Ostrich on the Hoof

[TheOstrich]

31/08 - First Qualifying Round of the FA Vase (the FA Cup for minor non-league clubs) today, and two or three interesting encounters in the area with Cornish clubs making their annual foray across the Tamar Bridge. The game I chose was, needless to say, the lowest scoring one of the bunch , but interesting nevertheless.

The venue was Keynsham Town FC and Keynsham is a pig of a place to try to drive to. It’s half-way between Bath and Bristol on the A4 trunk road, but to drive there on main roads from Dorset normally involves passing through Bath city centre, and no-one in their right mind does that if it possibly can be avoided. Not if they want to arrive at their destination the same day, that is. The alternative is to try to find a cross-country route through the Mendips and that’s not easy either. My preferred way (well I’ve done it once before, but got lost twice coming back ) is to Frome, then across to Radstock, and then through the hills via Camerton and Timsbury to pick up the A39, and you have plenty of time to admire those pretty little villages because, this being BANES territory (Bath and North East Somerset District Council), each village has a two to three mile section of 20mph roads! So it’s a long journey.

Turning right onto the busy A39 is not the easiest task, but after that it’s quickly off onto the B3116 and that leads you down into Keynsham, where another long 20mph stretch awaits you. I didn’t fancy traversing the town centre itself, so used the A4 bypass to get round it, and turned back down Daisy Hill towards the conurbation and the AJN Stadium.

Getting into the stadium carpark wasn’t easy either (you have to pick up a narrow sliproad that dives behind a brick wall) and I was glad I’d found that out by researching Google Street View before setting off. But the carpark was tarmacked, spacious and well laid out, unlike the usual potholed, loose gravelled dumps I usually have to frequent. The pitch is a 4G artificial surface, a bit of a rarity in these parts, but the rest of the stadium was a bit ho-hum. There’s a clubhouse and changing room building down one side, but nothing on the other three. And the bar was very nondescript, not much in the way of furniture, and the Sports TV was one of those projection arrangements onto the back wall that tends to lose all focus and definition in the picture.

In town today were Helston Athletic, who had made the sensible decision to travel up yesterday evening. It’s a shade under 200 miles, and not one to be done on a Saturday in August. My 38 miles from Dorset was bad enough! Helston have been tipped to win the South West Peninsula League Premier West this season, so Keynsham, newly promoted into the equivalent Western League Premier Division, were aware they’d be no pushovers - and an incident as early as the second minute set the scene. Keynsham’s veteran Scott Saunders, in the back line of defence, slightly misjudged a long ball hit forward, and instead of firmly heading it back, he deflected the ball the other way towards his keeper. Quick as a flash, Helston’s Alfie Flack was past him, onto the ball, and all but nutmegged the home keeper Ash Clark. Clark did well to sit on the ball!

What quickly became obvious was that Helston, a young side, were whippet-fast and they mercilessly chased everything (including the home keeper ). The Keynsham defensive four were under huge pressure from the start, and it wasn’t a huge surprise when Helston took the lead on 13m. A corner to the near post was glanced on to Olly Brokenshire, who cleverly juggled the ball past a defender and rammed it home.

The story of the rest of the match is quickly told. Keynsham couldn’t make much headway and got cross with themselves. Helston’s fast forward surges always looked dangerous. The game got a bit fractious later on; referee Mike Halford booked four and calmed it down. Both sides had a penalty shout turned down; neither looked like penalties to me although Helston’s had more merit. Helston played out time by the corner flag. And that was it for this week! Entertaining enough, and another Cornish football club in Ossie's bag.

Only got lost twice again on the return journey, but not as badly as last time!

24/08/19 – Buildbase FA Vase First Qualifying Round: Keynsham Town 0 Helston Athletic 1
Admission: £4, including a free 32pp programme, not a bad read.
Refreshments: A run of the mill pasty £2.50 and chips (of the frites variety), on which I accidentally put too much salt £1.50
Attendance: 71. Poor, really, I’d have thought they’d get more than that, but Bristol City were at home today so I wonder if that’s a factor.

