Four Weddings and a Penalty Shootout

[Kaz]

[miasmum]

So funny Ossie. I agree you should write a book

[JoM]

[TheOstrich]

09/09 – A lucky escape midweek ….. we travelled to Salisbury Hospital on Wednesday afternoon where Mrs O had a consultant’s appointment; however this ran well over an hour late. The Ostrich was left with no time to drive home and then onwards to Westbury United vs Chippenham Park, so we settled for a leisurely return with an evening stop-off at a pub in the Chalke Valley for a delicious (but somewhat overpriced) pair of vegetable curries. If I had attended that game, it would have been my third 0-0 draw in under a month – and all of them in Wiltshire! I shall think very carefully before choosing a match in that county in future ….

Having travelled up to Esher RFC last Saturday, I was half tempted by a similar trip to neighbouring Walton & Hersham FC today, as I’ve never visited their historic (and soon to be closed) Stompond Lane ground, but a poor weather forecast coupled with general inertia led to me staying with my original Plan A, an all-Hampshire FA Vase cup tie between Ringwood Town and Eversley & California. Possibly a lucky escape from the travelling point of view, as I believe South Western Railways suffered massive delays today due to a Wimbledon signalling failure.

A relatively seamless journey via Verwood, although the road was blocked through Sixpenny Handley for a Scouts Parade; however the diversion around it was fairly straight-forward. After departing the maelstrom of the four-lane A31, a trek through the rather attractive Ringwood town centre on the B3347, passing the local brewery and David Lloyd Fitness Club, and then left into Moortown Lane and right, down the very narrow Long Lane, to the ground, which is situated more or less in the middle of nowhere. There’s a fair amount of parking available on the site, which is bordered on three sides by New Forest terrain and extensive allotments on the fourth. Entrance is gained past the wooden hut pay-station next to the squarish red-brick clubhouse which, with its two huge external tannoy loudspeakers and narrow shuttered windows, vaguely reminds one of a WW2 camp barracks.

Between the clubhouse and the pitch, there’s a small mini-pitch with wooden surrounds, the surface of which is 3G carpet strips; these have been pre-lined out with white line markings – but the strips have been laid in a haphazard manner, so the markings are all over the shop! Quite what its purpose is, I’m not entirely sure. The main pitch is railed, with dugouts on the far side and on the near side, a breeze-block stand with somewhat worse-for-wear wooden bench seating which looks as if it’s about to succumb to woodworm or rot. Generally, it’s a ground which perhaps needs a little bit of TLC.

Wessex League Ringwood are mid-table, but have had an interesting season so far. They’re joint highest league scorers, but also have the worst defence; they’ve seen an average of over 6 goals a game in matches so far. Eversley & California, from the Combined Counties League, have also seen an average of over 5 goals per match this season, so I was hoping for a goal-fest today – needless to say, in the event, I’m thankful that I got the single goal.

No frantic 100 mph stuff here, both sides played thoughtfully, plenty of close-passing tippy-tappy in mid-field, and intricate (sometimes too intricate) stuff in attack. Trouble was, they tended to cancel each other out. The game kicked off under apocalyptic skies, and on 11m, we got both the goal, River Smith taking advantage of a bit of hesitation in the away defence to score easily, and an opening of the heavens, the game continuing in an intense downpour for around 5 minutes. Floodlights on! The first half was a pretty even affair, but after the break Eversley & California pushed forward and controlled most of the second half, with Ringwood content to defend and raid forward occasionally. The home keeper was quite noticeably getting glacially slower and slower retrieving the ball for goal kicks, but in fairness to him, it seems he was carrying a back injury and eventually he had to be substituted. As the away team chased the equaliser, frustration set in with the inevitable litany of bookings, including a home substitute by the dugout who presumably must have said something he shouldn’t to the linesman . The best move of the second half came right at the end when Ringwood’s Steer launched a pile-driver which came back off the bar, and when the ball was recovered and pulled back to him, he lashed in a second attempt which the Eversley keeper just managed to block.

A game that promised a lot, and delivered a fair bit of entertainment for the neutral, but at the end of the day sadly lacked goals. A quiet journey home, with a beautiful double-rainbow lighting up the sky over Win Gap.

FA Vase 1st Qualifying Round: Ringwood Town 1 Eversley & California 0
Admission £4, programme £1, refreshments from the hatch 60p for a packet of Walkers crisps, 50p Mars bar, £2.50 for a very flaky sausage roll and coffee (confusingly, none of these prices bore any resemblance to the list pinned up by the window), and attendance a rather disappointing 43.

[Ally]

Great read as per Ossie.

Your sausage roll and coffee was almost the same price as my chicken and black bean sauce I've jut had from the take away.

[TheOstrich]

Your sausage roll and coffee was almost the same price as my chicken and black bean sauce I've jut had from the take away.

I'd stick to the chicken and black bean, to be honest, Ally. I dread flaky football club sausage rolls. I usually have a compulsive desire to hoover the clubhouse carpet afterwards ......

[Ally]

[TheOstrich]

16/09 – to Cockrams on Tuesday to see The Rockies (Shaftesbury Town), and two interesting talking points emerged. Firstly, there is no need to make a change to the title of this thread, because as we entered injury time, with the score at 2-2, no extra time in this Wessex League Cup tie, and penalties beckoning, I thought “Nah, someone’s going to score and deny me my second ever penalty shoot-out!”. And then I thought, “Maybe, just maybe …... ” – at which point the wretched Harry Beckley pursued a ball down the left channel and neatly lobbed the away keeper to give Shaftesbury a 3-2 victory. That was in the 92nd minute; the referee restarted the game and promptly blew for full-time! Unbelievable! So still only one penalty shoot-out seen, after all these years ….

