25 years of football - the random games, some of which will never be repeated

After reviewing my 25 years of going to football matches I went through my boxes of old programmes to scan a few for a post about memorable matches. And I found a lot of other games that I remembered, and some that I didn't. Here's a selection of programmes from some very random games, featuring a number of clubs that I will never get to see again.

Some Shrewsbury ones to kick us off

Shrewsbury v Scarborough, Div 3, 15 September 1992

Scarborough went bust a while back. A new club has formed, Scarborough Athletic, but they are a long way off returning to the league. This programme was from the era of Shrewsbury's "scrambled egg" shirt designs, which is now being sold in the club shop as a retro item. At the time we mocked it as horrible. Even in the 90s, which was a decade of horrible shirts. Wait 25 years and it's cool again. I blame hipsterism for this.

I'm mainly including this to show how I used to deface football programmes with my own notations.

I gave Mark Barham my man of the match award. I vaguely remember him having blonde floppy 90s hair and being a winger. I could well be wrong.

Shrewsbury v Carlisle - 3 April 1993

I'm only including this because the cover star is flame-haired full-back Tommy Lynch!

I adored Tommy Lynch.

Shrewsbury v Hereford - Div 3, 2 April 1994 - birthday football!

Got to love going to a game on your birthday. Not as memorable as the Newcastle game I went to 11 years later (see here for more). Also, typical Shrewsbury photo choice with more of a gurning Hereford player than the Shrewsbury player who is being out-jumped for the ball. I think that's Gary Patterson, who I thought was crap but lots of other Shrewsbury fans loved.

Oswestry Town v Shrewsbury, pre-season friendly, 8 August 2004

Another disappeared club. This fixture will never happen again as Oswestry Town were absorbed by the TNS monster, who moved in and became The New Saints.

Telford United v Macclesfield Town, GM Vauxhall Conference, 26 February 1994
This is why I always think of the league below the football league as the GM Vauxhall Conference, even though it's been rebranded multiple times. The power of imprinting! Telford were founder members of the national league below the football league.

The programme cover shows the main stand of the Buck's Head. Rebuilding the ground in the 2004-05 season bankrupted the club owner and the club. They relaunched further down the leagues as AFC Telford United. Their new ground is quite nice, but they have never sustained the heights they were at in the 80s and 90s.

Next up, a Wales B international - do they still do these? This was in 1994.

We went mainly because Carl Griffiths, ex-Shrewsbury striker, was selected for the Wales squad, and it was played at Wrexham's Racecourse ground which was less than an hour away. There are some random players in this line up. I still defaced programmes back then, so we can see that Carl came on as a sub.

In 1994 I moved to Cardiff. I went to a few City games, but it didn't stick. So I drifted to other games. Here's another team that has disappeared - Inter Cable-tel. Technically their opponents, Barry Town, are a phoenix club now as well. This was the era when Barry bossed the League of Wales, although this was a league cup game.

The League of Wales is now the smaller Welsh Premier League. So both these clubs and the league they were competing in have either disappeared or been considerably revamped. The ground it was at, Leckwith Athletic Stadium, was bulldozed when Cardiff City relocated over the road from Ninian Park and built their big new CCFC Stadium. There is nothing about this game that could be repeated.

The next season, Inter Cable-tel had reverted to their original name of Inter Cardiff.  That's a cleverly cropped photo of them, saying Inter without the suffix,  with the Welsh Cup on the cover of this programme from a UEFA Cup qualifier in 1999. A note inside the programme reminded me that the half time entertainment was provided by the Tongwynlais Temperance Brass Band.

Thinking about it, that's a cup competition that's gone as well, replaced by the Europa League. Everything changes.

Here's another game unlikely to be repeated: League of Wales v League of Ireland, 4 March 1997.

My main point of interest on the night was the appearance of ex-Shrewsbury winger Mark Rutherford in the League of Ireland team. But this LoW squad list is a who's who of late 90s Welsh domestic footballing talent. Several players in the squad played for Inter, so this was like a home match for them, as it was played at Leckwith.

Moving on to Scotland - have you ever seen an Inverness Cup game? I have.

I've already said how my football match tally is influenced by my Dad's love for going to football matches. (Something I've caught.) We were on a family holiday to the Moray coast and Dad found this game was on. Forres Mechanics are known as the Can-Cans and play in the Highland League. Clachnacuddin are from Inverness.

A few years later and I was in Glasgow for a work conference. Celtic were playing at home so I sloped off one night to watch them.

It had been a boyhood ambition to go and see Celtic play because one of my best friends, Ed, was Scottish and supported them. The game was pretty dire and finished 0-0. But I had a great time anyway.

Another unlikely to be repeated opportunity - seeing a Great Britain international team. I went to the 2012 Olympics match played at the Millennium Stadium against Uruguay and Team GB won. I can't remember if Craig Bellamy played, but he looked alright on the programme cover, despite that honest-to-goodness disaster of a kit. The game was a double header with Mexico v Switzerland beforehand. Football should do more double-headers.

