Brighouse Town 0 Scarborough Athletic 2

Northern Counties East League, Premier Division
Attendance: 1,059

Boy, I’d be waiting a long time for this one. My last proper football match was nine weeks ago at Spennymoor. Amidst a quagmire of postponements I got tickets for Berwick v. Rangers but was unable to use them and also saw the unblogworthy Man U v. Reading (see below). So bring on Brighouse, home of The Floral Dance, for this tasty top of the table clash against Scarborough Athletic.

League leaders Scarborough had won nine of their last 10 league matches (and hadn’t lost since October) while second placed Brighouse had won 10 out of the last 11. Only the champions are promoted to the Northern Premier League subject to ground grading. Match of the day in the Northern Counties East League? More like match of the season.

The Seadogs’ progress since their formation from the ashes of the town’s League club in 2007 has been slow. They’ve now been stuck in the NCEL for six seasons. (AFC Liverpool, formed a year later, have similarly stalled in the North West Counties League.) Scarborough still have no shortage of support, though, as I discovered on my previous visit to see them – at Pontefract in 2008 – and today their fans swelled the attendance to exactly 10 times Brighouse’s average.

Parking at the ground was like arriving at an agricultural show. I paid admission through the car window and was stewarded into a row on a large field beside the pitch. At Old Trafford last month my son, Bertie, and I had to neck our bottle of water at the turnstiles as fluids were not permitted inside and were then frisked by phalanx of orange jackets. No such security at Brighouse, thankfully: we simply stepped up from car park to pitchside – with our bottle.
 

The pedestrian entrance was a sort of sentry box with turnstiles either side like you get in urinals at stations with a bar stool positioned alongside. I liked the PA set-up too: a hi-fi stack inside the clubhouse connected to a pair of speakers on the roof via cables trailing from the window. The rest of the modest ground consists of basic scaffolded cover along one side, one Portacabin as a clubhouse, one as the sponsors lounge and distant changing rooms accessed not by a tunnel but a railed run. That’s it – but, heh, we were here for the occasion more than anything else.

During the first half the sides pretty much cancelled each other out. I had the feeling that this was going to an anti-climactic goalless affair. At half-time we edged our way down the front row of the stand against the flow of Seadogs fans changing ends and careful not to send the flasks flying, jolt the elbow of the elderly pork pie eaters or tread on trailing edges of rugs. The spattering rain was getting heavier and the whole occasion becoming a bit grim if I’m going to be honest. Empty chairs and tables on a patch of astroturf outside the sponsors’ lounge looked forlorn.

The second half perked us up, though. Scarborough continued to shade it in terms of possession and finally broke the deadlock on 62 mins. Victory was secured with a second goal on 78 mins. Both sides played some good football throughout. The away fans were in full voice in the final minutes and greeted the final whistle with backslapping, air punching and a minor pitch invasion usually reserved for the promotion clincher – but that’s only two matches away now.

“Save them creosoting it before next season!” said another fan, like us widdling onto the perimeter fence before getting into the car. Fifteen minutes of queuing later (not a regular occurrence at Brighouse, I suspect) followed by a push through the mud and a cheery “all the best” from a couple of stewards and we were on our way.

Still to come … the final match at Consett’s ground, a play-off perhaps and, to finish, a visit to Richmond Town on a sunny day for the magnificent castle backdrop. I’m more than happy for this season to run into extra-time.

Star turn: A genuine one, this time. Spotted holding court in the clubhouse before kick-off … Mr Dean ‘Hull City’ Windass, a keen advocate of non-league football.

Name of the season: The novelty of his name will have been commented on often before but let’s hear it one more time for Rudy Funk, Romanian manager of Scarborough. Other names that have caught my eye lately are Jesus who plays for Harrogate Railway (surname: Samuel Martin-Farija) and Igor Djalmo Sequeira Van Dunen who signed for Garforth Town from Angolan side Atlético Sport Aviação in February. Try saying that lot after a few pints …

 

More than a match: Few clubs have been harder hit by postponements and match rearrangements than Guernsey. In the 37 days between March 30 and the end of the season on May 5 the Green Lions will play 20 times including three Fri/Sat/Sun runs of home games.

