Mad Birds and Cornishmen

[TheOstrich]

Online dictionary definitions:

hop (noun)
1) a hopping movement:
"place the rabbit on the floor to have a hop around"
2) a short journey or distance:
"a short hop by cab from Soho"
3) an informal dance:
"the society's regular fortnightly hop"
4) a twining climbing plant native to north temperate regions, cultivated for the flowers borne by the female plant, which are used in brewing beer.

However, there’s one missing ….

Hop - a day-long non-league footballing event in which around 200 sweaty, overweight, beer-gutted, 60-70 year old male football fans gather at three or four soccer matches, each with staggered kick-off times, to meet socially, yak incessantly, boast and show off, buy specially-made football club badges and programmes, eat copious numbers of hotdogs and burgers, and drink real ale.

Would you want to attend one of these “social” gatherings?

Thought not.

Me neither! I wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole!

Saturday was the day of the annual Yeovil and District League Hop, already postponed twice this season due to bad weather, but much anticipated by the aficionados . It is a time that old acquaintances can be renewed, much merriment can be had, and the clubs like it, because if your average attendance is 30, and all of a sudden it’s a guaranteed 230, you can charge admission, sell programmes and ramp up the catering profits. Local residents don’t like it as much, mind you , because local parking is overwhelmed, and there’s large groups of strangers hoving around looking for the nearest fish and chip shop or pub. More “organised” hops even arrange a coach service between the football grounds!

So to Saturday, and the three Yeovil Hop games were scheduled for 11:15 at Ilchester, 14:00 at Bruton and 17:00 at Langport. Taking his usual jaundiced view of these matters , the Ostrich decided he’d do his own Yeovil Hop, avoiding the madding crowds, and visit Pen Mill Athletic at 14:00 and Yeovil Town at 17:20 (conveniently a late kick off to accommodate BT Sport, although how on earth you can consider the wretched Yeovil Town “Match of the Day” fodder defies belief ).

In the event, though - starting Thursday, 60 hours of continuous, incessant rain, ranging from mizzle to downpour, completely wiped out all the local matches . The Hop was duly cancelled (I do feel sorry for the organiser, a certain Tim Lancaster, because a lot of work must go into the co-ordinating of these events to make them run smoothly, and I can well sympathise with his heart-felt Tweet “That’s it - never again!” ), and Ossie’s 14:00 game was inevitably one of the casualties. But Yeovil Town did get their game on for the TV cameras. In fact, walking around the ground to the Ticket Office, I had to take some care avoiding tripping over a multitude of snaking cables leading to and from various large vans and satellite dishes .

To the match, and it was another inept performance by the Glovers which sees them further embedded in the National League relegation mire . They seem to have no plan, no cohesion, lack confidence and appear toothless up front - the team has scored just 31 goals in 38 League matches. Today’s performance against mid-table Southend United was marginally better than the Maidstone United game I saw at the beginning of February, but it was still pretty dire. As in that match, they conceded a first half goal, Jake Hyde being in the right place at the right time to score easily from 10 yards after 23m, and Yeovil were duly booed of the pitch at the interval, but even the boos were half-hearted this time around .

Again, as in the Maidstone game, they brought on Alex Fisher at half-time and back in February he secured them a point in the second half. Not so this time; after 54m he was involved in a collision with Southend keeper Collin Andeng-Ndi, and it was immediately apparent he’d received a serious injury. It was a classic 1 on 1 situation with the keeper coming out for the ball and the Yeovil player chasing in after it - the clash was unfortunate, accidental, and the keeper, who got to the ball first, certainly not to blame for it. After 5 minutes or so on-pitch treatment, Fisher was stretchered off, and from post-game comment, it’s a suspected broken ankle.
The Sun's take on it:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/21910226 ... ex-fisher/

Andeng-Ndi was subsequently roundly booed by the Yeovil faithful, not only for that incident but also for fully displaying his Master’s Degree in time-wasting . No ball could be caught without a protracted roll on the ground , and the 11 minutes of extra time was more than justified. That said, when Yeovil did get on target, he pulled off a stunning near-post save from Josh Staunton .

On 84m, Yeovil’s Miguel Freckleton was dismissed for a second yellow, and Southend’s Rhys Murphy hooked the ball into the net in the first minute of injury time to complete the Shrimpers’ victory. They shouldn’t congratulate themselves too much, however; they played like a team with a hang-over for most of the game. Way too much hoof-ball down the side-lines, and Smith didn’t really have a lot to do in the Yeovil goal.

