August 2019 football round up

A record-breaking 7 games for me in August. I've already blogged about the opening weekend, but here are some more bad photos and comments where I try to be amusing.

The newly rebranded JD Cymru Premier league kicked off on a wet Friday night with Barry away at neighbours Penybont. It was a ground I hadn't been to before and fortunately there was space in one of the stands so I could stay out of the Biblical rain.

It was relatively restrained rain at kick off.

Barry won 2-1, after going behind to a penalty. The winning goal was an absolute belter from Jonathan Hood, who later got sent off for messing around on the substitutes bench. Afterwards the players came over to salute the fans who had been raising the roof all night.

And then had a post-match huddle in front of us.

A week later and it was another Friday night game for Barry, this time at Jenner Park, against Aberystwyth Town.

My Mum was down for the bank holiday weekend so I took her along. She really enjoyed it.

Barry won 3-1, although they didn't look as comfortable as the scoreline suggests, particularly after the sun went down.

On the bank holiday Monday, Barry were at home again, this time playing Bala Town.

It was a much tougher game, ending 2-2. The weather was glorious, with barely a cloud in the sky. The clouds we did have were rather lovely.

Next up was a midweek game in the South Wales Alliance, Premier Division where my most local team, Grange Albion, were playing Cardiff Draconians. The Dracs are the Manchester City of the division apparently, and even pay some of their players. They have the fancy warm-up routines you would expect.

It was a game played with unofficial linesmen and plenty of banter between the ref, the players, the crowd and the managers. This is a level where referees can answer back.

The Dracs were 4-0 up before Albion got on the scoresheet to make it 4-1  at half time. Given their ground is right next to the bus depot (do you remember when I went to the bus depot?), it's a shame Cardiff Bus just repeatedly drove their buses past the back of the Albion goal instead of parking one in front of it.

The game finished 4-2 to the Dracs with missed chances aplenty in the second half.

And so to my final game in August, and my fourth in eight days, when I went with my friend Sara and her extended family to watch Cardiff play Fulham, in the other stadium on Sloper Road in Grangetown.

Cardiff's warm up was a bit different to the Dracs'. But I'm not sure what ring a ring a rosie will achieve.

The game was still 0-0 on 42 minutes and then was 1-1 at half time, which was also the full time score. It wasn't the most memorable game, although I did see a player, Harry Arter, sent off after getting booked for diving. It was his second yellow card and he had a long trudge off the field with a chorus of 'Cheerio! Cheerio! Cheerio!' for the duration of the trudge. I think that's the first time I've ever seen a player dismissed for diving. There's always something new to see at a football match.

We do like to go and see the C side - non-league international football report

I am cruising towards a twenty year high in terms of the number of games I've been to this season. Last week I went with one of my erstwhile footballing compadres, Steve, to see Wales 'C' versus England 'C'. This is an international played between players at the semi-professional level or, if you like, a 'non-league' international. England C have been playing for a while, but this was apparently the first time the Welsh FA has fielded a C team.

The teams line up for the anthems

I have seen Wales and Wales B, so was pretty pleased to add Wales C to my list of teams I've seen play. Cathy asked if there was a Wales Z composed of the country's absolutely worst players. "If you've never played football before, you're in," she said, laughing.

The game was played at Jenner Park in Barry, which given the weather, wasn't going to live up to its Barrybados nickname. More like Brrry, I thought, as I layered up with long johns, long sleeve under shirt, thermal socks and a snood. There was a massive pile of snow by the side of the pitch as we came in through the turnstile.  I was still a bit cold by the end of the night, even with all that clobber on.

The Wales team was drawn exclusively from the Welsh Premier League, given that the game was apparently celebrating the 25th anniversary of the WPL's predecessor, the League of Wales. I saw a League of Wales representative game back in the late 90s, so in a sense only the branding had changed. The England team was mainly from the National League. No Wrexham players were present on either side, which was a bit odd considering they are doing pretty well in the National League. They are probably considered an English club by the FAW, but there must be some Welsh born players in their team and playing elsewhere in the semi-pro system in England.

My dad had asked me to get him a programme. There were no programmes. There was a QR code instead. I would have to download it. Given there were over 800 people there, the decision not to print some programmes seemed a bit odd. I couldn't get the QR code to work as I'd not scanned a QR code in the two and a bit years since changing my phone, so I just went to the website, old-school style, and downloaded it from there. (A couple of days later I found a menu option in the scanning section that enabled me to swap to a QR scanner.)

