-3 in horrendous conditions, (but did manage to extract the coach), and were out for a bit of revenge today.

The home side spent most of the first 40 minutes encamped in the Windsor half, and had hard luck on 11m when a 35 yard penalty kick fell just short allowing a Windsor player to gather the ball, but his clearance kick was charged down. After a few heart-stopping moments, Windsor managed to regain control and clear the ball properly. Sherborne were not to be denied, however, and were 8-0 up at half-time thanks to a 25 yard Marcus Healey penalty and a close-range try by Owen Williams, but they’d also lost their first choice scrum half, his replacement being efficient but cautious.

Sherborne continued to keep Windsor pegged back in the second half, missed a fairly straightforward penalty kick on 57m, but Healy made amends 8 minutes later to make it 11-0. It was then Windsor’s turn to press, and needing two scores to rescue the tie, they blitzed Sherborne’s line but crucially didn’t cross it until the 4th minute of stoppage time. Sherborne restarted, Windsor took possession and made one last final push upfield before the home side managed to halt them and clinch the match. A dramatic end to an always tense game, and Sherborne now go through to meet Marlow in the next round.

It was perishingly cold watching the game from the touchlines today, despite the odd gleam of sun which was very welcome when it did break through the clouds. The roads were fine, although I took the precaution of sticking to the main roads such as the A30 which I knew would have been gritted - a slightly longer route than I'd usually make. AA Roadwatch Live was showing slow traffic through Milborne Port on the final stretch into Sherborne, but when I passed through it, the only congestion was all the cars parked on the main drag outside the village's pub, the "Tippling Philosopher". In the event, by 12:00 most of the lying snow had melted in the Vale, but where I could look across to the uplands at the edge of the Salisbury Plain, they were still shrouded in snow. A snowy British landscape at its best! Coming back, I did take a short cut via Kington Magna and Sandley, but that involved a climb over a ridge on back roads that still looked a bit icy, so cautious 2nd gear, 20 mph stuff in places until a safe arrival home.

Southern Counties Intermediate Cup Semi-Finals: Sherborne RFC 11 Windsor RFC 5
Admission: £5 including programme
Refreshments: £2.50 for a bacon butty pre-match in the clubhouse, and second one bought from “The Shed” pitchside at half-time, by which time they’d gone up to £3 and were stone cold! £1 for a jammy doughnut and £1 for a cuppa tea.
Attendance: 313

[Ally]

A 50p hike in prices - now that's inflation!

I thought of you yesterday Ossie. As we were basking in sunshine I wondered if you'd make it to a footy match given your weather. And you did. Fair play to you.

Thanks for another great read.

[Kaz]

Profiteering indeed!

[cromwell]

Windsor is a long way from Sherborne isn't it? Anway, well done Sherborne for rapaying Windsor for the dirty tricks! I bet it was perishingly cold as well.
The cold, inflation ridden bacon sandwich is a scandal though!

[TheOstrich]

09/02 – “Ey-oop the Blues!”, chanted Ossie.
“Pardon? What’s with the strangled, mock Yorkshire accent?” I enquired.
“It’s Franglais!” declared the bird.
“Ah! I think you mean ‘Allez les Bleus’ “ I laughed.

Because today we were due to attend a 6 Nations Championship rugby game, no less! England vs France! But this being Ossie, of course, there’s a twist - not a full-bloodied International at Twickenham, but the Under-20’s version due to be played at the impressive Sandy Park ground, home of the Premiership club Exeter Chiefs. It’s a ground that’s been on my bucket shop list for a long time, but (a) I wanted to have a sporting chance of getting into the place and (b) I didn’t want to pay ridiculous money to do so. Two junior international games, scheduled for Sandy Park this February and March, therefore gave me an ideal opportunity. The kick-off time was set at 12:05 (live broadcast on Sky Sports) necessitating an early start, but Digby and Sowton station, on the Exmouth line, is handily placed for the stadium.

