Subbuteo in the modern era

I don't think this is an improvement! I'm not a fan of VAR (Virtual Assistant Referees).

(This isn't a joke. It's genuinely on sale on Amazon.)

I have a Subbuteo set at home. It's branded for the 1998 World Cup in France. I remember buying it in a sale in WH Smith's for a fiver after the World Cup was over.

I've played it once. Cathy and I had a game. She won. I doubt VAR would have come to my rescue in that game.

A decamonth of football (April 2022)

"Decamonth" is the new term I've coined for a month where I have been to ten football matches. The ten matches included two "twofers" - days where I get to two games in a day. On one of the twofers I saw two teams who were on course to pass each other due to promotion and relegation. I saw Barry Town play at home three times in eight days. And I even got to watch a football match on my birthday!

The first game in April was my birthday game. Barry struggled to beat Cefn Druids who were adrift at the foot of the table, finally scoring the single goal that won the game through a moment of brilliance by Rhys Abbruzzese. Rhys's emergence into the first team has been about the only bright spot in a dismal season for Barry. 

From an unappealing fixture, here's a photo of several Barry players appealing for a throw in.

That was the Saturday. On the Tuesday it was back to Jenner Park for Barry's sixth and final meeting of the season with Cardiff  Met. Barry beat them for the first time this season. It was 1-0 to Barry again, this time thanks to a penalty, and suddenly Barry's Cymru Premier status didn't seem quite so tenuous.

The next Saturday, Barry's game was moved to a 5.15 kick off as S4C decided it would be the most interesting game of the weekend and wanted to show it on TV. That meant I could turn it into a twofer and so I went to Pontyclun FC v Treharris Athletic Western before the Barry game. A friend from work was there watching his son who plays for Treharris, so I spent a very enjoyable almost two hours chatting to him during the game.

Treharris (in red) take an interesting approach at kick off, possibly borrowed from rugby.

I was impressed by the set up in Pontyclun. There is a lovely new clubhouse. The pitch was very well-maintained. And, like to many places in Wales, if the game wasn't capturing the imagination, there were some nice hills to look at.

Although Treharris took the lead, Pontyclun came back and won 3-1. After the final whistle I bombed it down to Barry to watch their game against the Connah's Quay Nomads. 

Things seemed to be going well for Barry when the Nomads conceded a first half penalty and had a man sent off. Barry were winning at half time, but really needed all three points. However, their efforts in the second half against ten men were extremely frustrating to watch. The Nomads scored from their one attack and then were satisfied to defend in depth to take an away point. Barry, as so often happened this season, could not break through and score, so it finished 1-1. 

I dropped a couple of levels for my next game, which was at a ground I had not visited before: the Riverside Ground in Radyr in Cardiff, home of the Cardiff Corinthians. They were playing Llanrumney United in the South Wales Alliance Premier Division, which is the fourth tier of Welsh football.

It was an evening game. The Riverside ground is surrounded by trees and with the low sun, so the game was played in a lovely dappled shade across the pitch.

The Corries, as they're known, had their half time team talk out on the pitch. I took a photo as I walked past them on my way to the bar for a cuppa at half time. 

The points were shared at the end of the game, with the 1-1 scoreline a fair result. The Llanrumney coaches were quite vocal and, although it's probably not really acceptable behaviour for an official, I can't criticise the referee for shouting "Oh, f**k off!" after a loud ridiculous appeal for a free kick. He had my sympathies really, because everyone was gobby. 

By the time Easter Monday had rolled around, Barry's situation had deteriorated following a defeat away at Haverfordwest on Good Friday that left them in a relegation spot. The last home game of the season at Jenner Park was against Aberystwyth Town, the only team left within reach of Barry. Again, S4C decided this was the game most worthwhile of broadcasting so it got moved to a 5.15pm kick off. Which meant I could do a twofer again.

I opted to go to Pontypridd Town v Cambrian & Clydach BGC in the Cymru South, mainly because Ponty were the team most likely to finish second in division and therefore be eligible for promotion...if the club got its licence to play at the top level. The chaps on the gate were very friendly and told me where I could park for free, and then told me they thought the licence would be denied because the authorities wanted to keep Barry in the Cymru Premier. I felt that was highly unlikely. But it just proves my point that every club feels the world is biased against them.

Before kick off I spotted a lone paraglider high above the hills opposite.

Ponty play in the University of South Wales sports park right next to the A470. I somehow ended up sat surrounded by the junior team who were mascots for the day. That was quite fun and one of the kids in particular was excited about everything that happened in the game! Everything! "Look mum, my player got kicked!" "Wow! The ball went right up in the air!" And so on. It did make me consider at what point fans become so jaded we lose the wonder. 

Pontypridd won the game 2-1. They dominated the first half. Cambrian came back into it second half and pulled a goal back. Both sides looked well organised and confident when they attacked. A marked difference to the second game I watched that day.

Barry went into the "must win" game and were a goal down after less than 5 minutes. And despite huffing and puffing and trying all sorts of desperate ways to get back into the game, that's how the scoreline stayed. (And by desperate, I mean, the captain got sent off for diving to try and win a free kick on the edge of the area.) I mentioned the half-time controversy involving song choices in my blog post about relegation. That about sums up the event. 