The other little point is that you have all been very kind and suggested that Ossie should publish his memoires in a book. Well ….not quite, but I always post an account of games I attend on a major non-league football forum after the match and on Wednesday, I received a PM from a guy who is the Editor of the Sydenhams Wessex League Newsletter asking if he could use reprint my Shaftesbury report in their next edition!! It’s published online on the league's official website. Ossie was so discombobulated, he failed to ask how much birdseed they’d send him for giving his permission …..

It really was an excellent match, played in foul and filthy conditions, incessant rain and wind gusting across the pitch, and credit is due to both teams for their performance. Whitchurch United were very unlucky to lose it at the last gasp.

So to today, and a senior citizen short-term memory loss moment for Ossie as we made plans to attend Amesbury Town vs Fareham Town, and then suddenly thought, “hang on , who did we see play a couple of weeks back at Hamworthy?”, and yes it was Fareham! So a quick re-trawl through the fixture lists, and Paulton v Kidlington ticked a couple of boxes. Firstly, the away side are on my bucket shop list for this season, so an opportunity to knock them off now rather than leaving it until Taunton next March as originally planned, and secondly, Paulton Rovers are one of a number of Southern League clubs currently toying with on-line programmes.

Now like many groundhoppers, I’m old-school and an inveterate programme collector (they all go in a couple of big boxes in the wardrobe ), and I’m somewhat disconcerted by a new regulation issued by the Southern League this season that clubs may produce online programmes only. This is all very well, but the costs of downloading, configuring and printing out a 36 page programme at home on my crappy ancient Kodak printer would be extortionate , and in any event, I want something I can read at the match on the day. This was therefore an opportunity to visit a new ground and acquire traditional match-day paperwork because Paulton are, at the moment, still providing copies at the turnstile as well as on-line, but I am not sure for how much longer. Arriving ridiculously early, as per my usual technique, I quickly ascertained from the gateman that the current print run is only about 20-30 copies, so asked him to put one under the counter for me when they arrived, whilst I sat in the bar and generally lost the will to live watching Crystal Palace vs Southampton on the wide-screen . Later, paperwork securely in hand, I did overhear rumblings of discontent from the Kidlington dressing room that there were no complementary copies laid out in the changing rooms (this is the norm), and away club officials were actually being asked to pay for any they wanted.

Paulton is a large village (population just over 5,000) lying in the old Somerset coalfield belt which includes Radstock and Midsomer Norton. It’s otherwise pretty unremarkable, although it was the site of the first ever Great Mills DIY store, which has now morphed into Wickes. Paulton Rovers’ ground lies off the B3355 south of the village centre; approaching from Radstock and Welton you pass the small cottage hospital and the La Campagne restaurant, and you then need to turn into Bloomfield Rise with the large club car-park immediately on your right. The clubhouse entrance is outside the ground; the bar (complete with taciturn barman) is spacious and the décor is that sort of brown and slate-grey that you might associate with an old-fashioned country hotel. A turnstile by the clubhouse takes you into one corner of the ground – on the clubhouse side there’s an old-fashioned elevated stand with two flights of corrugated steel steps up to the seats, and beyond that a smaller seated stand at ground level. Behind the near goal, and along the far side of the pitch, it’s basically no-frills covered standing; the pitch slopes slightly end to end. A rather utilitarian ground.

The game itself was somewhat tetchy, and occasionally rather evil due to a number of off the ball incidents. By the 20 minute mark, it looked like it was all over anyway, as Paulton were leaving wide open spaces on their left flank for Kidlington to exploit, and the away team quickly rattled in two goals through Martin and Browne; the referee had already booked two players by then, (one inexplicably, and the second for attempting to bury an opponent, which was probably justified ), but then produced a straight red for Paulton’s Harvey, signalled as feet up in a tackle, but my take on it was that it was a pretty harsh decision, a view echoed by the home bench, who were apoplectic with rage, and Harvey himself, who had to be ordered off, and subsequently sat near me in the stand, muttering darkly . I didn’t blame him. Paulton then upped their game, as often happens when it’s 10 v 11, but it was still 0-2 at half-time, and it could have been worse given that the home keeper had a rush of blood at one point, tried to dribble the ball past an attacker and all but lost it.

Into the second half, and Paulton pulled a goal back within the first two minutes, Byrne converting a left wing cross. Then on 53m and 64m, Paulton’s Ball notched two goals, the first a solo run stumbling through three challenges before shooting, the ball hitting the cross-bar, bouncing down onto the line and spinning into the net, whilst the second was a close-range far-post header from a direct free kick. A most unexpected turn-around, and Kidlington didn’t have anything left in them to come back from that.

One final aspect that rather annoyed me, and that was the amount of taunting and sledging that took place during the second half, one of the home players being a serial offender . Some consider it part of the beautiful game but IMO there shouldn’t be a place for it, not the constant baiting I heard today. Surprised the referee didn’t “have a word” with said player, to be honest ….

FA Cup 2nd Qualifying Round: Paulton Rovers 3 Kidlington 2
Admission £7, programme £2, refreshments J2O and cheese ‘n onion bun in the clubhouse £3.10, Winterfield Whoppa (double cheeseburger and onions inna bun) and golden vegetable cuppa-soup at the hatch £4.70, attendance 155.

[Ally]

Oh how exciting Ossie...will I be able to see your report online?

That weather sounded awful!

That food all sounded good!

Thanks for another brilliant read Ossie.

[cromwell]

Muttering darkly!

I agree about the taunting Ossie, I've never liked that sort of behaviour.