Now the Chief’s website (like many top soccer and rugby clubs) appears to have only one aim – to get you to buy a match ticket. However unlike most other clubs, it doesn’t really give you any alternative. For example, there’s no stadium plan showing any form of ticket office. There’s no price structure setting out ticket prices on the day. It’s all “click here now to register and buy your ticket”. Now I’m allergic to registering my details on-line just to purchase a one-off game ticket, so I decided I’d wing it, turn up and see if I could get in on the day, as it would hardly be a sell-out. And I had various back-up games in the area should I be turned away.

So all was set fair – until Friday night when I decided to check the fare on the National Rail Enquiries website. And that revealed – unbelievably, but fully understandably given the season I’m having so far – “bus replacement services between Salisbury and Yeovil Junction” – with an earliest arrival time in Exeter of 12:30! That was straight out of left field, as they say; I had no inkling of that from researching the game earlier in the week.

Well, I consoled myself, there’s always the international on 9th March – the England Women rugby team vs Italy. That notion lasted less than half an hour – the RMT Union promptly announced another round of Saturday strikes on South Western Railway starting – you guessed it – 9th March. You couldn’t make it up!

So Saturday morning, back to the drawing board. And a bleddy good thing I hadn’t succumbed to buying a match ticket for the rugby online ….

“Stożek na Ciebie kiełbasy!”, chanted Ossie.
“Pardon? What’s with the strangled, mock Hungarian accent?” I enquired.
“It’s Polish!” declared the bird. “It means ‘Come on, you Sausages! ’”
“Ah! You’ve been on the vino again,” I laughed.

Hastily researching local games, a rather interesting factoid emerged. In the Dorset Senior League Division 1, there’s a team called FC Boscombe Polonia, which I assumed were a Polish emigre team playing in Bournemouth. Idly investigating a bit further, I established 99% of their squad as listed on the FA FullTime website are indeed Polish - as also is their (incomprehensible) Facebook page, from which can be clearly seen, for example, that they played Sturminster Marshall on “Sobota 17th Listopad; Na Mctz Z Liderem Zapraszamy Na Stadion, Old Bakery Close, Pimperne, kick off 14:00.” Strangely, Pimperne is nowhere near Bournemouth; it’s a well-heeled village just outside of Blandford Forum, and it’s now replaced the Exeter Chiefs stadium on my bucket shop list!

FC Boscome Polonia were indeed supposed to be playing at home today, and I toyed with the idea before opting for a much more enticing game at Wimborne Town. (Good thing, too; the Boscome Polonia game appears to have been called off for some reason.) Anyway, the Magpies were hosting Hendon, the final one of the five London teams told by the FA at the start of the season to play in the Southern League South West, and which I have been out to see. So it was off to Cuthbury, a ground I’ve already visited twice this season notching 16 goals in the process, and I wasn’t to be disappointed today.

Like rivals Metropolitan Police and Harrow, Hendon made an impressive start to life in their new league, but haven’t been able to keep up the pace and are now firmly mid-table. As indeed are Wimborne Town, who also hadn’t expected to be in this Step 3 league, but gained a last-minute promotion in a major FA reshuffle last July following the demise of Barnsley-based team Shaw Lane Aquaforce. The Magpies have done better than they anticipated this season, playing attractive soccer and recording much higher crowds than in past years, and in Toby Holmes, they have the joint highest scorer in the league (21 goals).

We got off to an entertaining start. Wimborne kicked off, promptly lost the ball, conceded two throw-ins, the last a long one into their penalty area which they just about cleared upfield, two quick flicks later and Toby Holmes was racing away one on one with the Hendon keeper. His chip shot neatly beat the goalie – and came back off the crossbar! All that in the first minute! A 15 yard effort from Luke Holmes smacked against the bottom of the post, and the Magpies looked firmly on top. At which point Hendon, of course, opened the scoring, Ryan Hope’s shot squirming out of the home keeper’s hands into the net.

