The Day I Joined the Good 'ol Boys

Getting old, sadly it comes to most of us lucky enough not to die young, which of course is sadder still.  Most of us hope for three score year and ten as a minimum, whereas only a few years ago 70 was considered a very good knock indeed.  Now most of us under 60 will be expecting to make it to 80 or beyond.  The aging population is playing havoc with pension schemes where contributions were set with say an expected post retirement life of 10 years and in a short time frame that payment commitment has doubled.  What a time to grow old in this 'vale of tears'.

I have passed 50 now and have had the day when I realised that I had probably lived over half of my allotted span and that this is probably as good as it is going to get.  All downhill from now, faculties fading and bits dropping off, I just hope my teeth hang on as long as I do.  How do we take this process?  Grow old gracefully or go all gung-ho like Iris Apfel (the 94 year old in the Citroen advertisement) and live life to max?  You're not ready and you never will be!  Well being a boring accountant I guess I will steer a path down the middle but with the occasional mad moment.

Television doesn't help; I for one am sick of the pathetic, contrived over 50s life cover adverts, so much so that if I ever met a certain professional Yorkshireman it would be a tossup whether shook his hand in awe or nutted him for being a sanctimonious git.  You can get that sort of cover for less and I hope you have BUPA cover too.  But seriously it can be frustrating getting e-mails from Saga trying to entice me on grab-a-granny cruises and the like and if after a 27 year hiatus I decided to 'get my boots out' it wouldn't be veterans now but walking football.  I am now old enough to play walking football; is there any wonder I feel like crying?

For now I will concentrate on beer and whisky and getting football fixes where I can at least until the cricket season is in full swing...

Today its 'Tales From The Riverbank' and sees Hammy (me), Roderick (Darren), GP (Rick) and the Wise old Frog (John) visiting the Good 'ol Boys of Barton Town on the south bank of the Humber.  A trip to Mississippi or Alabama would have been nice but sadly the budget doesn't stretch that far.

Barton Town Old Boys 3 (2)   Thackley AFC 1 (0)    Thursday 31 March 2016

Ashley Dexter (14, 22):         Thomas Dugdale (77)         

Jake Vernon (72)  

Attendance: 91

(Floodlight photo courtesy of Darren Norton - https://knockernortonfootball.wordpress.com/)

After last week’s race up the pyramid to National League North (which mysteriously includes Lowestoft) today we are back down to the Northern Counties East League Premier Division.

It has to be said that this nice little ground is not the easiest to find even though it is in the shadow of the Humber Bridge.  It’s down a little lane amongst houses near a railway crossing.  There is a decent size car park and pay up £5.00 and you are in and then realise that you can't actually see said bridge, it’s as if Dynamo has magic’d it away!  The Swans Review is the match day programme (£1.50) and is an excellent publication, one of the best I have seen so far. Full colour with a good mix of articles, statistics, player profiles and information amongst the necessary advertisements.  Well done, shows what can be done and is certainly a level to aspire to.

The club building is single story and pretty new, housing the changing rooms, a comfortable bar and committee rooms.  Opposite the dugout is a decent stand with seating and behind the goal to the right (south) is a 'shed' in which the Barton flag was hung and the keen lads stood.  As near as you can get to Ultras in Curva Sud in this level of non-league football and to be fair they did make some noise.  As I had come straight from work in Doncaster it was straight into the bar for something to eat.  Pie and peas.  The pie was decent enough but the mushy peas were a bit of a letdown, a small portion (I’m a growing lad) and a little watery.  I guess that this being the start of the south it is considered to be 'pea puree in pea jus' if they have gone all Jamie Oliver on us.  Still it set us up nicely for a cold night of football.

The 'Curva Sud'

The first half was a slightly odd affair with neither side creating clear cut chances from open play and Thackley for me probably just shaded it in quality of play.  It was Barton Town though who were on the score sheet with two powerful headers from Ashley Dexter who may not be the quickest of centre halves but can certainly head a ball with some force.

As with most small grounds the ball disappears out of play over some pitch side obstruction.  At North Ferriby United it may be the allotments; here it was the garden fence of some pitch side houses.  The lad assigned ball retrieval duties had to scale a 6 foot fence to get the ball.  Get the lad a stepladder chaps, health and safety and all that!

The second half was just as frantic as the first one but at least there fewer aimless punts up field.  With the ball on the ground, albeit somewhat bumpy, Barton Town exerted their dominance and Thackley seemed to run out of ideas.  Both sides scored but Thackley's was little more than a consolation goal and they never really looked like getting back into the game and taking anything from it.

This was a hard fought game between two committed teams and at the top level there would have been a flurry of cards for some of the tasty tackles.  A red one was shown for an impressive double pole-axing; no quarter is given at this level and I did note that the coach did seem to carry a tool box for some reason...

All in all an excellent evening; no doubt we will be coming back next season.