The teams came out and lined up for the anthems with a surprisingly large number of press photographers taking lots of photos. Laudably there was no booing. There was a comedy moment when the announcer stumbled over name of the England number 11, Fejiri Okenabirhie, and then muttered "I can't pronounce that name" which came through loud and clear over the tannoy.

It was a decent game of football. Both sides tried to play pass and move football. I've had a few conversations recently about how the quality of football at lower levels is so much better these days and this was a showcase for how quality has trickled down the pyramid.

Almost inevitably, Okenabirhie scored the first goal, benefiting from an unselfish pass from the number 9 who had pressured the defence into a mistake and then drew the keeper out. The announcer mangled his name again. The vocal locals who sing all the way through Barry matches were present in force and sang "We can't say your name, we can't say your naaaa-aaaame, Number eleven, we can't say your name." I thought that was amusing.

It was 0-1 to England at half time. Should have been 0-2 but somehow the striker hit the bar and the guy following up headed over from 4 yards out. Wales had had an early chance but didn't look particularly threatening.

Wales were better in the second half but were soon down 2-0 after the spawniest penalty I've seen in a long time. It looked like a clear dive and it looked like it was outside the box. For the first time ever the crowd sang for VAR. But despite the protests and the boos from the stand, the penalty was well dispatched by Okenabirhie. This time the announcer tried to put the stress on different syllables, but that didn't work either and he paused mid-surname, which was cheered by the crowd.

Wales rallied in response to the refereeing injustice, getting a goal back. But then England scored their third goal, which was an absolute cracker from the edge of the area. It also sealed a hat trick for Okenabirhie. The tannoy man bailed and just announced it was "a hat trick for... FEJIRI!" as if he was a Brazilian player with one name. The crowd cheered and the announcer stuck with the one name moniker when Fejiri was subbed later on.

Wales stuck at it and seemed the stronger side as the game went into the last twenty minutes. They pulled it back to 3-2 with a few minutes to go and had two really good chances to equalise before the end, but they just couldn't get the ball in the net.

I'd give Fejiri man of the match. In a game where the overall organisation and quality was surprisingly good, he stood out as a very talented player. He plays for Dagenham & Redbridge, but could probably do some damage at a higher level. He's certainly as good as several players I've seen at League One and League Two level.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable game and I hope the FAW continue with the C International experiment. I thought it was an excellent advert for both the WPL and the English non-league system. However, next time we really need to have proper printed programmes. There are only so many innovations we can live with in football.

25 years of football - my top 5 most memorable matches

I recently blogged about my own football-going records, covering 25 seasons of going to games. It's kind of hard to pick out the best games, or the most memorable. There are some I will never forget. Here are programmes (and some photos) for five matches I went to that I think are the ones I will remember forever.

Newcastle v Aston Villa - 2 April 2005

It was a game on my birthday - always a bit special, that. My sister-in-law, Abby, had bought us really good tickets quite close to the pitch. So close we could see Alan Shearer doing his shouty, pointy, bossy stuff, and Graeme Souness glowering in the dug-out. Kieron Dyer was Newcastle's highest paid player. The woman behind us didn't rate him. "He's too fancy for me," she said. "Too fancy!"

Too fancy! has become a bit of an in-joke for me and Cathy.

This game itself has become legendary. Newcastle had three men sent off. Two of them - the "too fancy" Kieron Dyer and wannabe thug Lee Bowyer were sent off for fighting each other. The third, Steven Taylor handled the ball on the line, and then collapsed holding his chest in a laughable attempt to fool the referee. Aston Villa won 3-0. They were already leading when Dyer and Bowyer started trading punches.

They were properly swinging as well. None of this brush a guy's cheek and he falls to the ground clutching his face nonsense. They'd have done ice hockey proud.

In the programme, there's a bit about how the game brought Bowyer "into conflict" with his former boss David O'Leary.

That may have been true, but it brought him into more conflict with Kieron Dyer.

I remember leaving the ground, trying hard not to stand out as a non-Geordie in a seething sea of very, very angry Geordies. There was a palpable sense of repressed fury in the crowd. It just needed a spark to erupt into a riot. If that had happened, St James' Park would have been ripped apart and we'd be talking about the day two Newcastle players were lynched by their own fans.


Wales v Italy - 16 October 2002
The Millennium Stadium was packed. Noisy Italian fans. Even noisier Welsh fans.