Hendon were employing a lot of spoiling tactics, and whilst tempers never got particularly frayed, it wasn’t helping Wimborne’s rhythm – however, they did equalise on 27m when Toby Holmes was well flattened by an outrushing goalie – the referee initially pointed to the spot, but in the aftermath of the collision, Luke Burbidge had collected the ball and screwed it in from a tight angle, and the referee (perhaps controversially) allowed the goal to stand. We did get a penalty, though, just before half-time, when Oldring was yellow-carded for shoving in the box, and Hendon’s gloriously-named Shaquille Hippolyte-Patrick scored from the spot.

1-2 at the resumption of play, it didn’t take Toby Holmes long to equalise with a precision turn and chip from Stephan Penney’s cross, and on 64m, Holmes notched his second of the game with a downwards header after Burbidge had helped on a corner. But just two minutes later, it was 3-3, Hendon’s Darren Locke heading home a corner at the far post. Straight after that, the visitors' Obi Ogo launched a screamer which hit the underside of Wimborne’s crossbar, bounced on the goal-line and spun out – it was that sort of match!

No further scoring, (not for the want of trying, mind you), with the draw a fair result to a most entertaining game for which both sides deserve credit.

Evo-Stik League South Premier South (Step 3): Wimborne Town 3 Hendon 3
Admission: £6 (old codger)
Programme: £2 – one of the best in the division, packed with features and statistics *.
Refreshments: £3 for a decent-sized pasty and a tea pre-match in the clubhouse, and £2 for chips at half-time
Attendance: 388

* not forgetting, of course, Dorset Dave’s Chuckle Page ……
“How will Christmas dinner be different after Brexit? – no Brussels!”
“Friend of mine works as a baggage handler at the airport. He used to be a lawyer, but kept losing his cases ….”

[Ally]

"The Blues"

This was the war cry in our house this morning Ossie! (Birmingham City V QPR. Away. Not sure if you follow the footie but Blues won after an extremely tense 90 minutes 3 -4. Hurrah!)

Anyway....'decent sized pasty'

Great read as usual Ossie....keep em coming.

[Kaz]

[cromwell]

I| still can't get my head around how a team in Wimborne can be playing one from Harrow.
Boscombe Polonia! I hope they do well.
Ally my team (Leeds) are second in the championship but are showing signs of blowing up now! Fingers crossed firmly until the end of the season!

Great read Os.

[TheOstrich]

I| still can't get my head around how a team in Wimborne can be playing one from Harrow.

That's nothing! Thanks to the sainted FA's decision to reorganise the leagues and cut travelling costs, Harrow Borough (and Hendon) now have to travel to Merthyr Tydfil !
That's just over 160 miles each way ....

Glad to see Birmingham City and Leeds United both doing well this year!

[TheOstrich]

16/02 – The Ostrich has been trying to get a few train trips under his belt as the next round of RMT union strikes is looming. The good news was that there were no replacement bus services out of Gillingham this Saturday; the bad news was that there were affecting Brockenhurst instead , which ruled out the bird’s Plan A. Ossie looked very carefully at games at Newton Abbot and Teignmouth instead, but the timings are lousy – a lot of waiting around on stations, an overall 2 ½ hour journey, and the feathered fiend has better things to do than drink execrable, eye-wateringly expensive Starbucks coffee on St David’s station.

So Plan D emerged as a much more gentle trip into East Devon, to Honiton. Standing back in the station foyer to allow a queue of late-running passengers to buy their tickets for the 11:51 London train, I waited until that train had departed – and then found the ticket booth had been firmly locked up! Change of shift, and no replacement station clerk. After reading the regulations and suspiciously eyeing the ticket machines, I banged various buttons but couldn’t see how to extract a “permit to travel” from it! So with only a few minutes left before the Exeter-bound 12:17, I decided to hop on board ticketless, brazen it out with the guard and hope to avoid a swinging penalty fare.

