Travels with my Ostrich ....

[Kaz]

Mick has played against Cinderford's second and third teams, in the past

Oh I love the sound of the flyball, that does sound like fun

Ally they are such prima donnas these top league footie players, I couldn't agree more

[TheOstrich]

£11 admission fee..is that expensive?

I think that admission charge is about par for the course at that level of rugby union, but I'm planning a couple of visits to other teams in that league before this season's out, so it will be interesting to compare. Don't forget I qualify for an over-60's concession - full admission at Coventry RUFC is £15, I think.

Anyway, today's saga:

Saturday 26/03/16 – Midland Football League Division 1 (Step 6) @ 15:00
Hinckley AFC 3 Pershore Town 1
Admission: £3, programme: £1.50
Refreshments: £2.20 burger, £3.20 pie and coffee, 80p Mars bar. Brian the Painter has just finished glossing the kitchen, and Mrs O has declared another "Cook's Day Off"!
Attendance: 160.

Again, predictions of dire weather for this afternoon made me think long and hard about today’s fixture. I had originally been looking at visiting Old Wulfrunians who play at Castlecroft, north-west Wolverhampton, but I know they have no shelter around their pitch, so I decided to head north-east and visit St. John’s Park in ‘eever, a ground I’ve not previously attended. ‘eever (the local pronunciation of Heather) is a village in north-west Leicestershire, not a million miles from Ellistown where the Ostrich landed up a few weeks back. In fact, it’s not quite as far, so an easy journey. Like Ellistown, Heather thrived on coal mining and brick making, and two fairly large open cast coal mines have operated nearby since the 1980’s, harvesting nearly 9 million tons of coal. Both are now closed; one has been turned into a country park and the other has been acquired by the Woodland Trust for a 460 acre new forest.

The main football team in the village is Heather St Johns FC, but in 2014, they acquired ground-share tenants in the newly-formed Hinckley AFC, a community trust football club which arose from the ashes of Hinckley United FC. You could, quite seriously, write a book on all the shenanigans arising over Hinckley football clubs in the last 15 years. Back in the 1970’s, I used to watch Hinckley Town play at a long-demolished stadium somewhere on the south side of the conurbation – leastways, I think it was Hinckley Town. It might have been Hinckley Athletic. Anyway, there were definitely two clubs and they merged in 1997 to become Hinckley United, who played at Middlefield Lane close to the town centre – that’s now a housing estate, I think. United relocated in 2005 to a spanking new stadium on the northern edge of Hinckley on the Leicester Road, De Montfort Park - aka the Marston’s Stadium, named after the brewers who sponsored it. That didn’t last long as it became the Greene King Stadium in 2009 when rival brewers took over the sponsorship!

Hinckley United’s first game at De Montfort Park was on 5th March 2005, a 1-1 draw against Stalybridge Celtic in front of 2,000 spectators, and the Ostrich was in attendance! The bird still has a commemorate enamel badge for the event, a limited edition, no.159 of 200, no less! What I remember most about it was that it was bitterly cold, snowed and the stadium was far from complete. The car-park was a muddy building site and the gents urinals hadn’t been connected up. The half-time queue for the closet facilities was so great that a number of folk including the Ostrich made a necessary and frantic dive into the ladies, from where the bird was subsequently evicted, squawking.

Hinckley United were a Step 2 club in those days, but from 2010, financial rot set in – and there was some skulduggery over who actually owned what parts of the stadium. HM Revenue and Customs started the move to sue the club for outstanding debts, and they were eventually wound up in 2014. From the ashes, however, two teams emerged – Leicester Road FC and Hinckley AFC, both having to start at the bottom of the pyramid. The basic difference between the teams seems to be that Leicester Road FC (who still play in De Montfort Park) was formed from the old Hinckley United youth teams and thus are the true “phoenix club” whilst Hinckley AFC were formed as a community club by disaffected and generally p*ssed off supporters of United, but had to find somewhere else to play – hence their tenancy at Heather. Both clubs won promotion last year and both are currently in Midlands League Division 1 – Leicester Road are 4th and Hinckley AFC are 6th. There is understandably a huge rivalry between these two clubs!

So, to today’s event and once through the turnstiles at St John’s Park, you’re facing the main pitch that at first sight looks quite small, largely because it’s surrounded on all four sides by a thick 10’ conifer hedge – no less than 350 of them according to a plaque in the foyer of the deceptively spacious clubhouse. The bar was doing a roaring trade before the match, and Hinckley AFC memorabilia were on sale in one corner. There’s a sort of a players’ tunnel out onto the pitch, running underneath an elevated press box, and seated modern stands on both sides. Behind the conifers at one end is a field marked out with two further pitches, and over the hedge on the far side from the clubhouse is an extensive floodlit training area. All in all, it’s a sizeable sports complex for what is really just a large village.