Wales scored first. Italy equalised from a soft free kick. But then Craig Bellamy scored what proved to be the winning goal. I remember the headrush from leaping up when the goal went in.

This was part of the campaign for Euro 2004 that saw Wales miss out in a qualifying play-off to a Russian team later exposed as harbouring drug cheats. Given everything that's come out about Russia since, that shouldn't be a surprise.

Wales were a team much greater than the sum of it's parts. Here's the squad for the game. There weren't many stars in it.

By contrast, this is Italy's squad. Less than four years after this game, Italy won the World Cup. Again.

Shrewsbury v Everton - 4 January 2003
Two games from the same season make my top five. This was an FA Cup match from the era when tickets for football matches looked like this:

Not a bar code to be seen.

The programme features a delightfully dated early twenty-first century photoshop montage pitting boy wonder Wayne Rooney (whatever happened to him?) against Shrewsbury's feisty talismanic striker Luke Rodgers.

An interesting factoid: the Everton team were managed by former Shrewsbury central defender David Moyes (whatever happened to him?), while Shrewsbury were managed by legendary former Everton central defender Kevin Ratcliffe.

I was on the Riverside, which was the side of old Gay Meadow that backed on to the river. It was a long roofed terrace and it was rammed for this game. I don't remember much of the football. There was a crowd surge when Shrewsbury scored the opening goal - a Nigel Jemson free kick that Richard Wright completely screwed up. Niclas Alexandersson scored an equaliser for Everton. He was a squad member getting a rare run out. (I'd ask whatever happened to him, but that would just be sad.)

The surge I really remember was the one when Nigel Jemson scored with a header in the second half. If you've never stood on a packed terrace you may never have known that sense that suddenly you aren't yourself any more. You are travelling as a mass, forwards, cresting on a wave of fellow fans. It doesn't matter of course because you are yelling and hugging your mates, and just loving the moment.

Unless your name's Mike and you're an Everton fan in the home end with us, and this is probably one of the most painful football experiences you will have. (Probably not, really. He is an Everton fan after all.) Yeah, it really sucks to be Mike that day. But for the rest of us, woohoo!

Again, a squad comparison. This was the Shrewsbury team that would get relegated out of the football league at the end of the season, eight points adrift of the second bottom team.

Kevin Ratcliffe has not worked in management since the end of that season. He tips up now and again on BBC Wales as a pundit. David Moyes brought his West Ham team to Shrewsbury's new stadium in January this year for an FA Cup game. It finished 0-0.

The Riverside got demolished a couple of years later. They built yuppie flats on it.

I'm still friends with Mike. He'll likely read this. DO YOU REMEMBER THIS GAME, MIKE?


Cardiff v Shrewsbury - 10 January 2016

Another FA Cup game. I've got to include this because I'd seen Shrewsbury play Cardiff three times in Cardiff and never win. The first was a Cardiff City promotion party that was curtailed slightly early by the referee because of crowd encroachment on the pitch. The second was a midweek game that I remember mainly for a Shrewsbury fan being hit in the eye by a coin thrown from the Cardiff fans. The third was a hammering that I watched from the away terrace behind the goal nearest to my house. All three were in the third or basement division.

This was the fourth time I'd seen Shrewsbury play Cardiff in Cardiff, but the first at their swanky new stadium. They were a fancy dan Championship side now, having just spent a season in the Premier League no less. It was also live on S4C on a Sunday night which might explain why almost nobody turned up. Seriously, it was empty. This was the home end:

And Shrewsbury won! 1-0 with a smash and grab bundle-it-over-the-line goal right in front of us in the away end. Oh how we celebrated! Me and Steve and Connor and John! Good times!

My friend Nigel, caught a still of us all intently watching the game from the S4C coverage.

This! This is how you watch a televised match. None of this waving at the camera really excited like.

Paulton Rovers v Poole Town - 25 October 2014
I've included this one because a game doesn't have to be a team full of stars for a match to be memorable.

My friend Steve is a Poole Town fan and he has taken me to a few places to watch them play. Glamorous places like Merthyr, Weston-Super-Mare, and even Poole itself. But few places feel as out of the way as Paulton Rovers. I'm still not entirely sure where Paulton is and I've looked it up on Google Maps. It's somewhere nearish to Bristol. Or Bath. I think.

It's in the country.

You can get very close to the goals.

