Football Recap of the Month - April 2024 part 2

 ... and on to the second part of my football round up for April!

Game 57: West Ham United 1-1 Bayer Leverkusen

I was in London for a work conference and one of the people I was with secured us tickets for this Europa League Game. Leverkusen had just been crowned Bundesliga champions in Germany. We were in the away end, very high up, but with a great view of the action. 

Game 58: Charlton Athletic 1-1 Shrewsbury Town

I stayed on in London to go to Shrewsbury's final away game of the season. Plenty of fans turned up in fancy dress and Shrewsbury got the point they needed to secure League One status for another season. (Next season they will be the club currently in League One that has been there for the longest number of consecutive seasons.)

Game 59: Colwyn Bay 1-0 Barry Town

I left London on the Saturday after Shrewsbury's game, got the train to Shrewsbury and the next day borrowed my mum's car to drive to Colwyn Bay to see Barry's final game of the season. I took my nephew, Zac, with me. It was his third Barry Town league game and they have lost all three 1-0! 

Llanelian Road was the last ground I needed to "complete" the Cymru Premier League. I've seen Barry play at every ground.

Game 60: Cardiff Draconians 6-0 Seven Sisters Onllwyn

After three new grounds in a row, it was back to the familiar Orange Llama Stadium in Gabalfa for this game in the third tier of Welsh football. I sat with my friends Nic and Scott and we watch Scott's son, Sam, score five of the goals for the Dracs. We were tantalisingly close to seeing Seven Sisters concede seven goals, but I was equally happy when I realised this was game number 60 of the season and the score was 6-0.

Sixty games equals the previous record for me in a season. With a few games lined up in May, I'm hoping to set a new record before the season ends!

Football recap of the month - July 2023

I'm not planning to do a separate football post every month, but my main recap for July was mostly about me changing jobs. It didn't feel like there was also space for me to talk about football matches too.

This year I set a new record for football matches in July, going to seven games. Five of them were friendlies but the two competitive games I went to ended in penalty shoot outs and there was some other drama along the way as well.

Game 1: Barry Town 1-0 Canton Liberals

Entertainment value: 1/5
Reason for going: I'd not seen a game on the 1st July before.
Noteworthy fact: This is one of the last games played by "Canton Liberals". At the end of July the club announced they had changed their name to Canton FC.

Game 2: Cardiff Met 0-2 Cardiff Draconians

Entertainment value: 3/5 (mainly because its fun to watch Cardiff Met lose)

Reason for going: this was the first game for the Dracs under their new manager, Nana Baah and also my friend Steve wanted to go.
Noteworthy fact: see reason for going

Game 3: Barry Town 5-2 Cardiff Corinthians

Entertainment value: 5/5 (7 goals - and the Corries were a much better team than the scoreline suggests)
Reason for going: Peer pressure, and to see if the Corries are going to be any good this season.
Noteworthy fact: This turned out to be Barry manager Lee Kendall's final home game in charge as he unexpectedly resigned the following weekend.

Game 4: Haverfordwest County 1-0 FK Shkendija (1-1 aggregate after extra time. Pens 3-2)

Entertainment value: 4/5 (although the first 85 minutes were 2/5. The rating (was boosted by a very late goal and the drama of a shootout)
Reason for going: it was a Europa Conference League qualifying match held at Cardiff City Stadium - within walking distance of my house - and there was the added curiosity value of seeing a team from North Macedonia.
Noteworthy fact 1: the previous time I saw Haverfordwest the game ended with a penalty shoot out. Goalkeeper Zac Jones saved two penalties in both shoot outs.
Noteworthy fact 2: Haverfordwest became the only club from the Cymru Leagues to win a tie and progress in European qualifiers this season.

Hero keeper!

Game 5: Cwmbran Celtic 2-2 Taff's Well (no ET. Pens 0-3)

Entertainment value: 5/5
Reason for going: this MG Cup game was a last minute alternative after a game I planned to go to was called off due to Biblical levels of rain. Basically it was close enough to get to.
Noteworthy fact: this was my second game in a row that ended in a penalty shoot out - after Cwmbran scored twice in time added on at the end of the game. The Taff's Well goalkeeper saved the first two kicks he faced.

Game 6: Caldicot Town 3-2 Shirehampton FC

Entertainment value: 4/5

Reason for going: My friend Ben plays for Caldicot. He got an assist.

Noteworthy fact: Shirehampton were the first English team I'd seen this season.

Game 7: Shrewsbury Town 1-1 Notts County 

Entertainment value: 2/5
Reason for going: my friend Paul is a Notts County fan so we travelled up together along with Paul's wife, Val, and another Shrewsbury fan who is also called Paul. We all had lunch at my mum's house where Fred the dog made some new friends!
Noteworthy fact: with typical foresight, Shrewsbury had closed the old club shop and hadn't opened the new one yet, so no new shirt for me!

Pre-match canine shenanigans for Paul

Roll on August!

July 2021 - End of month review

July started with us coming back from a week's holiday on the Lleyn Peninsular in North Wales (see blog posts here), and ended with us on holiday in Shropshire with family from Salop and from Edinburgh. 

There's a cheetah in this card game!

Inbetween these times away, we squeezed in quite a bit.

I came back from our North Wales holiday with a sore throat and sneezing more than usual. Apparently that can be a sign of coronavirus infection in people who have been double-jabbed, so Cathy and I booked appointments at the drive-through test centre at the Cardiff City Stadium. I now feel I have lived the full pandemic experience, now that I have had to stick a swab up my nose! 

Our tests were negative. I was impressed with the organisation of the test centre. Everyone there really knew the drill. They knew we were coming, and processed us through very politely and quickly. We had the results texted to us in less than 24 hours. It was a good experience in a stressful moment.

