Hall Road Rangers v Knaresborough Town 3 December 2016

Penistone Church v Hall Road Rangers from 16 November 2016

East meets West

In the summer a friend of mine, Darren Norton (@Knockernorton1), decided to set up a Fanzine to cover local non-league side North Ferriby United who had just gained promotion to step 1 of the non-league pyramid.  The aims of the magazine are twofold; to stimulate interest in a local club which has done wonders for its size, and to raise much needed funds for local junior football. 

View From The Allotment End @VFTAE was born in August and will be publishing issue 3 in January 2017.  It has started small but so far has sold out and has also sold small batches of merchandise (tee shirts and bobble hats).  The magazine doesn’t concentrate solely on North Ferriby United and because of this a few copies are posted across the country.  Details of how to get a copy can be found on the Twitter feed.

I will be a regular contributor to the magazine and my brief is connect football to the arts in general.  The piece I wrote for issue 1 follows, I hope you enjoy and check out the magazine, we think its rather good.

East meets West

As a youngster growing up in the 1970’s your football fixes were few compared to today’s 24/7 coverage.  Live football was almost non-existent; highlights on match of the day was best but restricted to a few major teams rather than covering all matches like today.  There was always the radio to fall back on though.  Crackly radio 2 on medium wave was put up with because of the brilliant Peter Jones, especially so for midweek European Cup matches.  For glamour we had Ajax and Bayern Munich but for mystique and the unknown we got a glimpse behind the iron curtain.

One of the strangest instances of East clashing with West happened in the 1974 World Cup in West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) when the hosts played East Germany (German Democratic Republic – the GDR) in the first group stage.  The GDR was formed in 1949 in the early days of the cold war when certain areas of the Soviet Occupation Zone the control was passed to Soviet supported communist administrations.  West Germany refused to accept the GDR as a sovereign state until 1972 and meetings between the two were restricted Olympic Games trial matches.

The draw for the groups in itself was controversial.  Chile should have played the Soviet Union in a two-legged intercontinental playoff but the Soviets refused to play the second leg in the Estadio Nacional which had been used a detention and torture centre in the recent coup d’état, giving the tie to Chile. Then the groups were seeded with previous World Cup Winners in one pot and the other three pots being on a geographic basis.  That kept the GDR (who would follow the Soviet’s bidding) apart from Chile but allowed for West Germany able to be drawn against the GDR, which following sods law duly happened.

This was to cause headaches as just weeks before the tournament the West’s Chancellor Willy Brandt had to resign after it was discovered that one of his personal assistants was actually a spy for the East.

The game itself was played at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg on 22 June 1974 watched by a sell out crowd of 60,200.  The West had already beaten Chile 1-0 and Australia 3-0 but they were not reaching the levels which were expected of them.  Whereas, the East had beaten Australia 2-0 and had drawn with Chile 1-1 and they were surpassing expectations but for them the only match that mattered was the final group one.  The final group match for Chile and Australia had already ended 0-0 which meant that both East and West had already qualified for the second group stage.

The game itself wasn’t regarded as a classic, perhaps there was too much at stake (from the East’s perspective), or perhaps there was too little with qualification assured.  Both sides spurned easy chances in the six yard box before Gerd Müller came closest to scoring hitting the post shortly before half-time.  Then the unthinkable happened on 77 minutes when a quick counter attack from the GDR found Hamann in space, intelligent running from Lauck provided a decoy for a long pass to Sparwasser making his run from deep midfield.  The pass took an awkward bounce and he appears to control it with his face rather than his chest but this pushes him past a defender and allows him to lift the ball over the sprawling goalkeeper Maier.  The West continued to press but they were wasteful and the East hung on for a dramatic victory.   After winning this one the East made sure that the record would remain intact by avoiding the West until re-unification.

Was there some kind of conspiracy?  Well coming second in the group meant that the West missed the Netherlands, who were blazing a trail, in the second phase.  However the Netherlands final group game was the following day (23^rd) so the idea of throwing the game doesn’t stand up, certainly not like the shameful events of ‘Disgrace of Gijón’ in the 1982 World Cup which led to final group games being played simultaneously.

The 1974 match features in a recently-released crime novel by Cottingham-born Hull City supporter,  David Young.  After trying a variety of temporary jobs – including a short stint with his father’s builders’ merchants, JR Young & Sons, on Clough Road, Hull – David ended up with a career in journalism with local newspapers, a London news agency, and international radio and TV newsrooms.  His first book ‘Stasi Child’ – the first of a series set in mid-1970s East Germany – was published in paperback earlier this year and has been longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA Historical Dagger.

