An afternoon at the Impact Arena saw Alfreton Town FC play St Neots FC in the 4th qualifying Round of the FA Cup. The sunny afternoon brought out a total of 645 fans, over 100 from St Neots who were noisy through out.

This compact ground very close to Junction 28 of the M1 and tucked away in a housing estate has seating on two sides , standing behind one goal and mixed seating on one side. The pitch slopes down hill from the standing end and the grass cover is thick and lush. There was little wind and the sun shone intermittently through wispy cloud.

St Neots from the Southern League Premier  (Step 3) were trying to progress in the cup and match their previous best showing against an Alfreton team from the higher (Step 2) league, National League North.

Alfreton Town 4 St Neots Town 0

The Reds knowing the ground chose to kick down hill in the first half and soon took control of the game exerting pressure from both wings and were 4 nil up within 28 minutes and out of sight. No 7 Curtis Bateson playing down the left terrorised the St Neots defence and No 2 James Clifton overlapped continually down the right and his long throws were hard to deal with.

Within 5 minutes Batesons cross from a corner on the left swirled over everyone into the far corner of the net. On 18 minutes Peniket was brought down in the box and James Clifton placed it perfectly from the spot into the left hand corner. 4 minutes later Bateson was put through after some sloppy defensive clearances and he drilled it home and a few minutes later Clifton converted another penalty smashing it into the roof of the net in the middle of the goal. The penalty was awarded after Wilde had been bundled to the ground.

The game seemed to drift through to half time and St Neots made early substitutions in the second half and did press  but Ramsbottom in goal for Alfreton made some competent saves to deny any fight back.

Alfreton deserved to go through and their tactic of taking advantage of the slope and dominating early play may earn them a lucrative tie with a EPL club in the draw for the next round. Good Luck Alfreton.

Alfreton Town have two good refreshment kiosks at either corner of the ground and the chips were served quickly. They were hot and cost £1.50 but not a golden brown and did taste a bit flowery, their score is 63.

A beautiful day in Lincolnshire with a temperature of 24 degrees  greeted my visit to Boston United, whilst at the same time the West Coast of Britain was being battered by storm Callum.  As a club Boston United were only formed in 1933 when Boston Town folded. They now play in the sixth tier of English football (National League North) having once graced the Football League between 2002 and 2007. They have been involved in some great F.A. Cup giant killing in the past and reached the F.A. Trophy final in the 1984-85 season. They are very much a community club with a good following in this Lincolnshire outpost.

Their Northumberland opponents Blyth Spartans have a long history going back to their inception in 1899 and they still play at Croft Park where they started. They have for a long time been one of the most prominent Non-League teams of the North East. Like Boston they have been involve in F.A. cup giant killing but have never won a national trophy.

The Jakeman stadium is near to the town centre nestling amongst residential houses. It is overseen by the famous Boston Stump which is the tall tower of St Botolph’s Parish Church. The ground is magnificent, very tidy, covered on all sides, with seating down one side and some at one end. The program £3, ‘The Pilgrim’, is named after Boston’s nickname and is 48 pages of good, detail, interviews, statistics and photos not overpowered by advertising.

The wind swirled around the stadium. The beautiful striped grass was a little bare on the touchlines and the pitch sloped slightly downhill from the ‘stump’ end.

Boston United 4 Blyth Spartans 0

The game started slowly but within five minutes you could feel that Boston were gaining an advantage with some intelligent midfield play. A through ball to Gregg Smith enabled him to beat the offside trap and calmly stroke it passed the keeper for the first goal on 12 minutes.  Boston kept up the pressure and it wasn’t until the 40th minute that Blyth had their best chance as a header just went over the bar.

The second half continued much of the same with the Pilgrims unable to convert their superiority into goals. Then in the space of 15 minutes they scored three deserved goals. Firstly  on 64 minutes Walker scored through the goalkeepers legs after a neat through ball from Allott. The roles were reversed on 77 minutes when Walker’s pass along the goal line from the left was tapped in by Allott and just two minutes later Abbott struck a beautiful drive from 25 yards that went in off the cross bar.  The Pilgrims had beaten the Spartans 4-0.

The food facilities were good, manned by a very friendly and happy team. The prices were very reasonable, coffee £1.10 and chips £1.30. The chips were a good colour, size,  tasted of potatoes and were warm. They could have been a bit hotter hence a score of 73.

They are very proud of their football team in West Aukland. You get the message as you enter the town and on the green is a statue to their football exploits and their mining past.