After the game, manager Mark Cooper cut a dejected figure in his post-match interview , and the phrase “dead man walking” came readily to mind. About a fortnight ago, it was announced that Yeovil Town had been “taken over” by some 28yo called Matt Uggla, the son of a Canadian millionaire businessman, replacing the controversial Scott Priestnall who fans blame for the team’s demise, but since that announcement, there has been radio silence …….
Anyway, a massive next 10 days looming for Yeovil - they have to play fellow strugglers Dorking at home and Gateshead and Aldershot away. We shall see what we shall see!

01/04/23: Vanarama National League (17:20 ko)
Yeovil Town 0 Southend United 2
Admission: £5 (concession) for a seat in the Screwfix Stand, basking in the late evening sunshine. The maximum adult ticket price is £10 - matchday admission has been reduced for this and the remaining home games this season in an attempt to “#PackThePark” and generate some atmosphere; well, it’s certainly boosted the attendance by around 1,000. I can live with £5 considering the dross on display - better than the usual concession charge of £19 .
Car parking: £3.
Programme: £3 - 40pp glossy, all the basics included, but not exactly an absorbing read.
Refreshments: Didn’t bother, massive queues.
Attendance: 3,630 (announced), including 246 away fans.

[Ally]

That is a shame The Hop was cancelled.
UK weather.

Miguel Freckleton...I have visions of a Spanish Yorkshireman.

Great read Ossie very much enjoyed with my morning coffee.

[cromwell]

Both teams have seen better days. The were both in the football league at one time.
Sounds line a bad injury, that.
Miguel Freckleton? A name to conjure with, but for a Spanish yorkshireman I prefer Pablo Micklethwaite! (Who doesn't exist).
Sympathies to the Hop organiser - to have all that ruined by the weather!
Great read Os.

[Kaz]

Loving the Spanish/Yorkshire crossover

Another good read, Ossie

[TheOstrich]

A yellow light on the dashboard ….
“Oh, no, not again, Ossie”, I sighed.

The last time, it was the yellow engine warning light. I discussed it with the garage; shall I bring the car in?
“Nah, leave it overnight. The light’ll probably be gone by tomorrow morning.”
“Seriously? What are the chances it’s just a glip, then?”
“About 98% with your make of Ford ….”

The time before that, no warning light but whilst I was driving, I suddenly started hearing a strange, regular metallic ticking sound, which didn’t vary whether I was driving fast or slowly. I was driving up Shaftesbury tip at the time; what had happened turned out to be nothing to do with the car, despite my worries. I was transporting two old, life expired, ceiling-mounted smoke alarms for recycling, and one of them had “woken up” during in the car journey!

This week’s yellow warning sign I didn’t recognise. So out with the manual. When I eventually found it, on Page 100 as it happens, it said (and I quote):

FUEL RESERVE (amber)
The warning light turns on when the main beams turn on.

Errr, what? Fuel Reserve? I usually run with a pretty full tank, and I knew I was just under ¾ full. The main beams weren’t turned on, it was midmorning. And what on earth do main beams have to do with fuel reserves anyway?

I took it down to the garage, as I had to book an upcoming MOT and service anyway. I showed the manual to the guy who does the bookings and runs the place, and explained that the warning light was intermittent, and had now gone out. But what did it mean?
“No idea,” he said, puzzling over the book, “but that symbol looks to me like it’s for a heated rear windscreen fault.”
“Nothing to do with fuel? Nothing to do with lights?”
“Yep”
“So the manual’s gobbledegook, then?”
“Yep”
<sigh>

So, on to the footie. First, an update on Yeovil Town, for all those of you not glued to the BBC Sport Results app. Three crucial games, 9 points at stake, all against fellow relegation struggles. The outcome?
Gateshead 4 Yeovil Town 0
Aldershot 1 Yeovil Town 1 (and the Shots blazed a 87th minute penalty over the bar!)
Yeovil Town 0 Dorking Wanderers 1.

So now they are 8 points adrift of safety with only 3 games remaining, and the next game it away at league leaders Wrexham …. Actually, I’m rather pleased in the scheme of things. There’s a number of clubs in the league below I haven’t seen play yet, the likes of Eastbourne Borough and Tonbridge Angels, so you might find the bird down at Huish Park more frequently next Autumn.

Last Saturday, a local visit to Vernalls Field; a pilgrimage I make at least once a season to see South Cheriton United. On a balmy Spring afternoon in glorious surroundings, they managed to defeat promotion-chasing St. Crispins 5-4 in a highly entertaining game.