FA Cup footnote: David Lacey writes in today’s Guardian: “The semi-finals are not what they were. Those nerve-racked, tensed-up occasions when players barely dared put one foot in front of the other for fear of making a mistake that would cost their team the place at Wembley which every footballer treasured have become just another set of cup-ties hidden awkwardly among the TV schedules”. Indeed. Ian Payne on Five Live initially referred to Man City v. Wigan as “the second of the finals”. Easy to get disorientated in the latter stages of the competition.

 

Grand grounds: Visiting Old Trafford was more like going to a tourist attraction than a football match. Just the one pic, above, and a video diary from our day out. And, to finish, here’s some great old stadium porn courtesy of the Mail Online.

Spennymoor Town 4 Bemerton Heath Harlequins 2

FA Vase, fifth round
Attendance: 398

Bemerton Heath Harlequins. What a splendid name. It fair leapt out of the draws for the latter rounds of the Vase – and was reason itself to travel to Co Durham for today’s tie at Spennymoor. For the uninitiated (and that will be most of you) Bemerton Heath is a district of Salisbury – just down the road from the equally wonderfully named Fugglestone St Peter. One of the many things I like about the Vase is that competing clubs hail from such small places you often have to look them up. As the FA Cup goes to seed it was nice to get back to basics in the Vase – and on a benign winter’s afternoon and in a crowd small enough not to feel conspicuous taking pics.

This was one of the biggest matches in the 24-year history of the Harlequins and Spennymoor were seeking to reach the quarter-finals of the Vase for the first time. However, in view of Friday’s sell-out top of the table clash against Darlington 1883 and put in a historical context, the game wasn’t such a big deal for the hosts which may account for the slightly low-key atmosphere for a match which puts the winners two wins from Wembley. (That said, today’s gate still exceeded all but three in the Conference North). In their pre-2005 incarnation as Spennymoor United the club played in the Northern Premier League, reached the semi-final of the FA Trophy (in 1978) and were regulars in the proper rounds of the FA Cup.



The Northern League lends itself to black and white photography

Following recent improvements to the substantial and smart Brewery Field ground including new floodlights officially switched on only last week the Moors are carefully gearing up for promotion back to the Northern Premier League in a manner which reminds me of Staveley Miners Welfare. The old terraces behind one goal and pronounced slope of the pitch are the only hints of the ground’s 106-year past. I particularly liked the new continental-style dugouts with a garden fence arrangement running behind and above them, an ideal position from which to do ‘Kilroy was here’ impressions and share views with the coaching staff.

Spennymoor were hot favourites for this tie as, indeed, they are for the competition. They have been Northern League champions for the last three seasons, are unbeaten in the league this season and were drawn at home for the fourth consecutive round.

Despite all that they went behind to a surprise Harlequins goal after just two minutes. (From the cheers it didn’t look like many had made it up from Wiltshire and you can hardly blame them). You always felt this was a temporary set back, though, and so it proved. The dominant Moors hit back with two goals before half-time. To their credit the Harlequins stayed in the match and grabbed an unlikely equaliser on 54 mins. It wasn’t long before the Moors had regained the lead, though, and they rattled in a fourth to end the contest with three minutes to go.

During the second half I sat in the grandstand. Next to me I chatted to a 90-year-old who spent 16 years as the secretary of the local RAF association (don’t know why he told me that but I tried to look impressed) and a 78-year-old with a jumble of teeth who has been coming here since 1957. He shaked me by the hand as we bid farewell at the final whistle. For me, this, as ever, is likely to be a one-off unless the Moors play  Guernsey at home in the quarters or semis. Now that would be an even more novel southern visitor that it would be hard to resist.

Style notes: The Harlequins away strip (sadly not diamond patterned like their home strip) was all orange and the goalie sported a clashing shade of lilac. I liked the ad for a hairdressers in the programme: ‘Support the Moors in style with Streets Ahead hair salon’. From a quick scan of the elderly gents around me a short back and sides is the most elaborate coiffure required by spectators.

Star connection: Frank Skinner’s dad played for Spennymoor before the Second World War.

Further viewing: For some great pics of the Harlequins scenic home ground and magnificent clubhouse click here. Hardcore Vase fans will also enjoy this complete recording of Bodmin v. Gornal Athletic on the Cornwall Channel.

 

Macclesfield Town 0 Wigan Athletic 1

FA Cup, fourth round
Attendance: 5,849

A ‘non-league home to Premiership’ fourth round tie in the north of England, that kicks off at 3pm on a Saturday and for which tickets are readily available online at a mere £15. That sounds too good to be true – but wasn’t in the case of this match. It was also the first time Macclesfield had made it through to the fourth round in their 139-year history.

