Ah bless, despite crippling my back and inflaming several swellings I'm carrying from my recent very painful 18 inch spanner with extension bar versus groin 'incident' at work (you can't keep a good man down - but OUCH never again), I got my project to revamp the front garden finished by early afternoon and the rest of the day is mine to enjoy as I see fit.Seeing as I'm going to a gig in Leeds tomorrow night, I decided to do something a bit different tonight for a change ...
NON LEAGUE FOOTBALL
There are many clubs with a backlog of fixtures to clear after the big freeze a couple of months back, which means a lot of games are being squeezed in on Thursday nights.Which for a sad anorak like me means even more opportunities to indulge my passion for the grass roots variety of the noble art that is Association Football.
Thursday was always traditionally a day of rest, unless recently your team featured in the UEFA Cup, but necessity has blown that last bastion of tradition out of the water and pretty soon the world will reverberate to the throbbing pulse of 24/7 football, football, football.
Or summat like that.
Typically, seeing as I'm up for it tonight, the choices are few and far between, but I more or less decide on a Lincolnshire League match between Lincoln United Reserves and Boston Town Reserves.
Surprisingly there are no volunteers whatsoever to fill the empty seats in my car for this fixture. Tsk, you lot are feckin' lightweights sometimes.
But while my bath is running to soak away the aches and pains, I decide to peruse the excellent, essential non league orientated Tony Kempster Forum.
There is a thread about games being played tonight so I add my two pennyworth.
A rather tempting alternative fixture is suggested by a 'veteran' poster and I'm soon looking up where Dunscroft Rovers will be playing Ackworth United in the Doncaster Senior League Division 1 tonight (it is a feeder league for the Central Midlands Football League).I'm delighted to discover the game is to be played at the home of Hatfield Main FC (the 'other' HMFC).
With the greatest of respect to Lincoln United, I've been there loads of times and their reserve game was the only fixture I'd spotted within half an hours drive from my home (I'm on shifts later, so I'd planned having a lazy, short and unproblematic trip).
On the other hand, I haven't been to Hatfield Main/Dunscroft Welfare for about seven seasons and had been very saddened when it looked as if the 'other' HMFC had gone to the wall forever a few years ago to think that the ground might disappear.
I'd never seen Dunscroft Rovers or Ackworth United play before, so two new teams on a favourite ground from the past swung it for me.
There was some conjecture as to when kick off would be.Usually it's 6PM in the Donny League midweek, but Dunscroft Welfare has floodlights so it might be a 7.30/7.45.
To make sure I arrived at about five to six and wasn't too nonplussed to find the place all locked up. I assumed they must be playing under the lights then.
Obviously somebody had been busy with the red paint and the ground had finally had some of the TLC it had been crying out for when I last saw it and the drive that approaches the ground from Broadway (a long road right through Dunscroft to Hatfield) had been resurfaced, I'd once been down there in a Rover Metro in the past (I loved that little car for some unfathomable reason) and had become very concerned that I wasn't going to be able to retrieve it from one especially spiteful pot hole of dimensions that suggested this track had been used as a NATO practice shelling range at some point.
I went for a wander around Dunscroft to kill an hour or so - hmm, I've been to more aesthetically pleasing beauty spots, like the fish docks in Grimsby or the sewerage plant near Tinsley Viaduct, the time simply flew by (it never really) - and returned at around 7.20PM. There were a few young blokes hanging around with gelled up hair wearing shell suits who I assumed were players and the gates were open. I wandered in ... Hmm, that's strange, no goals! I figured there still could be time to put them up if someone hurried up but soon discovered there was no game on here tonight. Kinnel!
In fact I got some pretty strange looks from the clientèle in the clubhouse when I asked.
I was home in a little over 25 minutes and checked on the non league bible Football Mitoo website to see that I hadn't imagined they had definitely listed a game at Dunscroft tonight that I had cross checked on there just before setting off.
They had posted the following while I was out and about:
Doncaster Senior League Division 1
2 - 0 Dunscroft Rovers v. Ackworth United.
Ackworth United unable to field a team - match awarded to Dunscroft Rovers.
Oh well, at least I got back in time to get get to work.
And I haven't been ripped off at that toll bridge and the way to (and from) Lincoln.