Today is one of the derby’s of the season, West Aukland v Bishop Aukland, West v Two blues. 1.5 miles apart and local rivals for over 100 years, these County Durham teams have won trophies at their level to rival anyone in England. The fierce local rivalry was borne out of their strong mining communities.

West Auckland’s great football claim to fame is that they are known as the winners of the first ‘World Cup’ in Easter 1909. They won the Thomas Lipton Trophy in Turin beating F.C. Winterthur  of Switzerland in the final 2-0.The trophy was presented by Sir Thomas Lipton, of Liptons tea fame, who had organised the competition. Originally envisaged as between national teams it became a club competition with teams nominated from, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain. Just how West Auckland came to represent GB is not known but the team made up of mainly local miners managed to fund the trip at great cost and came back triumphant.

Two years later they defended the Trophy beating  F.C. Zurich 2-0 in the semi- final and beating Juventus FBC 6-1 in the final who had beaten Torino in their semi-final. They were then awarded the trophy for life and it stayed in West Aukland at the Wheatsheaf Hotel whose land lady had lent them £40 to cover some of their travel costs. The club managed to pay their debt in 1960 when tracking down Mrs Lanchester to Liverpool where she accepted £100 and the trophy was again theirs. It was displayed at a few local hostelries but was stolen from the West Auckland Workingmen’s Club in 1994 never to be seen again. Luckily the insurance money and sponsorship by Liptons meant a replica is again on display.

They have since been runners up in the F.A.  Amateur Cup in 1961 and the F. A. Vase in 2012 and 2014.

Bishop Auckland’s achievements match their rivals. Within 10 years of the club forming out of Bishop Aukland Church Institute in 1886 they had won the first of ten F.A. Amateur Cup finals a trophy that they were also the beaten finalists 8 times. In fact they played in 27 semi-finals a truly magnificent achievement in the then premier Cup for Non-League teams. For such an achievement they were presented with a replica of the cup to keep forever when it was retired in 1974.

You enter the ground down a track in one corner of the ground passing some housing, one of which is for sale, a snip for a passionate fan.

The pitch is open to the elements and slopes from one end to another and falls away from the stand side with a dip in the middle. The playing surface was thick grass that looked like a carpet.

West Aukland 1 Bishop Aukland 1

Both teams were competitive from the start and the referee had a good game dealing with some squabbles calmly. The crowd of 474 reflected the derby and there appeared to be equal numbers supporting their teams. It was a friendly atmosphere and everyone could use the homely club house or the food kiosk and there were lots of groups catching up on friends and gossip.

West Aukland started briskly and it was no surprise that Lamar Purewal rose to meet a great cross from the right by Hegarty and headed the ball firmly in the goal. Bishops came back hard and Winn who was leading the attack bustled through a group of West Aukland defenders to place the ball in the net on 28 minutes.

The 1-1 score at half time stayed the same to the end of the game even though both teams remained committed. West Aukland looked the most likely to score as Bishop Aukland tired and the draw they earned has taken them to top or the league. This will only be temporary as they have played more games than most other teams in the league.

Great afternoon out and a good game of Football.

In the chip league I have scored West Aukland 65, the chips were only warm, but they tasted really good.

In a back street of Todi a beautiful, hill top medieval  town in Italy, we stumbled upon a blacksmiths, metalworker, designer shop, where we saw this amazing coffee/patio table/ bar, football stadium.
Designed and created by the owner the Mini stadium had spaces to place bottles and glasses and had coloured lighting that you could remotely  theme to your personal team . The synthetic turf was overlayed with a football grid but this could easily be changed for tennis, American football, hockey or rugby.
The design has also been tried with a soil base and real grass
The owner and his friend were proud to show off their creation and other items in the shop.
Thank you.

On the first day of September (the weather forecasters start of Autumn) I visited Worksop Town’s Sandy lane ground to see them entertain Grimsby Borough in the 1st qualifying round of the FA Vase. The sun was out and the temperature reached 26 as these two North East Counties East Football League clubs competitively entertained a good crowd of 374 supporters.

Although Worksop play in a league above Grimsby they were evenly matched and it was understandable why Grimsby are fancied for promotion this year.

Worksop claim to be the fourth oldest team in England starting in 1861 but research has shown no records of them until 1873, ref: ‘A History of Sheffield Football 1857-1889 – Martin Westby’. This however still makes them one of the first clubs in England with a proud tradition. They have played at a higher level and done well in the FA Cup in the past but financial problems have brought them to where they are today, They  have returned to Sandy Lane, sharing it  with league rivals Handsworth Parramore whose owner purchased the Sandy Lane lease in 2011 and agreed a deal to allow Worksop to return after a nomadic period of ground sharing. Things are looking up again for Worksop Town.  