So, why is this memorable? Well, it was one of those games, you know. Paulton were soon leading 2-0. Then Poole pulled it back to 2-2. Then Paulton scored again twice, either side of half time. Poole got another goal back, then won the softest, most dubious penalty ever to make it 4-4. Then with barely minutes to go, unbelievably went ahead and ended up winning 5-4. A very exciting game, and proof that entertainment can be had wherever you end up watching football.

Football watching - the first quarter decade

I've been logging the football games that I've been to since the 1992-93 season. It was my first year at VI Form College and I got into going to football in a big way. I was helped by my Dad being a keen fan of football and got the opportunity to visit a number of grounds near to where we lived in Shrewsbury. I saw 29 games that season, mainly Shrewsbury Town, but also games at Wrexham, Telford, Bridgnorth, Crewe, Walsall, and strangely, Cardiff City's Ninian Park. Little did I know that I would end up living barely a 20 minute walk away from that now-demolished stadium for a good chunk of my adult life.

Here's a graph of my game attendance from 1992-93 through to the 2016-17 season.

The blue line marks all the games I went to in a given season. The red line is the number of Shrewsbury games as a subset of that total. There are three seasons when I was a one club man, but most years I've been to a few more games. For most of the noughties the other games were Wales Internationals, but there have been others. Recently, thanks to my friend Steve, I've been to quite a few QPR games and some Poole Town games as well. And my friend Sara, a season ticket holder at Cardiff City has helped me catch several games at the new CCFC Stadium, built opposite where Ninian Park used to be.

My record high point of 37 in 1993-94 is probably going to stand for all time. I joke that year was BC - Before Cathy. But it was also a year when I possibly should have spent more time concentrating on my A-levels, rather than going to football matches. Ah, the freedom of youth! And I had my Dad seeking out more games for us to go to when Shrewsbury weren't at home. That's how I went to a Shifnal Town game.

I still like going to football matches with my Dad. Last week we froze in the permanent temporary marquee that is the away end at Bristol Rovers. Shrewsbury's late winner warmed us up a bit.

In this 25 year span, I saw Shrewsbury 149 times, and a total of 269 football matches. These are small beer compared to the numbers racked up by serious groundhoppers, but still a lot more than many people manage. The average is dragged down by seasons like 2009-2010 when I only went to two games. I have seen at least one Shrewsbury game every season, literally just the one in 2005-2006.

In the process I have visited 59 different football grounds, ranging from Elgin to Plymouth, Norwich to Newtown, and including a MLS game in Salt Lake City. Several of the grounds have disappeared. Ninian Park, obviously, the Gay Meadow, which I loved and can picture clearly in my mind's eye even after ten years in the new stadium, the frankly horrible Vetch Field, and even the original Wembley.

In total, I have seen 148 different club sides. I expected it to be higher given the number of games, but I have seen some clubs a surprising number of times, and I'm not counting International or Representative teams. Some of the teams I've seen no longer exist, disappearing through mergers or just going bust. A number have reformed lower down the league. I am counting Wimbledon prior to the move to Milton Keynes and AFC Wimbledon, founded by fans in protest, as the same club. It's my list; my rules.

Here's a table of the teams I have seen most often

As you'd expect, Shrewsbury lead the way. I'd been to more Cardiff matches than I thought when I totted them up. I haven't seen Bridgnorth play since 1994-95, but I did see them 9 times over three seasons in the 90s. Torquay place quite highly, thanks to the influence of Cathy's cousin, Adam, who supports them. Inter Cardiff won't be improving on their position. They disappeared in a merger with UWIC several years ago. UWIC then evolved into Cardiff Metropolitan. I have seen Cardiff Met play, but it's not the same club at all.

The top ten will change next year. I've already seen QPR lose narrowly at Cardiff this season, so they will move up to joint 5th. And I've mentioned how I've seen Bristol Rovers again, so they will be on their own in 10th.

In 2016-17 I went to the highest number of games for 20 years (14), but that was a precursor to a real renaissance in matchgoing this season. The game at Bristol's Memorial Stadium last Saturday was my 20th of the season so far. I have plans to see Shrewsbury again on my birthday and they are also one game away from another Wembley appearance in the football league trophy, which I will really want to go to. If they get to Wembley it will be the fourth time I have seen them play there. They've lost all three previous games, so they are due a win. I feel I am due a win too.