The game itself proved pretty entertaining; not least because a gusty wind blowing up the pitch was causing all sorts of mayhem and meant that during the first half, Pershore had some difficulty getting the ball out of their own defence at times. Nevertheless, the away side took the lead on 18m when Ludlow beat the offside trap on the right, cut inside, and comfortably beat the keeper. They’d also had an earlier chance which Pearson cleared off the line. Hinckley went after the equaliser with a will, and very nearly got it on 28m when a long clearance by keeper Cross caught the wind and all but sailed over Pershore custodian Yarnold into the net – he did well to turn it over the bar!

During the interval, whilst juggling with my pie and trying to pour milk into my coffee by the food hatch, a hefty gust of wind caught me and snatched my fork and serviette from my grip, propelling the fork into a crowd of other spectators like a whirling kung-fu death star, and the serviette to all intents and purposes over the clubhouse roof! I managed to hang onto my pie, and retired to the comparative serenity of the clubhouse bar to eat it, having to improvise and use a ripped off corner of the polystyrene pie tray as a shovel!

Hinckley eventually made it 1-1 on 48m when Yarnold brought striker Richards down in the box, a rather silly penalty to give away which Seal converted. The game became a little more subdued after that, but Hinckley added two further goals through Roberts turning in a Richards cross from close range (69m) and Richards himself with a 10 yard shot into the corner with the keeper possibly unsighted (82m). A fair result on the day.

The promised rain finally arrived around the 85 minute mark, and I managed to drive back through Sharestone virtually to the M42 before it turned into a deluge. Most folk were sensibly keeping around the 50-55 mph mark on the motorway, but needless to say, there were still some eejit drivers tailgating in the outside lane ….

[Ally]

Oh well done on the 'clinging to your pie' effort.

Sounds an entertaining...if windy...game.

Thanks Os. x

[Kaz]

Nice save Ossie

[TheOstrich]

Saturday 02/04/16 – East Midland Counties League (Step 6) @ 15:00
Blaby & Whetstone Athletic 3 Greenwood Meadows 1
Admission: £2, programme: £2
Refreshments: £3 for 2 x excellent ham baguettes, £2.50 for chips and cuppa tea at half time, 50p for a bag of pick ‘n mix sweets from the clubhouse.
Official Attendance: 8 (according to the league website, which is perhaps slightly at odds with my own headcount of 34 on the day, but there again, I was including all the various kids around the touchline. …..)

This was my first visit to the Warwick Road, Whetstone ground; an pleasant drive in sunshine down the M6 to Rugby, then north through Lutterworth to the southern outskirts of Leicester. I’ve previously been to both Leicester Lions and Vipers rugby clubs nearby, and Blaby’s ground is only ¼ mile or so from them so I knew the route; however, the soccer club’s car park is accessed from a rather fiendish one-way system; you have to approach Warwick Road from the roundabout to the east, and on leaving you can loop round the back of the ground to reach the main road again.

The ground’s a bit confusing at first to the newcomer, as there’s two separate car parks on the premises and no specific signage for the soccer club from the road – it seems to be all “Blaby and Whetstone Youth Club” orientated. Indeed, not long after arriving, another car pulled up alongside me and I was asked if this was “the right venue for the children’s party.” I was able to confirm it was, as there was a sticker to that effect up on one of the doors into the clubhouse, and indeed, during the first half, I noticed several large soap bubbles drift on the breeze past my nose, so they must have had one of those bubble-making machines! I eventually located the entrance to the soccer ground itself just off the western car-park, behind the rather block-built social and youth club building - as the bar facilities are effectively outside the ground, I paid my admission money, secured a programme, then went back out and into the bar to watch Aston Villa’s ritual Saturday humiliation on the widescreen, this week at the hands of Chelsea.

Back inside the ground, it’s rather a quirky affair. There’s an all-weather court to the left behind the nearside goal, and beyond that, down the far side of the pitch, are the dugouts and a small, ancient stand with bench seating. Alongside t’other side of the pitch is another full-size pitch with its own dugouts, and in between these two pitches, there’s a a raised oblong concrete-block base with a corrugated dividing wall down the middle and a roof over both sides. It functions as a covered spectator standing area effectively serving both pitches, but it looked rather like a Midland Metro tram stop shelter. At the far end of the ground, there’s a spanking new big red portacabin which was, I think, an indoor mini football court with added gym equipment, and alongside this, a second small training area with an indeterminate surface – it could be a very early version of artificial turf or even hard compacted green sand (so hard that even the Ostrich could not bury his head in it .. )

To the game, and visitors Greenwood Meadows started today having played 29, won 1, drawn 1 and had had one of their four league points deducted, presumably for playing an illegible player earlier in the season. They had entertained Blaby back in December in the reverse fixture, and had lost 0-10! Blaby were 7th in the league table, but had lost 5 of their last 7 fixtures. And this was in fact their last home game of the season – they now finish with 4 away matches.