*no rye whisky was sipped or baccy chewed while producing his piece

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.

Scottish Football

The following is a piece that I wrote for Seasiders Review the match day programme of Bridlington Town AFC

Another Weekend in Scotland

A quick return north o’ the border, this time with Brother in Law John for a quick break before his birthday.  I’d promised him a little trip months ago and after so many local non-league cancellations last weekend seemed as good as any.

It’s a long way so an early start was needed.  We started the journey listening to some back episodes of The Blizzard podcast as I couldn’t face Talk Sport or 5 Live so soon after dawn.  The SatNav instructions kept interrupting the flow of the podcast which led to some amusing breaks such as “...his favourite anecdote was”.. “at the next roundabout go straight on”, bloody good story that one!  After a while though we succumbed to the inevitable and tuned into Talk Sport and endless chatter about the North London Derby.  Apparently a Talk Sport 2 is to be launched soon which will probably delight taxi drivers though you have to worry how thin they can spread their special brand of ‘intelligent debate’.

As the driver I was knackered when we finally reached Stark’s Park, the home of Raith Rovers.  Our first sight was the offices and the Val McDermid stand looming over a wall.  In case you are not a fan, Val McDermid is a crime writer (The Wire in the Blood, and others) who comes from Kirkcaldy.  A quick photo and tweet to Hull crime writer Nick Quantrill and we were off in search of refreshments.  Ten minutes later we almost run into the good lady herself but she was occupied with a group of people so I couldn’t go all fan-boy and ask for an autograph and picture.

Refreshment came by way of a decent pint Orkney Raven ale in the Robert Nairn down the lovely named Kirk Wynd.  I could have happily spent all afternoon supping but we had food to find and football to watch.

Food came by way of the ubiquitous pie from a local baker on the High Street.  John opted for a macaroni one and a chicken one whereas I went for scotch and chicken.  John was a bit apprehensive about the idea of a macaroni pie but after a couple of steaming bites deemed it one of the finest pies he had had.  Praise indeed!  I bit into my piping hot scotch pie and got a squirt of hot fat.  It is one of the mysteries of life that if you dip your finger in something wet two seconds later you have a wet arm up to your elbow.  In this case super heated pie fat up to my elbow; curses followed and some of my pie filling fell onto the pavement.

Stark’s Park is a curious little ground with the away fans sat in the Val McDermid stand behind one goal and the bulk of the home fans sat behind the opposite goal.  There is a main stand which contains the offices, changing rooms and such like but it doesn’t even make it to half way.  On the opposite side is a covered terrace which is being converted to seating, on which was proudly displayed the Raith Rovers flag which appears to be a Lion with a Talbort Sunbeam steering wheel.

The match itself was a very entertaining end to end affair.  The purist would probably argue that there were too many long and aerial balls but to be fair the pitch was heavily sanded by modern standards, which is not conducive to slick passing.  Raith opened the scoring after only three minutes and added a second mid way through the half.  St Mirren battled away and got their reward just before half time, but Raith were good value for their half time lead.

The second half started much as the first did when Hardie quickly grabbed two more to complete his hat trick, all of which were finished well.  They then eased down somewhat, becoming a little sloppy and inviting pressure.  St Mirren required no second invitation and got themselves back into the game on the hour mark.  The tide had turned and as so often is the case when a team eases off they find it hard to raise their game back to the required standard.  This was no exception and St Mirren added a third and were looking for looking for an equaliser.

Back to the car and a short drive over to Glenrothes where our hotel was situated, on a roundabout which being a new town it seems to have in abundance.  All rather confusing in the dark and for some inexplicable reason one wrong turn led to a 30 minute walk taking nearer to 90 minutes.  At least it worked up a thirst and an appetite!

We finally made it to the local Wetherspoon’s pub the Golden Acorn for a few pints and some food.  Unlike their pubs in England they do a Highland Burger which is like a chilli burger but with a haggis toping rather than chilli.  Bloody lovely; we must petition for them down south.

A great day was rounded off with a nightcap in the Fettykil Fox adjacent to the hotel and plans for Sunday morning sightseeing in Edinburgh.

Raith Rovers 4 (2) St Mirren 3 (1)

Hardie (3, 53, 55), Stewart (24)                   Watson (41, 76), Clarkson (61)

Raith Rovers

Cuthbert, Thomson, Toshney, Benedictus, McKeown, Connolly (Anderson 56), Callachan, Davidson, Panayiotou (Matthews 64), Hardie, Stewart

Substitutes: Anderson, Matthews, Thomas, Court, Craigen, Law, Barr

St Mirren

Langfield, Watson, Webster, Baird, Irvine, Gallagher (Gow 56), Mallan, Quinn (Agnew 25), Stewart (Thompson 85), Shankland, Clarkson

Substitutes: Goodwin, Gow, Thompson, Agnew, Cooper, Wilks, McAllister

Referee: John Beaton

Attendance: 1,888