We also watched the European Championships semi-finals and final. England blew it, is my verdict, with a terrible penalty shoot-out in the final that will potentially have scarred another generation of kids. I mentioned last month how this was the first international championship I have experienced since my Dad died, and after the final I have thought several times about how he would have rung me up to dissect the failure in detail. These are the unexpected moments when grief catches us.

In my other blogging project, I reached a new milstone - 700 baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn. I feel I am starting to run out of steam a bit with the baseball cards and my blogging has been very gappy of late as the supply of new cards has run out.

It might continue to be gappy, as I have started going to football matches again. I've blogged about my trips to Bristol and Aberdare. I added a third match in the month of July as The New Saints were playing Kauna Zalgiris from Lithuania in a Europa Conference League Qualifying game during our week in Shropshire. As TNS play in Oswestry, just half an hour away, I went with my brother for a fun evening out.

TNS already had a 5-0 lead from the first leg in Lithuania, so I was hopeful we would see some goals. And we did. 

It was a very one-sided affair. Kauno Zalgiris played suicide football, trying to build from the back and repeatedly giving the ball away as TNS played a high press. Several moves broke down in their own half and resulted in TNS having chance after chance to score. There was a Lithuanian guy in front of us and his partner started laughing as me and my brother started shouting 'Nooooo!' as the Kauno defenders set up for another futile attempt to play out from the back. It was cringeworthy to watch. 

TNS won 5-1 on the night, with some superb goals, to cap a 10-1 aggregate win over the two legs.

Spending a week with family also meant there were opportunities for back garden football with an array of smaller people. My eldest nephew is getting pretty good these days - he graduated from his soccer course with three trophies a couple of weeks back. He also hits the ball harder than he used to and his Dad has had to reinforce the back fence, as you can see in this photo!

I will do a summary of our week in Shropshire in a future blog post, although our big days out were actually in Cheshire and Wales, so it will be photos from not-Shropshire in the main.

Europa League Dreams - Unbelievable Barry Town versus Cliftonville FC

When I declared for Barry Town last season, I didn't think they would qualify for the Europa League preliminary round. Of all the clubs in the draw, Cliftonville was the closest away trip we could get. (I had been a bit worried we would end up in Kosovo.)

The first leg was at 'home' but UEFA didn't pass Jenner Park as fit to host European football, so Barry had to decamp to Cardiff Athletics Stadium in Leckwith. Now as Leckwith is next door to Grangetown, this benefitted me personally, but I think it was to the detriment of the team.

Despite decking out Leckwith with Barry flair, it wasn't a 'home' game.

Barry flair

Even bringing along a huge number of mascots didn't work to dull the brightness of the blue interactive running track (seriously, it's called Power Track and times races by itself).

Mascot plethora

Still, Barry battled to a decent 0-0 draw against their Northern Irish opponents.

Which set things up nicely for the return leg. I got the early flight into Belfast, landing at 7.15am and with some newly-made friends arrived too early for breakfast at a  city centre Wetherspoons. Once it opened I had the veggie version of an Ulster Breakfast. I'm going to post a general post about everything else I did in Belfast, but suffice to say about 11 hours after our flight landed, I arrived at Solitude, the home ground of Cliftonville FC.

We all gently and politely squeezed into the clubhouse, which had already been claimed by the Barry fans. I discovered Clonmel Lager. I liked it.

We made ourselves at home

Soon it was time to head to the away end in anticipation of kick off.

That big, derelict looking stand? Yes, it has actually been condemned. There's been discussion about how Solitude made it past the UEFA inspectors when Jenner Park failed. The pitch is an old style artificial pitch with so much black crumb getting kicked up the players looked like Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoon strips. I also noted that the directors parked their cars next to the derelict stand, inside the ground, at considerable risk of a drilled clearance denting their bodywork.

Previous visitors had left their mark on the away end.

We flagged it up. I don't think anyone brought stickers.

We saw a lot of action in the first half because Cliftonville were kicking towards us. And the game seemed to be mainly Cliftonville kicking the ball towards us.

First half close up action

Cliftonville led 2-0 at the break. I stood motionless in the chip van queue for 15 minutes then gave up as the second half kicked off. The sun came out. The rays really made the rust patterns on the derelict stand 'pop'.

Second half distant action

We saw very little down our end in the second half. Cliftonville got two more goals. This then prompted a conga of Barry Town fans around the away end, and in front of the 'overflow' home fans who had been parked in seats next to us, singing "Four nil down; Who give a f***; We're Barry Town; And we've got a fox!"

Conga time

So, yeah, about the fox (as seen at the front of the conga there)... Well, two Barry lads turned up with it. There are already a few versions of the story going round, but the one I heard is that "Basil" (as he's now known) was acquired as they walked through a housing estate to the ground, when a random old chap asked them if they wanted to buy a stuffed fox (it's a proper stuffed fox, as well, not a toy). Now, that in itself is weird, but I suppose the really weird thing is that they said yes, and brought him along to the game.

The fox has come home to Barry. It took the lads in question an hour with environmental health officers to get him on the plane. As hand luggage.

A 4-0 defeat, a plane ride away from home? Well, you got to keep singing. At the end the players trudged across the pitch to applaud the fans and stood there for five minutes listening to us sing.

Mutual admiration

The reaction on social media from the Cliftonville fans shows that we made an impression the way we kept on singing throughout the game. Realistically, football-wise it was a hammering. It was an epic away trip in every aspect apart from the 90 minutes on the pitch. I have no regrets about going and I would do it again... except that's the end of the Europa League dream for this season.

(A shout out to the Barry Town fans I made friends with on the trip and Mike, Steve, Neil, Mark, and Kathryn, in particular. Also to Tom and Steve H who sat through the 0-0 at Leckwith with me.)