“If I were a rich man,
I might then be able to afford a Yeovil Town season ticket ….”
Time for the bird to re-open his footie diaries for the forthcoming season, hopefully for your enjoyment, but probably, I suspect, more for your general bemusement.
It promises to be an interesting 2019/20 season in many ways. Firstly, locally, we have the afore-mentioned Yeovil Town newly relegated into the Non-League Pyramid after 16 years or so in the Football League. This has come with a shed-load of politics; the collapse of a proposed take-over by Americans, the current negotiation of a take-over by some, shall we say, interesting characters
(the jury is potentially still out over this – the hook is that there’s a lot of land surrounding the club’s stadium that’s got development potential – but most Glovers fans appear happy to see the back of the old regime), the departure of the old manager and the majority of the players, the appointment of an untried new manager (who left his last post as head of the academy of a Football League side “amicably” after being suspended for alleged bullying 
) and the recruitment of a brand new rookie squad. It promises to be an interesting ride, and I have one or two visits to the Huish already pencilled in.Secondly, the bird is hoping to make a more visits to far-flung venues by train, although the threat of rail strikes has not gone away.
There’s an uneasy truce at the moment between the RMT and South Western Railway over the role of guards on trains, but I see that the RMT has recently balloted members who have given the union the go-ahead to call more strikes. 
Possibly more serious is the threat of a nationwide rail strike over pensions. Nothing will happen overnight, but we shall see what we shall see.Thirdly, we have had a bit of league restructuring in the area, which has mainly affected Cornwall and Devon. The South West Peninsula League was split into two, East and West, and two new county-wide leagues set up to feed into them. In Cornwall, there was a marked rebellion.
Teams in the west of the county refused to travel to Saltash and teams in the east of the county refused to travel to Mousehole! They got around this by dividing the feeder league into two - but then found they didn’t have enough clubs to fill all the new spaces. Meanwhile in Devon, there was initially great enthusiasm for their two new feeder leagues 
; however, that rapidly disappeared when clubs were asked to stump up £100 towards the costs of running them! Apart from Feniton FC, who publically declared they wanted nothing whatsoever to do with it, it has proved very difficult to establish what the ‘eck has gone on down there, but apparently the two new leagues are now up and running – we just need a website to confirm it!Finally, we have the mass roll-out in non-league football (Step 5 and below) of sin-bins, which have been trialled over the last couple of years. They seem to be effective, as there was a 38% reduction in the number of cautions for dissent in the leagues that took part, but pity the poor referees, because the actual new laws themselves are more than somewhat complex. If a dissent offence is followed by a second dissent offence and then by a non-dissent offence, what do you do? Answer below!*
Oh and by the way, remember Marvin Brooks? The Poole Town midfielder who skipped pre-season training and entered ITV2’s Love Island?
Well, apparently he “coupled” (I understand that’s the technical term ) with some lass called Maura but she dumped him after 13 days in the villa and that was the end of that. Still, didn’t do him any harm as when he did resurface back at Poole, he scored 5 goals in their next pre-season friendly! Which brings us to Ossie’s own series of pre-season friendlies. Three enjoyable and quite competitive games, at Salisbury, Street and Wimborne Town, sandwiching Melksham Town vs Bath City, which was anything but.
In the absence of wet paint to watch drying, 4 hot air balloons, a low-flying Hercules and a Velocity Blast or some such cricket game between Hampshire and Sussex on Sky Sports in the bar proved acceptable diversions to the football. This was seriously heading for a goalless draw, but somehow it finished 1-2, both Bath goals resulting from the home side’s defensive errors.So, to today’s opening fixture of the 2019/20 season. Amesbury Town were the target, a ground I haven’t previously been to, and the opposition were the strangely-named Baffins Milton Rovers, who were apparently formed in 2011 by the merger of two Hampshire-based Sunday sides. Baffins ply their trade in Portsmouth and have a rather well-appointed ground in the Hilsea area with views over the Channel. Amesbury Town play at Bonnymead Park which involved navigating the one-way system in the bustling town centre, driving over the picturesque River Avon bridge, and after the sign announcing you’re entering the historic Stonehenge Heritage Area, turning right down a narrow track to the main car park with the ground a hundred yards or so in front of you. Reference to Stonehenge is quite apt – the gigantic buttresses in the Gents loo appeared to have been hewed from the same Neolithic quarry.
The clubhouse itself was quite non-descript, but apparently before I arrived, there had been some sort of opening ceremony involving the town’s deputy Lord Mayor cutting a ribbon; the changing rooms having apparently been enlarged (by one metre!) to meet the latest batch of FA directives. Two seasons ago, Amesbury were relegated to Division 1 of the Wessex League. Rather surprisingly, they bounced straight back, gaining promotion last year back to the Premier. Baffins, in contrast, have been performing as a fairly solid Premier side for a number of seasons now.
After the first quarter of an hour or so, I was beginning to wonder if I’d made the right choice of match. Baffins looked happiest going backwards, and Amesbury seemed to have no idea where they were going at all.
But as the game progressed, Baffins realised Amesbury were there for the taking, started pressing forward, and took the lead on 28m via Parish’s easy goal after a defender failed to cut out a cross. Parish duly celebrated Ronaldo-style by the corner flag, thus earning the wrath of his manager: “What on earth the **** does he think he’s doing?” Moret made it 0-2 just 4 minutes later, a simple unchallenged header in front of goal.After the interval matters only got worse for the home team. Moret scored his second on 79m and two late penalties made it a handsome victory. On the basis of this opening game, Amesbury might be a good bet to go straight down to Division 1 again!
Back home on the A303, passing Stonehenge itself, which was surrounded by hundreds of tourists, only to find (with no prior warning or signposts) the road closed at Cricklade due to a lorry fire earlier in the day.
I had thought it was quiet for a Summer Saturday! Managed to work my way around it on country lanes, and thankfully not much delayed.https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/som ... ed-3170265
Wessex League Premier Division: Amesbury Town 0 Baffins Milton Rovers 5
Admission £3, basic programme £1
No hot food on offer, so a couple of buns for £2. For the connoisseur, one cheese and coleslaw and the other ‘am and pickle.
Attendance: 77
* The sin bin question: Well, in theory, that combination of events should never have happened. Your errant player would have been sent to the sin bin permanently on the second dissent offence, and not allowed to rejoin the match!