Anyway, Greenwood defended resolutely throughout the first half on a rather bobbly surface. The first 30 minutes was pretty much one-way traffic, but Blaby’s attacking foundered in the final 10 yards or so. Eventually Greenwood started pushing up the pitch, and even won a 40th minute penalty, which their penalty-taker wellied right down the middle – and about 5 feet over the bar!

However, on 56m, Greenwood did in fact take the lead when Davis hit a speculative 25 yard volley to perfection over the keeper’s head, but Blaby’s Hill equalised 4m later with a close range header. Greenwood had a lucky escape when a Blaby shot hit the turf and flew upwards only to cannon off the underside of the bar and back out into play.

With time winding down, the Greenwood defence finally imploded and conceded goals on 86m and 88m through Morris and Hill. And a minute later, Blaby were again through 1 on 1 with the keeper but this time, the shot was well over the bar. So, final score 3-1, and you couldn’t really argue with the result - but full credit to Greenwood Meadows for nearly pulling off a draw today.

This was a little bit of a celebration day for the Ostrich, as he has now completed seeing all the 19 clubs currently playing in the East Midland Counties League! The celebration took the form of the purchase of half-a-dozen home-made sausage rolls from the club snack bar for 50p, which they kindly put on a chip-tray and enclosed in cling-film for me to take home and share with Mrs O. !!

[Ally]

That sounded a good day in all Ossie...footy AND pik 'n' mix. Result!

Those entrance, programme and food prices were much more realistic.

Well done on seeing all the 19 clubs!

And as an aside......what has happened to the once mighty Villa??!!

Of course Don & Conor (being Birmingham fans) find it all hilarious. Not so our eldest lad!

Did Mrs O enjoy the sausage rolls?

Has her kitchen re-opened for use again?

Thanks for another great read. x

[TheOstrich]

Saturday 09/04/16 – National League 1 (Level 3) @ 14:30
Hartpury College RUFC 31 Rosslyn Park RUFC 27
Admission: £5, programme: £1
Refreshments: £3 burger and onions before the game, £3 hot dog at half time. 70p Snickers bar from the clubhouse.
Attendance: 233

Today, a trip to “The UK’s Premier Sport and Education Setting where Nothing Stands in the way of Your Success”. Well, that’s what it said on the clubhouse wall ….

The most straight-forward way of getting from Birmingham to Hartpury College, which is affiliated to the University of the West of England, is down the M5, take the M50 to Junction 2, and then south on the A417 Gloucester road. The promise of extensive roadworks on the M5 in north Worcestershire, however, meant I diverted via Studley, Evesham, Tewksbury, and across the River Severn on the B4213 at Hawbridge, a pleasant enough journey despite traffic queues at various bottlenecks. The Hartpury campus is in the countryside just south of Hartpury village, and about 5 miles north of Gloucester itself. The college specialises in animal husbandry, veterinary and welfare, (there’s a large farm complex on the north side of the campus, and there’s also animal collections including meerkats, llamas and prairie dogs, but no ostriches, and Ossie was keeping a decidedly low profile today ) and also sports – I believe Gloucester RUFC use their extensive facilities for training. VVers will know that Kaz’s daughter studied here, and a superb place it is.

On turning into the campus, I found there was some sort of equine dressage event going on near the entrance, but I knew the sports college was about ½ mile further on, the only problem being how to get there as there seems to be a clock-wise one-way road system. However a guy with a walkie-talkie was staking out the entrance road, and having paid my admission cash to him, I was directed off down a track to the right and told to find his colleague up at the car-park. Successfully parked a stone’s throw from the pitch, I purchased a programme from a lad in a nearby hut, and decided to explore the college on foot. I walked up the hill past Dingle and Rudgeley Halls residential accommodation – they cater for up to 1,000 students living on-site, and there’s about 2,500 overall on the roll, so I was told, with the rest being bussed in daily from Gloucester and surrounds – and a new building called the College Learning Centre that looked completely deserted. It’s all very clean, attractive and modern, but there’s a propensity for 10 foot high green wire mesh, certainly surrounding the halls of residence. To keep the meerkats in or the ostriches out?