That result meant Barry were relegated, except they weren't until Pontypridd's appeal for the top level licence was heard three days later. I've described this as the VAR version of relegation. With VAR, you celebrate a goal then wait several minutes for the video assistant referee to give the nod that the goal should be awarded. This was similar. The club were relegated but had to wait three days for it to be confirmed. 

I'd watched the game from the east stand, which is normally in all my pictures at Barry games. This time I got a picture of the 'famous arches of the west stand' and the houses on Gladstone Road. 

The following weekend I was in Shrewsbury staying with my Mum. That made it easy to get across to Cefn Mawr near Wrexham for the 12.45 kick off in Barry's last Cymru Premier game for at least a season. I took my nephew Zac with me and we borrowed my Mum's Barry scarf for him to wear. 

As a spectacle it looked exactly like the two worst teams in the Cymru Premier playing each other. Cefn had a lot of chances in the second half that somehow they didn't score. Eventually, on 88 minutes, the Druids got the only goal of the game, which typically had to be an own goal following a scrappy scramble in the box.

Zac's verdict was that both teams were rubbish. It was hard to argue with that. He enjoyed being sat near the Barry drum and thought it very amusing when the drum skin broke and one of the fans started wearing the drum carcass around his waist. He said he would like to come with me to more football games... "but maybe not Barry again." He might not have much of a choice there. 

So, Barry's season was over, but my decamonth was not. I went to a midweek game at Cardiff Draconians who were battling against Ynyshir Albions for a play off spot in their league. Ynyshir wore a garish neon orange kit, which really came into its own when the sun went down.

Ynyshir took an early lead, but the Dracs won and converted a penalty. It was the 150th goal I'd seen this season. Almost immediately after equalising, the Dracs conceded again and it finished 2-1 to the visitors. That was mainly due to the young goalkeeper playing for the Dracs who pulled off two outstanding saves to keep the scoreline down. 

Then on the final Saturday in April, I drove almost to the Severn Bridge to watch Caldicot Town play Treowen Stars. My friend Ben has been playing for Caldicot all season and I wanted to go and see him play. However, he had picked up an injury so I was able to sit next to him in the stands and catch up with him. It's the first time I had seen him since way before lockdown, so that made the day even more enjoyable.

We arrived early and went into the clubhouse and watched the Premier League game that was on. I also admired the decor - I find clubhouse walls fascinating. The display of old programmes caught my attention.  

The programmes show quite a mix of games and competitions. History in a frame!

The match itself was quite competitive with a goal apiece in the first half. Caldicot scored early in the second half and ended up 2-1 winners. Treowen had a very striking red and white kit so were the sartorial winners.

And that was the last game in my decamonth. Over the ten games I saw 21 goals. I went to seven different grounds, including three I had not been to before. I watched football at each level of the top four tiers in Welsh football. I saw two teams destined to pass each other in the league structure play on the same day. And I had my first footballing away day with sole responsibility for my nephew. All in all, a cracking month.  

From a field to Anfield

This is just a silly football-related blogpost highlighting the extremes of watching football. On Saturday 1 February I was at Coronation Park, off Sloper Road in Cardiff watching Grange Albion of the South Wales Alliance Premier League play Merthyr Saints.

Merthyr set up to defend a corner

It was a decent game played in blustery conditions. Grange scored early then failed to score a number of really good chances. A couple of minutes before the end of the game, they conceded a penalty, which was duly converted, and the game ended in a draw.

Coronation Park is a football pitch next to the bus depot (site of a fun day out in times past!). I've given up making jokes about parking the bus, because my friend Tom who I go with didn't think it was funny the first fifteen times I said it. The rest of the ground backs on to houses and an abandoned playpark where the swings have been removed. I walked across the pitch and it's got daisies growing on it. It is literally a field.

Three days later I was watching Shrewsbury Town play Liverpool in the FA Cup replay at Anfield, one of the most famous grounds in football. There had been some controversy about the game because Liverpool were only going to play their under-23 team. Still, this was the first time Shrewsbury had ever played at Anfield and the universe, for once, conspired in my favour because I had some work booked in North Wales the following day, which had been in my diary for weeks before the fixture was announced. So I had a good reason to be in the vicinity.

It's fair to say Anfield was a bit different to Coronation Park.

A blue and amber huddle in a sea of red

8,000 Shrewsbury fans made the trip to Anfield, packing out the away end. It was the first time Shrewsbury had played with a Video Assisted Referee (VAR) and, as you would expect, after Shrewsbury scored, the officials rewound the tape until they found a reason to disallow the goal. What's the point of having VAR if it doesn't prevent one of the biggest clubs in the country going out of the top cup competition, after all? LiVARpool eventually went on and won the game, thanks to one of the Shrewsbury defenders panicking and heading the ball into his own net.

Shrewsbury will never have a better opportunity to win at Anfield than this game, and to lose it to an own goal is such a quintessentially Shrewsbury Town fan experience it almost beats losing for the fifth time at Wembley.

For me the contrast between where I was watching football on the Saturday and the Tuesday was the most amusing aspect. Football is football, whatever the surroundings look like. The game is still the game; the drama is still the drama; the disappointment is still the disappointment.