Merthyr Town v Poole Town

A friend hailing originally from the South Coast invited me to travel up to Merthyr to see his non-league team play the Martyrs in the Evo-Stik Southern Premier League. How could I turn down that opportunity? I'm a sucker for non-league football - the authentic game, as far as I'm concerned.

The game itself was lively. Poole were the better side, but Merthyr scored first, on the break, against the run of play. Then just before half-time a Merthyr defender stopped a goal-bound shot with his hand. Red card. Penalty. 1-1.

Second half a Merthyr player lunged in two-footed leaving a Poole midfielder screaming in agony with a broken leg. One of the more horrible things I've seen at a game. Another red card. Down to 9 men, Merthyr soon conceded another - a very good move finished off with a tap in. And then Poole just wasted chance after chance before Merthyr won a late penalty and then saw out the game with some heroic defending to take an unlikely point.

Anyway, here's some photos to give you an idea of what it was like.

The correlation of football and religion...

The flag is out ready for the match

Forget live on Sky - now that's a TV gantry!

A mural commemorates Saint Tydfil, martyred in Merthyr

First half goalmouth action

The Merthyr keeper organises his defence as Poole take a corner

Scramble in the goalmouth

The Poole Army cheer on their side, second half

The 'other' Premier League - Neath FC v Prestatyn Town

I like going to quirky football matches. My friend Matt lives in Neath. Neath FC play in the Welsh Premier League. We decided to go. It was pouring down in the morning and we almost ducked out. But then the sun came out and a gloriously sunny afternoon provided the perfect backdrop to a game of football that only occasionally rose above the mediocre, but was quite entertaining nonetheless.

Non-league, local football is about grass roots atmosphere. There is always a cute teenage girl selling programmes. There is always someone who brings in their own supply of food - the lad in front of us who ate an entire family-sized packet of hobnobs in this case. Tea is always served in styrofoam cups that allow the heat from the liquid to burn your hand off. People are friendly, stewards are funny, there are no police, there's banter between the fans. I love it.

Neath's star player is Lee Trundle, one-time Swansea City 'legend' and now knocking the ball about in a competition somewhat below his true level. His skills and touches set him apart from every other player on the pitch, most of whom looked like decidedly ordinary unathletic blokes. He was surrounded at the end - the only autograph the kids seemed to want.

The most unathletic player was the opposition goalie. Looking at him you could believe he'd have his win bonuses paid out in toblerones. He wasn't a bad stopper though, getting down smartly to two free kicks from Trundle that would have tested most keepers, and pulling off a very good save at his near post in the first half.

Neath won 1-0. They should have had more. But Prestatyn fought hard and kept going even when they finally went behind late in the second half.

Newport County v Wrexham

I had an article published on When Saturday Comes' website previewing the Newport v Wrexham game I went to yesterday. (Read it here)

I didn't realise that the game had been switched to a Sunday (for TV broadcasting purposes, no less) so had an abortive round trip to Newport on the Saturday. Doh! At least it meant I knew where the stadium was the next time around.

I really enjoyed the game. Two goals, a comical missed penalty when the taker slipped and spooned his spot-kick onto the bar, some decent passing football in patches, standing on an old-style terrace where people could smoke, the vulgar witticisms of the crowd.

Trivia notes... Both teams had goalkeepers who used to play for Shrewsbury - Glyn Thompson who was sold as a youngster but didn't make it in the big time was playing for Newport and Scott Shearer was in goal for Wrexham. Newport's reserve goalie was also ex-Shrewsbury and also called Glyn.

Neil Ashton, another ex-Town man, gave away the penalty and got sent off early in the second half. Despite the miss, having the extra man meant Newport were the better side in the closing stages. (Yet another ex-Town player was on the bench for Shrewsbury, one-time Wales under-21 international Jamie Tolley.)

Both the managers were called Dean, both had been strikers and played in the Premier League.

Former Chelsea defender Frank Sinclair, now 38, was playing for Wrexham. They say that pace is temporary, but class is permanent. You don't get to be a top-level defender for most of your career without having some nous. He read the game well and it seemed every time a Newport player turned around in possession, big Frank was there to boot the ball away.

All in all, a good day

Fed up with the glitz and gloss of modern football?

Do you long for the days when players had personality and really said what they think?

Well When Saturday Comes' weekly email newsletter included a link to just such a player's profile, Sam Farthing of Tadcaster Albion. He seems to have a lot of dislikes...