The book centres on East Berlin and follows a case investigated by heroine Oberleutnant Karin Müller.  When a child is discovered shot dead but apparently running away from the Berlin Wall rather than trying to flee to the West, Karin feels that there is more to it than appears.  Reading it you get a feel for a life of oppression in East Berlin and the fear of Stasi and their many informants.  David cleverly weaves the match into the plot of the book but you will have to read it to see how he does it.

David, who is you football allegiance with these days, Hull City or some southern softies?

Very much Hull City, even though I now live in Twickenham and last lived full-time in Cottingham when I was nine. I’ve supported them since the days of Chilton and Wagstaff, with occasional breaks when other obsessions took over. As a boy I dreamed of City getting to the FA Cup final but never really thought it would come true – then it did, and I was there! I try to get to as many away games as I can and I’m a member of the Hull City Southern Supporters, but find it too expensive and time consuming to go to home games, so the Midlands is about my limit. Furthest trips this season were for the dire league defeats at Preston and Derby, although the latter was atoned for in that great play-off semi-final away leg. I wore my very rare 1981 Adidas HCAFC shirt to Wembley. Allegedly it’s the one Keith Edwards threw at Mike Smith in disgust when he was subbed in a 0-0 home draw against my now local team, Brentford. The club were in dire financial trouble (plus ca change) and I offered to buy a season ticket if they sold me the shirt Keith had thrown away. Whether it actually was his, I’ve no idea. It’s a very tight fit!

Scandi-noir is a well mined popular genre, what made you come up with a book in a style that may be called Commie-grey?

The book does feature a section on the frozen Baltic coast of East Germany, so maybe I ought to sneak it into the Scandi-noir piles in bookshops! As a diversion from a day job I’d grown to hate (as a news editor for BBC World TV) I started my own indiepop band at the end of the noughties, and managed to blag a little tour of Germany. So the inspiration was seeing how much of the GDR still survives in eastern Germany, and also reading the wonderful Stasiland between gigs – Anna Funder’s non-fiction stories of Stasi operatives and their victims. And, cynically, I spotted a gap in the market!

How did the match come into mind for the plot of this book?

I needed the officials at a GDR institution to be sufficiently distracted by an event that they wouldn’t notice something else happening. So really I just used it as a device. It was such a big thing for East Germany, I imagined as many as possible would have been watching it on TV. So the match features – but in a very tangential way.

What comes next for you/Karin?

I’ve been lucky enough to secure a three-book deal with my publishers Bonnier-Zaffre, and the second in the series – set in the East German new town of Halle-Neustadt – is due out in February 2017. At the moment I’ve just started writing Book 3. Football looms large in this one – with East German team Stahl Eisenhüttenstadt (which loosely translates as ‘Steel Ironworks City’!) central to the plot. A Manchester City-supporting friend has insisted I get his team in too, and some Tigers’ fans want Hull City references. So I can see I’ll have to shoehorn in a fictional 3-way friendly tournament between the three ‘cities’. One thing there won’t be any mention of is Hull Tigers … or ‘hooligans’ being told they can die when they want.

As they say, available from all good bookshops from February 2017....

Look at me, please!!

It was Andy Warhol, the somewhat eccentric artist who is probably best known for his Campbell’s Soup tins prints, who came up with the well know quote "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes".  In many ways I guess he is right with so many so called ‘reality’ TV shows thrusting the generally talentless to the forefront of the media to then fade into obscurity in a relatively short period.  This also applies to the various ‘talent’ shows like The Voice, The X Factor and the beautiful oxymoron that is Britain’s Got Talent, which have never really thrown up much in the way of lasting superstardom.  Bizarrely some people seem to be famous for being famous and nothing else and no one knows what they do, such as the Kardashians.  I like to feel that talent and hard work are rewarded, which I think they generally are, but sometimes that’s not the case.

Being a shy and retiring sort I have avoided being recorded on film to such an extent of crossing the road if I see that Look North are recording opinion pieces in Hull.  I have never wanted to be a spokesman and if one is wanted I will go AWOL.  I take the Homer Simpson approach that volunteers are suckers; never volunteer, never own up and always make fun of people who are different.

I have had a few fleeting seconds of fame though.  I got my name in the Times and Financial Times when I passed my professional exams.  I even proved to be a winner ...albeit the crossword in Fishing News and the Sodoku in Professional Pensions both of which had small prizes and results in print, but this is hardly big league fame.