Grimsby Borough by contrast joined the Supreme Division of the Central Midlands League in 1987 then under the name Grimsby Ross. They finished bottom of the division in 1988–89, and were renamed Grimsby Borough at the end of the season. After disapointing results in the early 1990’s the club was re-established in 2003, in the Lincolnshire League. Since then they have been working their way through the pyramid system.

They play at Bradley Football Development Centre, Grimsby Rd, Laceby, Grimsby DN33 1RS which is significant in that they are the premier team in Grimsby. As many pub quiz goers will know , Grisby Town’s ground,  who play in the EFL League Two is in Cleethorpes, leading to the quiz question’ which EFL team plays all of their games away’.

Worksop Town 2 Grimsby Borough 1

The pitch was in great condition with a slight slope from end to end and it only took Worksop 3 minutes to take the lead when Mathew Sykes controlled the ball in the penalty area and drilled it past the outstretched right hand of Scott Drury.  Worksop Town continued to dominate throughout the first half and went in at half time 1 nil up. Grimsby Borough’s defensive composure had been dented when  their number 17 had to have attention to a very bloody nose after what looked like a clash of heads.

Worksop continued the pressure after the break and made it 2-0  when Steven Wooley scored on 55 minutes. They always say that 2 nil is the hardest lead to defend and that proved right as Grimsby came right back into it on 65 minutes when a through ball found Adam Drury and he calmly slotted home. Only some stout defending with bodies being  peppered with shots enabled Worksop to hang on for the win. On this showing both of these two teams can look forward to a good season.

The chips are strong contenders in the league with a score of 70. They were hot, golden in colour, served quickly’ tasty and cost £1.80. The container and fork were plastic but I did not mark them down like Forest Green as they do not espouse their green credentials.

The future is here as you walk up Another Way.

As you turn the corner into Another Way you arrive at Forest Green Rovers Stadium and into another way of doing things with practices that will become main stream very soon.

Formed in 1889 Forest Green have been at the forefront of Gloucestershire Non League foot until 2017 when they gained promotion to the English Football League for the first time and survived at that level in their first season.

But they are known worldwide for something completely different :

‘FIFA recently described us as the greenest football club in the world. We’re the first and only vegan football club in the world. And we’re the only club on the planet to have Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) accreditation, the gold standard of environmental management. This allows us to measure our impact on the environment and target the reduction of our carbon emissions.’                                  Extract taken from Forest Green Rovers Web site         https://www.fgr.co.uk/

Forest Green Rovers were the first Vegan football club in the world, vegan food is served to all players, officials and fans at the club. They also play on an organic pitch where no pesticides or herbicides are used and the weeding is all done by hand. The pitch is cut by a solar powered lawn mower that is nicknamed Mowbot and is watered by rainwater to ensure no mains water is used. As you walk along Another Way to ‘The Lawns’ ground you pass the electric vehicle charging points.

The club is supplied by 100% green energy, some from their own solar panels at the stadium and the rest from Ecotricity . Ecotricity was founded by Dale Vince who is also the Chairman of the football club. It is his drive and vision that has put them where they are, but it may not stop there as they have lodged planning permission to build a 5000 seat stadium all made from wood.

The whole experience was different, the Q Pie, Q for Quorn, was good, the atmosphere was friendly, family, happy and everywhere was spotlessly clean. The vegan credentials add to the experience, organic beer and milk for your tea or coffee was soya or oat milk. Never a fan of soya milk I was surprised to find oat milk a real tasty alternative to cows milk.

The beer mug was eco too and had printed on it’s side: ‘I am not a plastic cup. 100% compostable. 100% biodegradable. This tumbler is made from plant starch and can be turned into compost to help grow more crops.’ http://www.biopac.co.uk

The 52 page program is very colourful, informative and worth the £3, if there was any criticism it was that the details of the opponents players was very limited.

Sitting in the main stand had a good view of the pitch and there was no wall or fencing lining the pitch.

Forest Green Rovers 0 Stevenage 0

Of the football I have to say it was the most boring match that I have seen for years and the 0-0 draw seemed to suit Stevenage who defended well but rarely looked like scoring. My man of the match was the Forest Green number 2 Liam Shephard whose speed on and off the ball was good and he was unlucky not to hit the net after some surging runs. The crowd was only 1800, very disappointing considering the effort that is being made by the club.

The score for the chip league was a disappointing 56. They came in a paper tray but with a plastic fork. The chips were tasty but only warm and a bit soggy. Sorry Forest Green you are an outstanding, progressive club with amazing ideas that we will all have to look to in the future let down by the chips and fork.