[Kaz]

Blimey Ossie, that was a trek, but I totally agree about avoiding Bath, it's a nightmare for traffic

Shame about the chips, I hate it when that happens

[Ally]

Too much salt.

Reminds me of one time in a restaurant Don was putting pepper on his potatoes and the lid just fell off covering everything in a mountain of sneezy stuff.

Great read Ossie.

[Ally]

I've always wanted to go to Bath.

[Kaz]

Ally it's beautiful! Mick and I had a lovely weekend there, years ago Just don't take the car, it was built for carriage and horse, or pedestrians

[Ally]

We've got friends who live there Kaz and their car is hardly ever off the front drive.

[Kaz]

I can imagine, but lucky them!

[cromwell]

Os, driving 200 miles to play a non league football match is surely madness. Great report.

[TheOstrich]

It was more or less a year ago that Ossie took part in the Great Barnes Fiasco, a trip to the capital where just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. This week, the footballing blog relates one anniversary fiasco and one very near miss …..

I set off on Tuesday night for the short run to Yeovil Town to watch Sutton United, up from the capital for an evening game. But just as I left the town boundary, a warning light started shining on the dashboard of the Ossiemobile , so I dived up the narrow road towards the rugby club, pulled in at a farm gate, and, although I had a good suspicion as to what the fault was, started scrabbling in the glove compartment for the jolly old Handbook. Emerging triumphant from the depths, I looked up to find an extremely large agricultural sprayer looming over the car trying to get out of the field I was blocking! Cue a hasty departure up the road to another safe spot, where I confirmed the warning light was for an “external light failure”.

Of course, there are only so many external lights you can check from inside the car – you can’t properly check the brake lights for example – and although I couldn’t see any obvious problem, I decided to give the football a miss and rumbled back home, in order to drag Mrs O away from “Murder She Wrote” to help me thoroughly check round the car. And, do you know, we couldn’t find a thing wrong – full beam, dipped, brakes, indicators, side flashers, reversing, fog light – all fine! So it had to be a sensor failure – oh well …….

So down to the garage on Thursday for them to take a look, and they phoned me in the afternoon:
“All sorted!”
“So was it the sensor then? Have you replaced it?”
“Nope, it was a light bulb ….”
“Can’t have been, I checked everything!” I protested.
“It was the rear numberplate light ……”
Just about the one thing I’d never thought of …..

So to Saturday’s fixture, and, having not seen Sutton United on Tuesday, I was definitely interested in now seeing Sutton United play Notts. County at Gander Green Lane, up in London today. However, I was aware of some planned disruption to local services in and out of Waterloo set for today, so after mulling it over, I decided very late on Friday night to adopt Plan B – a visit to Maidenhead United – and what a lucky decision that turned out to be.

Getting to Maidenhead involves catching the Waterloo train up from Dorset and changing at Basingstoke. As I alighted onto the platform there, dead on time at 12:00, there was a frantic, garbled station announcement. The only thing I caught was “major incident”. Nonplussed, I wandered down to the Departures board to check on my connection – the 12:34 Cross Country service to Reading, and caught another garbled announcement ending “all trains cancelled …” The Departures board was, however, still showing the 12:03 local stopper to Reading …….

Well, not for nothing is the Ostrich known as The Fastest Bird on Land in the Whole Universe! With full squawk/flap mode engaged, Ossie hurtled down the subway in a cloud of feathers, up the other side, and charged along to Platform 5, just managing to board the train. The trouble was, around 100 wannabe Usain Bolts were charging along in the Ostrich’s slipstream under the similar impression this might be The Last Train Out of Town. And it was only a 2-carriage diesel unit! We stood packed like sardines all the way to Reading ….