It is possible to buy a bit of fame by sponsoring some event.  I guess I could try to get my name on the Big Screen at the KCOM stadium but knowing the Allams that would be eye-wateringly expensive as no doubt match and match ball sponsorship packages.  However, if you drop down to non-league it becomes very affordable.  I sponsored the match ball at Hall Road Rangers a few weeks back for the princely sum of £25.  That gets your name on the front of the programme and an announcement over the tannoy to a crowd perhaps running into three figures.  Not only that, you get admission for two with programmes and a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich in the inner sanctum of the committee room.  Bargain indeed. 

The match I covered was an incident packed local derby ...

Hall Road Ranger 2 (1)  v  Westella VIP 5 (1)   Thursday 14 April 2016

Adam Foster 47P, 63P      Chris Spinks 5P, 60 Garry Flounders 58, Chris Short 70, Joe McFadyen 75

Attendance: 75

Exhibit A match programme and the spelled my name correctly!

This game pretty much had the lot; seven goals, four penalties and a red card, so I couldn’t have picked a better game to be associated with, just a shame about the result.

This was probably the key moment 4 minutes in when the referee gave a red as well as the obvious penalty.  Personally I though he pushed the ball well out of range and so we would have managed to cover it.

The resulting penalty was put away.

The referee then continued to gave Hall Road Rangers no favours when he gave another penalty this time for hand ball when the ball made contact from an almost point blank shot.  Harsh in my opinion.

This time the stand in goalkeeper managed to keep it out.

Hall Road Rangers managed to get on terms just before half time with a penalty of their own.

In the second half Hall Road Rangers converted their second penalty the 4th of the evening but the extra man took its toll and Westella VIP put away another 4 to run out comfortable winners.

Smile please!

It’s over a month since I posted on this blog but not through a lack of things to say.  In fact more the opposite I've been so busy since the last post I just haven’t had time.  I had a three day visit to Belgium and France with work as well as fitting in a dozen football matches, a rugby league game and an ELO concert in Leeds.  The thing is the wet winter put paid to so many games that April has been a period of catch up with some non-league teams playing Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday.   Getting to four games in five days is great but when you work doesn't leave you with much time for anything else which is evidenced by the growing pile (physically and electronically) of books, audio books and football magazines in Chez Fleming.

I've also been faffing around with things I don’t understand...

Football fans in general have a sense of humour.  Standing in the cold and wet watching another drab goalless draw you’ve got to have one.   Admittedly much of the humour is coarse and ribald, probably as a result of the working class roots of the game, and it can manifest in a number ways.  Facing defeat in another relegation dog fight may result in gallows humour in a vain attempt to stay sane.  Some supporters can with superb comic timing usually coinciding with a moment of relative hush come up with a witty comment befitting Oscar Wilde and making smart-arse jokes at the expense of the match officials is now almost obligatory.   Then there are the songs and chants; sometimes coarse and offensive but others inventive and very funny.

Taking the piss out of friends and fellow supporters is also part of the game and if you are going to give it you better be able to take it!  Over the last few weeks I have been getting my share of good natured stick, well I hope it is good natured...

A couple of years back I got a pocket video camera for Christmas, to replace one that got lost, which sort of lives in one of the bedroom drawers.  The thing is being busy and suffering from age-related forgetfulness I never seem to have it with me when I go out and end up thinking if I had brought it I could have captured the moment.  This was to change though when one evening I had the idea of taking it with me when I went to see Hall Road Rangers.  What is wrong with that?  Queue the leg pulling.  Yes it is shaky.  No I am not after a job with ITV.  Yes I am the official adopted unofficial Videographer for Hall Road Rangers but I am not going up that tower, it doesn't look safe.  In fact it looks the sort of scaffold and architrave combination beloved of cowboy plasterers which can only end in tears for the unwary.  The funny thing is I also get “did you get that” and “let’s have a look” for the same people so it is of some benefit at the lower levels.  At North Ferriby United though they have a proper professional standard camera so I didn't get mine out, well no man wants to be belittled over the size of his equipment!

Still I will shrug off the jibes and persevere with it during the next non-league season and post the results on Twitter as well as some in this blog.

Hall Road Rangers 1 (0) v Knaresborough Town 1 (0)   Tuesday 12 April 2016
Jordan Harrison 57             Will Lenehan 80

Attendance 61

Hall Road Rangers hit the bar from a free- kick.

Hall Road Rangers take the lead from the spot

Knaresborough Town equalise from a corner.

A draw was probably a fair result and the game will probably be best remembered for the language emanating from the away bench, strong stuff!

Still I will shrug off the jibes and persevere with it during the next non-league season and post the results on Twitter as well as some in this blog.

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.