And yesterday?

Well, ‘tis the season of Rugby Union Cup Competitions and Ossie was slightly spoilt for choice with three interesting local cross-divisional ties in the current round of the competitions. Bridport entertained Bream from the Forest of Dean and got walloped 5-68, Wells defeated Frampton Cotterell 28-17, and then there was a third epic, pitting Counties 2 Dorset & Wilts Central division Westbury RFC against Counties 2 Cornwall Bodmin RFC - and that was the bird’s choice.

I’ve only visited Knott Field once before, back in 2017. The ground lies at the far end of the White Horse Country Park, although said famous equine, on the hill opposite the ground, is looking decidedly grey these days . An entertainment throughout the game, though, was the sight of paragliders leaping lemming-like off the top of the ridge by the horse , up to 20 of ‘em in the air at one point! The rugby campus itself contains a couple of pitches - the main pitch is railed on both sides and on one side sports four large wooden poles which, judging by the signage on them, once hosted floodlights, but not now. There’s a neat scoreboard on the far side, which wasn’t in use today. I seem to remember it wasn’t the last time I came either . Alongside the main pitch is a floodlit training area which could easily be a second’s pitch but has no goalposts, whilst a third pitch, at right-angles to the other two, has two of the most disreputable goalposts I’ve ever seen.

The clubhouse, set in one corner, is a rather utilitarian-looking flat-roofed building but surprisingly spacious inside, with a small bar area and the usual trophies and photographs on display. The changing rooms are merely a portacabin behind the near goal.

The game, which started at 14:00 (not that this was apparent from either clubs’ social media posts until around 10:00 this morning ), was a gloriously scruffy mongrel of a match; much aimless running about, much yapping (mainly from the Bodmin club linesman for whom the referee couldn’t get anything right - in fairness, he did have a bit of a point), and finesse was definitely a foreign word . Westbury opened the scoring on 10m when a long kick forward bounced wickedly backwards, completely wrong-footing two chasing defenders , and fell straight into the arms of James Leat who went in under the posts. Bodmin got their act together, pressurised the home team, and following an unconverted try on 25m, took the lead four minutes later with a superb breakout being finished off by Aiden Kent. However Westbury struck back just before the interval to make it 12-12, their conversion coming back off a post.

The second half could really have gone either way as the game ebbed and flowed. Advantage Westbury on 49m when one of their replacements crashed over for a converted try, but Bodmin’s Tom Day brought them back into the game on 76m with a 20 yard run; their conversion attempt, not a difficult one, was unfortunately wide making the score 19-17. Westbury desperately clung on to their slender lead, and despite the late sin-binning of another of their replacements, managed to seal the victory. A brilliant game for the neutral spectator, and plenty of banter with the vociferous Bodmin supporters who'd made the journey on the team coach.

Pre--match, I had wandered back down the road and visited the West Wilts Society of Model Engineering’s site, where two 32mm gauge (I think) steam locomotives were being tested on a raised track prior to a running day tomorrow. “Lady Magda”, a saddle tank, eventually set off after a lengthy steam-raising session and a bit of coaxing, but a GWR Prairie tank model regrettably failed with a defective water pump . Much muttering and tinkering underway when I left!

15/04/23 – (the snappily-entitled) Papa John’s Community Cup Counties 2 South Shield Round 2
Westbury RFC 19 Bodmin RFC 17
Free admission, no paperwork
Refreshments: A very nice ham and tomato bun and a Diet Coke £3. A proper big tomato too, you hardly see them in the supermarkets these days in my experience.
Attendance: 82.

And finally, as seen on the Bodmin RFC Facebook page. It got through the Facebook algorithms, but if of a sensitive disposition, look away now ....

Jodie: Best of luck gentlemen. Have fun on the bus
Mike: No waggling of male appendages on the bus on the homeward journey mind!!
Bodmin RFC: Mike, we’ve learnt from Truro’s mistakes
Mike: Their mistake was posting it. They obviously forgot the golden rule, to paraphrase the tour rule, what goes on on the bus, stays on the bus!!

I’ll leave the rest to your imagination ……

[Kaz]

[Ally]

Brilliant Ossie!

Papa John's has satisfied my hunger pangs on more than one boozy night in Brum.

[cromwell]

Those dreadful rugby chaps!

It does sound like a good match though; going on those scores there was a lot of entertainment.

Great read Os.