Macclesfield and Wigan were rivals in the Northern Premier League as recently as 1977-78 after which Wigan were admitted to the Football League. In football terms that’s all light years ago. You can ring the changes since by ringing the different types of name on the team sheet. Three of Macclesfield’s squad have in vogue double-barrelled surnames while Wigan’s squad included lots of players with z or a vowel at the end of their name. They hail from Oman, Ivory Coast, Argentina, Chile, Barbados, Honduras, Holland, Netherlands, France, Japan, Slovakia, Paraguay and Spain. That’s practically a World Cup draw. Of course, every Premier League team has loads of foreigners these days but such cosmopolitanism associated with such a quintessential northern town as Wigan still seems a bit strange to me.

Doing his best to uphold tradition was Macclesfield manager and Harry Enfield look-a-like Steve King. He has a fine short back and sides in the best of 1950s footballer traditions – and what parting to boot. “What a nice suit, What a nice suit, Steven King, What a nice suit!” a group of drunken lads right next to me opioned on his tweedy threads to the tune to Sloop John B. Their bawdiness got the stewards  (some bussed in from Wrexham) twitching. Subsequent verses remarked on how “he’s got lovely hair” and “lovely brogues”. Indeed.

We were stood in the London Road paddock which sadly meant I wasn’t in a position to admire the roof above with MTFC  on the fascia which is the Moss Rose’s only remarkable feature if you exclude the disused look-out box in the corner. Nice, though, at this advanced stage in the competition to be in a ground partially overlooked by houses. These – and the brass band playing on the pitch at half-time – were the last vestiges of non-leagueism I will encounter in the Cup this season. In one corner was a giant 12ft pile of snow which had been cleared from the pitch by volunteers at 7am. Full marks to the ground staff for getting this one on, by the way, and to the M62 gritters for making my long journey over hills a doddle.

Wigan took  the lead on six minutes with a penalty which rather put a dampener on proceedings. The Silkmen (one of those rare nicknames used more than the actual name of the club) later had a strong claim of their own when Fairhurst was clearly shoved in the back by Golobart. Steve King wasn’t happy. “It was a stonewall penalty, as blatant as you are going to see and I have left the referee my number so he can ring me and apologise,” he said. “That's killed our game and killed our FA Cup dream. Stevie Wonder could see we were worth a replay, at least.” Have to say that I didn’t realise Stevie was in the ground.

The game lacked ebb and flow and followed the same pattern throughout: even stevens with few clear cut chances. Macclesfield had three times as many shots and corners – but usually from range or rather wayward without really threatening the Wigan goal although Audel did have a free header from five yards out. The visitors – who made eight changes to their side from their previous Premier League match – looked a little sharper without often testing the emergency loanee Silkmen goalie. Sadly, not a classic, then. The real excitement and upset we craved was happening elsewhere …

Programme notes: The edition included a brilliantly researched and illustrated feature about past programmes of matches between today’s two sides. I particularly like the graphic for the front cover of this 1961/62 issue.

Shocks? What shocks?: OK: so Luton beat Norwich to become the first non-league team to defeat a top flight team since 1989 when Sutton knocked out Coventry. Well, yes, but that’s where the comparison ends. Luton are in truth a league team that accidentally find themselves in the Conference while Norwich – who fielded only five of the previous week’s line-up – have only been back in the Premier League for 18 months. Until or unless an out and out non-League side beats a full strength, established Premier League side (and I don’t think that will ever happen again) Sutton’s achievement remains unmatched in my view.

A load of old balls: No orange – or even yellow – ball needed today after all. But for that retro touch you only had to watch The Big Match Revisited the following day for a re-run of Man City v. Chelsea from 1979. The ball is more of a beacon than Rudolph’s nose in a snow storm. Pitiful coverage of the two non-league ties by ITV today, incidentally. Neither match was broadcast live and the highlights of the games lasted for just 2:04  (Macclesfield) and 5:34 (Luton).

Keep your knickers on: I’m not in the habit of searching online for images of girls taking each others shorts off – but did, nevertheless, recently stumble (honest) across this shot of a women’s international between Scotland and England from 1969. Girls: pur-lease!