Back at the sports campus, I wandered round the ground. There’s a grandstand fronting the pitch incorporating a large sports hall (indoor netball court), the rugby clubhouse and various classrooms, I think; peering through windows there seemed to be desks and wall posters extolling Sports Nutrition on the one hand, and Marijuana on the other. The other notable feature is that the grandstand is the Home of the Motivational Poster, i.e.:

“Contrary to popular belief, there most certainly is an ‘I’ in ‘Team’. It is the same ‘I’ that appears three times in ‘Responsibility’.”

And:

“The Guy in the Glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you King for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that guy has to say.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heatache and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.”

There was also a series of posters extolling all the various sports taught at Hartpury (Equine, Rowing, Modern Pentathlon, Netball, Soccer, Rugby, Golf) and naming the major alumni who had graduated from each one, including Dan Norton of England Rugby 7’s and Majeed Waris, a striker for FC Lorient and Ghana. I see, in passing, Waris was sent off last November in a French Ligue 1 game for launching a kung-fu kick on an opponent who’d riled him. “The guy fouls me,” he apparently said. “He was not sanctioned and I have a bad reaction to severe tackles. I should not have done it but I had no intention of hurting him or to kill him. I just wanted to scare him.” Yup, definitely three ‘I’s in ‘Responsibility’ …..

http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... mp-kung-fu

Anyway, suitably chastened rather than motivated, the Ostrich stepped back outside overlooking the floodlit, wooden-railed and grass-surfaced No.1 Rugby pitch, which has three dugouts on the opposite side to the grandstand, and an electronic scoreboard strangely set in a neighbouring field (which appeared to house pig hutches but no pigs ), and even more strangely counted down from 40:00 minutes rather than conventionally showing time played. There’s a second full-size and floodlit rugby pitch behind one of the goals, but this is 3G and surrounded in the ubiquitous green mesh. There are a number of other enclosed outdoor pitches dotted around the sports campus, including at least one other rugby training pitch, with a camera tower and little else.

The match pitted 2nd in the table Hartpury against mid-table (but currently on a good run) Rosslyn Park. Hartpury were, I gather, under strength due to student international call-ups. At first, the home side looked light-weight as Rosslyn Park bludgeoned over three unconverted tries in the first half, all scored by No.8 Hugo Ellis, with Hartpury only able to reply with four medium-range but well-taken penalties from Gareth Thompson. 12-15 at the interval.

Thompson tied the game at 15-15 on 50m with a penalty in front of the posts, but then Cochrane took a superb juggling catch at full tilt and ran it in under the posts for Hartpury’s first (and only) try. With Rosslyn Park’s Piper being sin-binned, the home side extended their lead to 28-10 with two further penalties, but on 68m Ellis notched his fourth try to keep the away side in contention. A final 76m penalty from Thompson made it 31-20, but with a couple of minutes remaining Field touched down for the visitors and Sneddon’s conversion made it 31-27. Rosslyn Park were inexorably taking the ball up the field in the final play, but lost their chance by conceding a final penalty, which Hartpury whanged gratefully into touch to seal the win.

Not perhaps the greatest of games, but always absorbing - two contrasting styles of play, and the result in doubt right to the end. Just time for a fast run back up the motorway, but the Ostrich was delayed 30 minutes in the final stretch of his journey through Erdington due to road works. I must get a poster saying “The Last Mile is Always the Longest” ….

[Ally]

Another great informative (two i's) read.

Our best friends live in Erdington Ossie in a huge Victorian house on the Kingsbury Road. The traffic is always really bad at both ends of that road.
Star City is only about a mile away and it's always mental round there.

The reason for the huge house was the 5 children they produced!

And carrying on with the 'funny substance' remark in your report it just so happens their next door neighbour was a certain female athlete who got done for a positive dope test.

Sorry Os...I hijacked your thread a bit.

[Kaz]

It is a beautiful place, isn't it Ossie? The views are lovely up there! We almost got lost in the grounds too, the first time we went up there for B's college interview Luckily there were signs and a man with a walkie talkie, wonder if it was the same one? Becky used to help with the meerkats and llamas as part of her course, but didn't come across Ostriches until she went to Africa

Any relation?

[TheOstrich]

Any relation?

I've shown the photo to Ossie, Kaz, but he says that he's very much an English Ostrich, and all those foreign birds look the same to him ...

Yes, from the college campus at the top of the hill, I noticed there were lovely views across to Herefordshire Beacon and the Malvern Hills. From the sports complex, though, no such scenery as it's down in a dip!

Ally, Kingsbury Road is on our bus route into town - went down it today in fact on my way to see the hapless Coventry Bears rugby league side get tanked again, this time by Barrow Raiders ....
Still, the £1.95 filter coffee on Mr. Branson's Pendolino on the return journey was quite excellent!