I also went to the third place play-off game in the Olympics because the brochure said it would include the bronze medal ceremony, which I thought would be a unique add-on to a football match. But then they announced just before kick off that the medal ceremony would be the following day after the final and the third place winners would receive their medals alongside the gold and silver medalists. I felt cheated by that and, frankly, the Olympics can do one for me now.

I've been to several football matches at the Millennium Stadium. In 2005, while Wembley was being rebuilt, they played a lot of cup finals there. Including the LDV Vans final between Wrexham and Southend United.

My Dad came with me, reliving his youth as a Wrexham fan, and also a couple of guys from work who supported Wrexham. When the game went into extra time I remarked to one of them, Pete, that I always felt extra time gave you more for your money. He wasn't happy about that - he wanted the stress to be over! He was happy at the end of extra time though because Wrexham had won.

And finally, to another cup final in Cardiff that went to extra time. It was my first women's football game, which also featured two goalkeepers taking the decisive penalties in the shoot out. I've blogged about it in more depth here.

Looking through my programmes was a mixed bag of memories. Some good, some bitter-sweet. It's a real reminder of how much the game has changed, and yet, it's still at it's heart the same game.

I'm going to do a post with some Shrewsbury-specific highlights next. And then a fun one to finish this short series.

It wasn't all bad... 11 new experiences of 2016

2016 was a bit of a rubbish year in lots of ways, but rather than mull over the increasingly terrible collective decisions the world seems to be making, or the long list of famous people who passed away last year, I have decided to focus on the good stuff. And for me there was a lot of good stuff. This post is about all the things I did for the very first time last year. A lot of this happened on our big holiday in pre-Trump North America, so I'm going to start there...

1) Went to Canada
There are loads of things I did for the first time in on our road trip to the USA and Canada, in terms of visiting places I'd not been to before (like Niagara Falls, or the Baseball Hall of Fame), but I'm going to lump all of those things in under this heading.

2) Ate fried pickles
Just one of the new culinary experiences of our road trip. We also ate at a Vegan Diner and on another occasion had poutine. But fried pickles were the new food of the year.

3) Went to a Baseball match on a giveaway night
'Star Wars night' made seeing the Boston Red Sox even more special. We also saw a baseball game in Toronto, with the Rodgers Stadium dome closed - the first time I'd ever seen baseball "indoors".

4) Saw a moose
OK, it was in a zoo, but it counts.

5) Checked into a hotel then checked straight back out again
The lowlight of our road trip was a disastrous hotel booking in Albany, New York. But it was a totally new experience for me.

So, enough about our road trip, here are some other things.

6) Saw Shrewsbury Town finally beat Cardiff City in Cardiff. 
It had been a long time coming, but I was finally present (in one of Cardiff's record lowest crowds at their new stadium) to see Shrewsbury beat them.

7) Got on a plane unaccompanied
I went to a conference in Glasgow and flew there from Bristol. It was the first time I had ever travelled by plane on my own, having always had Cathy, or family, or colleagues with me on previous flights.

8) Saw Celtic play
A childhood ambition ticked off

9) Went to Spain
Again, this was for a work conference. I took plenty of photos of Valencia by night. I loved it.

10) Rode through a bus wash
Seriously, this was one of the best things I did last year.

11) Going to a cartoon festival
I love cartoons and one of our favourite cartoonists was at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, we decided we had to go. We met her again a few weeks later, in her studio in Massachusetts.

Football season review 2015-16

It's the end of the football season and here is my review of the games I went to. The asterisks indicate the football grounds I watched a game at for the very first time.

First, here are the overall stats:
Season: 2015-16
Total games: 11
Most goals in a game: 7
Fewest goals in a game: 0
Total goals seen: 23
Number of football grounds visited: 8 (4 of which I’d never visited before)

Newport County v Queen's Park Rangers (friendly)
Score: 0-0
This was memorable mainly for the utter torrent of rain that drenched the Londoners who had forgotten that it always rains in Wales and had turned up in shorts. One of those games that could have been played forever and still been goalless.

Welcoming sign; inclement weather

Action shot of Spytty the dog

Shrewsbury Town v Millwall (League 1)
Score: 1-2
First home game of the season. First defeat. Set a pattern for the season really. The deciding goal was a penalty that was more of a penalty won than a penalty conceded.

Yeovil Town* v QPR (League Cup 1st round)
Score: 0-3
My first trip to Huish Park. I was a Hoop for the night. QPR ran out fairly easy 3-0 winners in the end.

Borrowed shirt.

Shrewsbury Town v Crewe Alexandra (League 1)
Score: 0-1
Crewe were bottom of the league having not won a match by this point (we were about 8 games in). They finished bottom of the league at the end of the season. Of course they won this game as Shrewsbury's players seemed to have forgotten what sport they were playing.

Pink bibs in the warm up. It was downhill from here.

Reading* v QPR (Championship)
Score: 0-1
I'd not been to Reading's Madjeski Stadium before. It was pretty impressive. This was Neil Warnock's last game in charge at QPR before being replaced by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Reading boss Steve Clarke was sacked the following morning as well. I think this is the first time I've been at a game that was the last game for both managers. The game was pretty dire and QPR nicked it at the end with a bundled in goalmouth scramble.