[miasmum]

Your Ford sounds a lot like mine Ossie, it loves a warning light

Great read and what a shame for all that organising

Least you got refreshments at the second go

[TheOstrich]

The MOT and service turned out to be a bit of a disaster - the car passed the test OK, but Diagnostics said there was a faulty fuel injector which they replaced for me the following day - the total bill was £537 ....

So, an update on the closing stages of the bird’s footie season …. only a few more games to go.

Well, following the entertaining Westbury v Bodmin rugby game, I decided the following Saturday to stick with egg-chasing , and travelled the short hop to Warminster to see the home team take on Teddington RFC in the Papa John’s Community Cup Counties 2 Championship Quarter-Finals. Teddington arrived as champions of Counties 2 Surrey, unbeaten all season, and in front of a bumper crowd of around 230, clinically despatched Warminster 7-42 in a game which won’t linger long in the memory. The highlight was probably the bacon bun for £3 before the game - it came adorned with 2 full rashers! I think they ran out of food before half-time.

This Bank Holiday Saturday saw my first ever visit to the Barwick & Stoford Recreation Ground. The twin villages of Barwick and Stoford lie about 3 miles south of Yeovil, next to Yeovil Junction railway station. Not that there are any trains at the moment because they’ve all been contaminated by the biofuel stored in tanks at Salisbury depot which has degraded and clogged up the filters on the train engines. They are a pig to replace, apparently, and with so many trains out of service, the timetable has been slashed (yet again) to 2 hourly.

Returning to the Rec, it’s street parking only at the ground and the available spaces were already filling up when I arrived an hour before kick-off. Before the match, I had a stroll round the area, which has an eclectic mix of housing including a couple of traditional “Dutch Barn” style semis, but no real village “centre”. Looking over the fields to the north, in the distance you could see the annual Bank Holiday 2023 Abbey Hill Steam Rally in full fling, including the top of a helter-skelter, and driving back after the game on the Sherborne road, I passed around a dozen old restored touring cars, all immaculate red and green paintwork and gleaming chrome.

There’s a simple brick-built changing room block with an equipment shed alongside; behind one goal there’s a rather run-down looking skate park and children’s playground, and that’s it, really. The pitch is unadorned, no rope or rail, and no dugouts. But what the pitch did have was, by my estimation (based on a mathematically extrapolating a small statistical sample from an area by the half way line - as one does ), around 4,000 dandelions. It hadn’t been mown for probably a week to 10 days, clumps of grass in places were a good three inches high, and I was slightly surprised the referee allowed a yellow match ball - you could’ve easily lost track of it! That said, the pitch did play quite well, although once when a wildly mishit cross was disappearing towards the corner flag, nobody bothered chasing it - and the ball stopped dead in play before rolling out. Cue mad dash across the pitch by attackers and defenders alike!

Bit of a classic men versus boys, this one. Plenty of action at both ends in the initial half hour, with Barwick’s piratical-looking captain in midfield bellowing his lads forward, and Somerton’s Colts displaying some sublime close-passing skills at times. Both keepers were happy to race off their lines in pursuit of the ball which presented a number of open-goal scoring opportunities, all of which were spurned. Somerton’s no.9 netted after a tussle, but it was ruled that he’d taken the ball out of the keeper’s hands. At the other end, the Colts keeper pulled of a blinding save, tipping a thunderous 25 yard drive over the bar. 0-0 at the interval.

Just 2 minutes into the second half, Barwick opened the scoring, their no.4 powering home a header from a corner. 2-0 on 62m when B.16 sidestepped a couple of challenges and picked his spot from 15 yards. The scoring was completed on 79m from the penalty spot by Barwick’s captain, coolly placing the ball to the keeper’s right.

An entertaining game, excellently refereed, and a quick get-away for home with a wary eye on a huge bank of dark rain-clouds which were beginning to pile up over the Yeovil skyline ….

29/04/23 – Yeovil & District League Division 2
Barwick 3 Somerton Town Development Colts 0
No admission
Refreshments: nothing available on site or in the village either, as far as I could see. There was a tattoo parlour, though ....
Attendance: 18

And finally today, a trip up to Frome Collegians to see the game against Blunsdon in the Wiltshire Senior League. Pitching 4th versus 5th, but a meaningless match in the scheme of things, Ossie was less enthralled by the footie than by the £1.50 slices of home-made coffee cake home-baked by the chairman’s wife. So good, the bird bought a second and took it home to share with Mrs. O. The game finished 0-1.

Probably only one more report to go on this season’s thread. Will the Ostrich get to a game next Saturday or will he be forced to act as mine host at the Coronation Tea Party Mrs O is preparing ……