The day I joined the Village People

Anyone who knows me will say that I am partial to a nice piece of head wear.  At football I can be seen wearing a beanie hat, Yorkshire cricket baseball cap or one of those Peruvian hats with ear covers.  For horse racing or holidays I have a nice straw hat.  At work I became rather fond of a denim tea cosy which could be shaped into a rather fetching hat in the Russian style and when we had a particularly shrill female Interim Finance Director a bump hat with attached ear defenders.  In fact I need little encouragement to put something on my head even though I have a good head of hair (for my age) albeit slightly receding at the front.

Recently I have had a hankering for a txapeldun, which is a special Basque beret.  I fear wearing a normal beret would leave me looking like a short, fat Frank Spencer.  Lets face it nobody wants people to go 'oooo Betty' when they see you.  A txapeldun is big, no outrageously big beret.  You can sometimes see them being worn in the crowd at Athletic Bilbao matches, usually by older gentlemen smoking huge cigars.  Just how big a txapeldun can be is probably best illustrated by an episode of The Goodies (from those old enough to remember them!)  In one episode entitled Kung Fu Kapers the lads introduce us the mystical ancient Lancastrian martial art of Ecky-Thump.  I seem to remember Ecky-Thump mainly consisted of men dressed in trousers with big braces, Fair Isle tank tops and ridiculously large flat caps hitting people with Rochdale black puddings (I guess a lot of acid was dropped in the late sixties and early seventies).  A man was reported to have laughed himself to death at this episode.

A txapeldun is about the size of the flat caps worn by The Goodies...

So to todays match when I popped along with John to see North Ferriby United play Stockport County in the Vanarama National League North.  North Ferriby are known as The Villagers (North Ferriby being more village than town) and so wanting them to win would make me one of the Village People!  Sadly no Native Indian headdress, police motor cycle helmet or Stetson today (and under no circumstances leather peaked cap), just a straightforward Beanie hat.

Fat man in a beanie

North Ferriby 2 (0)  Stockport County 0 (0)  Saturday 26 March 2016

Eon Visual Media Stadium

Brooksby (63), Denton (69)
Attendance: 926

The National League North is probably the top level of the part-time non-league game so is a pretty decent standard.  The next step up the National League, which is one step below the Football League, is a serious business and clubs are largely professionally run and the players full time footballers.  The National League contains a number of teams that were in the Football League in recent years and in standard is close to League 2, so think of it as League 3 (or division 5 in old money).

The ground is a decent little one, I have been here before for Hull City Reserves matches, but promotion to the next level will probably require a fair bit of investment in improvements.  Today’s opponents were an established football league side until recent years and this was reflected in the travelling support and the attendance in general of over 900 which brought some atmosphere to the match.

Admission was a reasonable £12 and the match day programme £2 although a bit lacking in content for me.

Humber Bridge in the distance

If the match is dull you can always manage a bit of train spotting










Conditions made playing decent football difficult, with a very strong, gusting wind and angled drizzle.  Much of a combative first half was spent with big punts up field and the ball in the air a lot; both sides being desperate not to concede an early advantage to the opposition.  The feeling was that both sides were above this and that hopefully if conditions would ease a bit then there was the danger of a decent game breaking out.

There were big queues at the refreshments hut but John showed great patience to come back with Bovril and a very decent steak pie.  In half time conversation I remarked to Nick that I couldn’t see a breakthrough and if the side half followed as more of the same we were set for a dire nil-nil, but Nick disagreed.  Shows what I know.

Action at the 'Allotment End'

The second half started much better and North Ferriby quickly produced a bit of a panic in the Stockport box and a goal mouth scramble (oh how we love one of those).  Then Stockport had a decent chance at the other end but headed wide.

North Ferriby broke the deadlock when a nice move was finished off with a powerful strike by Brooksby.  The lead was doubled six minutes later when Denton sprung the offside trap (though we less sure than the assistant referee) and neatly finished.  It was though just reward as he had played very well in attack despite a lot of defensive skulduggery and had produced some fine headed clearances.

Stockport redoubled their efforts to get back into the game in the remaining twenty minutes but North Ferriby used all their experience and showed great composure meaning the result was never really in doubt.

The second half made up for a poor first half and the bracing weather brought a glow to the cheeks.  Now all we needed was England to finish off Sri Lanka in the 20Twenty cricket and Roy’s lads to beat Germany in Berlin to end a great Saturday...not asking for much.