It filled up a bit for the actual game

Bristol City* v QPR (Championship)
Score: 1-1
Another QPR game. Another new ground. For a long time it looked like Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink would finally see his new side win. But Bristol City equalised. I was impressed with how he stood and shook the hands of all his players as they came off at the end. That's class.

Flags to greet the players as they enter the pitch

Shrewsbury Town v Fleetwood Town (League 1)
Score: 1-1
Shrewsbury struggled to make any headway against another struggling team. At this point I felt Shrewsbury were very likely relegation candidates.

Cardiff City v Shrewsbury Town (FA Cup 3rd round)
Score: 0-1
This was odd. The game was on a Sunday night. Most of the ground was empty as Cardiff fans were protesting something. It was also live on S4C. And yet, it's the first time I've seen Shrewsbury win in Cardiff.

Not many more arrived.

Seriously, this was about it.

Barry Town United v The New Saints (Welsh Cup 4th round)
Score: 2-5 (the most goals seen in a game all season)
Full write up here. Highly enjoyable game.

Shrewsbury Town v Manchester United (FA Cup 5th round)
Score: 0-3
Given everything that has happened at Manchester United since they went on to win the cup a few days ago, and the season they had, this was a real missed opportunity. Shrewsbury kind of choked. This was the third game in a row that I'd been to that was also live on telly. Full write up here.

Celtic* v Dundee (Scottish Premier League)
Score: 0-0
Full write up here. This turned out to be my final game of the season. It feels apt that my season began and ended with 0-0 draws. The essence of football, right there.

And now, bring on the Euros...

Previous seasons: 2014-15

Scottish Premier League for the night: Celtic v Dundee

When I was growing up my friend Edwin who lived round the corner supported Celtic. (His family were from Scotland.) Back then we collected football stickers and Edwin was keen on trying to get all the Celtic players.

Fast forward 30+ years and I had the opportunity to travel to Glasgow for a conference with work. On the off-chance that I might get to a game I looked up the fixture list and it turned out there was a game scheduled for the day I flew into town. Celtic v Dundee in the Scottish Premier League.

The taxi dropped me off right outside

Booking a ticket was very easy and every seat has a 'view' option so you can see what the view was going to be like. I had asked for advice on the When Saturday Comes message board because I didn't want to end up in with the Ultras. I was safely away at the opposite end.

I got a taxi out to the ground. The driver asked if I wanted to go the quickest route or the fastest route, along the elevated motorway, which also gave you a view of the ground. I opted for that and we arrived with plenty of time to spare. I went into the Celtic Superstore. They had everything you could imagine in there in Celtic colours. You could kit out your house in green and white if you wanted to. I bought a scarf and a programme as souvenirs.

Celtic Selfie (note scarf)

I made a big mistake of buying a veggie burger from one of the many food vendors outside the ground and missed out on the chance of a MACARONI PIE inside! (Although as Cathy pointed out that would be a mightmare from a carb point of view.) Still, the curly fries were good. And I will know to wait until I'm inside next time.

Even the little men on the sign wear hoops

Some people have added their own messages to the signs

I had a great view from my seat. There were a lot of spare seats, including most of my row, so second half I moved along a bit to get some space.

Dundee wait while Celtic huddle

The game itself was not a great advert for Scottish football. Celtic started brightly but soon fizzled out into bland play-it-across-the-park football. There were a couple of chances from free kicks and corners, for both teams. But really Dundee had come to defend and hit Celtic on the break. But Celtic were playing possession football and lying deep themselves, so rarely lost possession.

Celtic on the attack

The Celtic crowd are unforgiving, apart from the Ultras in the opposite corner who bounced along and chanted almost throughout the game. Within a few minutes there were sighs and expletives in response to mis-hit passes. From so high up it was obvious that as a team, Celtic were fairly clueless. The goalkeeper, Craig Gordon, echoed the frustration of the fans when he got fed up that no one was ever ready for a pass or throw to play the ball out from the back. He ended up just hoofing it upfield where it was inevitably headed back by a Dundee player.

And on the defence...

Celtic had one really good chance in the first half when they unpicked the Dundee defence for the only time in the game, but then the striker fired wide. Other than that, Dundee defended solidly while Celtic passed the ball across the park in front of them, and then cut it out when Celtic tried to go forward.

Midway through the second half Colin Kazim Richards came on. He's a much bigger unit now than he used to be. He made an impact, just not a positive one, as every touch seemed to be a foul. With twenty minutes to go, a goal seemed less and less likely and even the Ultras stopped making noise. Dundee could have won it at the death but their unmarked player somehow headed wide from a corner. Shortly after it was the final whistle, with lots of boos from the fans who had stayed to the bitter end.

Heading towards a 0-0 draw

Even with a final score of 0-0, I'm glad I went. It was a new experience, And I would go again if I had the chance. Mainly for the promise of a macaroni pie than the hope of seeing a brilliant game of football.