An interesting aside here; I hadn’t prior knowledge of this 12:03 train because it hadn’t come up on the National Rail Enquiries itinerary. I think this is because they automatically assume you need a 5 minute period to change trains, whatever the station. They obviously hadn’t bargained for the Fastest Ostrich in the West (Of England).

The onwards journey from Reading to Maidenhead was accomplished without further fuss, and as Maidenhead’s York Road ground is literally a 5 minute walk from the station, Ossie was safely ensconced in his seat well before the start of the game.

The two clubs playing today have two very well-known and respected managers. Maidenhead’s manager is Alan Devonshire, who player over 350 games as a winger for West Ham in the 1970’s and 80’s.; he was capped 8 times for England, and was in West Ham’s FA Cup winning side in 1980. Their opponents for today, Dagenham & Redbridge’s manager is Peter Taylor, who played in the 1970’s for Crystal Palace and Spurs, and was capped 4 times by England, scoring twice. He’s also had spells coaching England U-20 and U-21 teams in recent years, and In November 2000, whilst managing Leicester, Taylor was appointed caretaker manager of England for one match. For that game, he made David Beckham England’s captain for the very first time …..

Maidenhead’s ground is a good, old-fashioned traditional stadium. And it has history – according to the FA, it is the oldest, continuously-used Senior Association Football Ground in the World, having been used solely by the Magpies since 1871. They’ve actually got a blue plaque to that effect by the turnstiles. Various parts of ground still appear to date from that era, as well, but they do have a modern 550 seat stand down one touch-line.

As for the match, it was yet another low-scoring affair, settle by a solitary penalty on 48m, put away by the Daggers’ James Dobson after a home defender had handled in the area. Declan Bourne, the referee, thought long and hard before awarding it, but although the home fans were claiming it was inadvertent, it was a pretty cast-iron decision, really, by my reckoning. Dagenham’s goal led a charmed life at times; there were at least two clearances off the line, but Maidenhead could easily have conceded a few more themselves. An entertaining game, and just about the right result.

One fascinating feature during the game was the number of red kites, the birds of prey, wheeling leisurely over the ground and quartering the pitch. Despite the ongoing play, they were completely unfazed, and were at times hovering as low as 50 feet above the turf, I reckon.

The effects of the earlier “major incident” – a person had been hit by a train near Farnborough which had led to all services to and from Woking and Waterloo being immediately cancelled whilst the British Transport Police and emergency services dealt with the aftermath – were still being felt on my return journey, with eventual arrival home about 20 minutes late. I don’t know the circumstances of this particular incident, but it is a salutary fact that annually, around 250 people take their own lives in this way. It’s perhaps timely to devote a thought for all the people who are affected by such tragedies ……

07/09/19 – Vanarama National League (Step 1): Maidenhead United 0 Dagenham & Redbridge 1
Admission: £10 concession, programme £3 and a decent read.
Refreshments: There was a longish queue at the Tea Hut at half-time, so I grabbed the first thing available in the hot cabinet, a Pukka Pies Sausage Roll. I had genuinely forgotten how vile they are. And to make matters worse, it was a Large one (£3.50). I had to break a rule of a lifetime and have a coffee from the trolley on the train back home (£2.25) to get rid of the taste.
Attendance: 1551, including a lot of happy East Londoners ….

[Ally]

Wow Ossie! What a fiasco on Tuesday!

The past two summers I've travelled from Waterloo (to Twickenham) and both times the trains and platforms were changed resulting in a full scale charge of about 200 passengers (me included) to find the new platform and the guard ready with his whistle. When he saw the onslaught of us lot charging towards him and some shouting 'waaiiittttt!!', he looked suitably horrified.

Sad fact about 'jumpers' but a very real one.






I've often thought why you don't take your own food to a footy match. But that would rob you of your weekly season 'treat'!
The Spanish go their matches always, always with a pitufo or baguette filled with meat and wrapped in foil and for dessert it's the obligatory pipas.

Superb read this week Ossie. I love your reports.