I sought the gentleman out and explained the rapid closure of the ticket hatch.
“Oh that happens all the time,” he laughed. “Why don’t you sit there [in First Class! ] while I get my machine.”
Not only did I get my tickets, he also cashed in my final delay repay voucher from last autumn’s Barnes fiasco, and told me that there looked like there was going to be some movement on the strike impasse. Apparently the Department for Transport are leaning on the operator, First Group, to settle with the threat of being hauled in front of a public enquiry hanging over them. First Group have not covered themselves in glory since taking over the franchise from Stagecoach.

It had been dull and murky on leaving Dorset – by the time Honiton was reached, it was drizzling and the surrounding hills were shrouded in low cloud. Not enough to dampen Ossie’s enthusiasm, and a 5 minute walk brought him to the main, wide shopping street which usually hosts a Saturday market. Not as many stalls on display today due to the weather, but interesting to have a brief poke around, and mooch round some of the Courtyard shops. Honiton comes across as an attractive, thriving town centre with plenty of independent local retailers. Another 5 minute walk, and I found the Allhallows Playing Field (aka Honiton Leisure Centre ), and eventually tracked down the rugby club’s headquarters after a perilous (and possibly unnecessary) transit of a skate park. Ossie on wheels!

Unlike their reclusive soccer compatriots, Cornish rugby clubs, thanks to the league structure, do regularly visit Somerset and Devon, and I’ve been remiss in the past on not quite picking up on this fact. Halfway down the SW Pyramid, there is a combined Cornwall/Devon league for middle-tier clubs, and scheduled today was a top-of-the-table clash between first placed Honiton and second placed Penryn, who hail from Falmouth way.

Penryn have a strange club crest. It looks like a mugshot of an ancient Greek with the legend “BVRGVS PENRYN”. Now Penryn are nicknamed “The Borough” but Bvrgvs doesn’t appear to mean anything in Cornish, according to my online translator. So in the clubhouse, which was absolutely heaving with supporters, I accosted a Penryn fan wearing the shirt, and asked him. “It means Borough,” he said, “that’s who we are – the Borough!” “Oh, thanks,” I replied a bit nonplussed. A borough in Cornish is a burjistra; a village is a gwig or a treveglos. The bird, of course, had a ready explanation. “BVRGVS PENRYN?” intoned Ossie, “It’s quite clear – they’re obviously sponsored by a local fast food joint ….”

The match started at tremendous pace, and as the afternoon wore on, with the tall spire of the Honiton Parish Church disappearing in and out of the mist, both sides served up a humdinger. Penryn’s passing was occasionally wild, they couldn’t win their own line-outs for toffee, but their defence was absolutely rock solid. The only question was how many times they’d shoot themselves in the foot by backchatting the referee , who was under assessment and thus more than happy to apply the full force of the law as well as being pissed off by it all. That cost the visitors a sin-binning and the had at least one penalty in a promising position overturned. Honiton, for their part, adopted some rather peculiar game-plan decisions, opting to kick for touch an easy penalty award early on when they should have got on the scoreboard and claimed the 3 points, and mid-way through the second half kicking a penalty when they had Penryn on the ropes and should have kept up the pressure for a try. But by gum it was a close, tense affair. We went into the last quarter-hour with the score at 20-21 and it really was anybody’s game. In the event, two minutes from time, Penryn burst through in the corner to score a decisive try – superbly converted – to claim the spoils and even deny Honiton a losing bonus.

I stood for most of the game with a raucous group of Borough supporters. I now know that the Cornish for “%$&$%@~!!! ” is “~@%$@*&&!!! ”. It was employed many times, equally divided to the referee and their own side ….

Tribute Conwall/Devon League (Level 8): Honiton RFC 20 Penryn RFC 28
Admission: free, no programme today (the chap who compiled them sadly succumbed to cancer during the week )
Refreshments: a beef pasty for £2.90 from Complete Meats of Honiton in the High Street. Excellent! Worth noting that their Pork & Otter Ale Sausages were crowned 'The Best Innovative Sausage' in some independent retailer category awards in 2015. I must say, I’ve never eaten otter!
Attendance: 256