red card
You're quite right. It's a beautiful world but it would be so much better without so many people in it, causing wars, dropping bombs, firing weapons, stealing resources etc. We could have saved the planet but we were too lazy and selfish to do so.
Let's have some gentle escapism. How about a website that talks about non-professional football in England and Scotland?
What's that? Let's do it?
OK .
Note: Some of the following is shite. For a more informed view, and a link to some grand photographs, please move directly to Page 4.
And to prove this site does get updated, Heroes of the Week 11 to 18 October are...
Gainsborough Trinity for going to Hartlepool, outplaying the Monkey Hangers and knocking them out of the FA Cup.
The ref at Staveley Miners Welfare who stopped the game after a linesman was upset about being abused and ordered Staveley supremo Terry Damms to eject the offender from the ground. Annoyingly, Terry Damms decided to argue about it before complying but after 10 minutes, in which the ref refused to back down, the gobshite was sent packing and the game continued.
There's no evidence to back up Cray Wanderers' claim to be the second oldest football club in the world. It might be true, but it's widely accepted that Hallam hold that particular distinction.
The Wanderers live up to their name by regularly flitting from one groundshare to another. The picture above was from the time they were renting a ground at Oxford Road, Sidcup. That stadium has now returned to nature and from the evidence of Google Maps is the back garden of Sidcup Conservative Club.
Wormley Rovers of the South Midlands League are nicknamed the Worms. That alone makes their results worth watching out for. Come on you Worms! Brimsdown FC also play at Wormley's ground but in the Eastern Counties League, having been moved out of the South Midlands League while they were tenants at Tilbury. This means that two teams playing on the same pitch are in different leagues, for geographical reasons.
Enfield and Enfield Town met in the FA Cup this season but the match didn't take place in Enfield. It went ahead in Hertford, where Enfield currently groundshare. They don't play in the Borough of Enfield, and neither do Enfield Borough, who used to play at the art deco Queen Victoria II Stadium (pictured above) but are now sharing with Wingate & Finchley in the Borough of Barnet. Enfield Town now play at the QVS. Tottenham Hotspur also play in the Borough, which is bad news for the local folk since the Council has just signed away a huge expanse of land to allow Spurs to build a whacking training facility.
In Barnet the Borough Council have more backbone, and have refused Barnet FC's application to take over a public playing field, so the Bees will have to carry on playing outwith the borough at the Hive, which is in Harrow and was originally intended for Wealdstone FC. When Wealdstone's benefactor pulled out, after £4 million had been spent on the site, Harrow BC invited new bidders. Whoever took over was supposed to pay Wealdstone their 4 million back, but that never happened. Wealdstone soldier on at their ground, the former home of Ruislip Manor, who became homeless and more or less defunct till bouncing back as London Rangers in 2017 and playing home games at the Brunel University Sports Ground in Uxbridge. Then there's Uxbridge FC, who don't play in Uxbridge but in West Drayton.
Harrow Borough do, at least, play in the Borough of Harrow, at a ground about a mile away from Wealdstone's home which, as we already know, isn't in Wealdstone but in Ruislip Manor. There's actually a neat triangle linking the grounds of Harrow, Wealdstone and Hayes & Yeading United. When Wealdstone's owner sold his club's old ground they shared with Yeading for a while before Yeading and Hayes merged together. If I understand correctly, Hayes & Yeading played at Hayes' ground while sprucing up Yeading's home into a shiny new stadium, and that's where they play now after a few nomadic years of their own.
Hayes is in the Borough of Hillingdon, which brings us to Hillingdon Borough FC, formerly Yiewsley Town. They merged with Burnham to become Burnham and Hillingdon, playing in a suburb of Slough, Berkshire, which is in itself controversial since Slough was tradionally in Buckinghamshire. In fact, the only thing most kids knew about Slough was that Mars Bars were made there and the wrapper included the words Slough, Bucks. After a couple of years Hillingdon was dropped from the club's name and they became Burnham FC again. A new Hillingdon Borough was formed, playing in Ruislip, but not Ruislip Manor and not at Grosvenor Vale, where Wealdstone play.
I expect all this is a story that will continue to run. Should Barnet find a new home in Barnet then the Hive will be up for sale, but it's unlikely Wealdstone will ever be able to move in because they can't afford to. Demolition and replacement by expensive houses is probably the most likely conclusion to that part of the saga.
Nice try. Jack Rice of Taunton Town was sent off after 20 seconds against Plymouth Parkway but this is not the quickest red card of all time. Far from it, in fact. It's not even the fastest sending off involving a team from Taunton. A laddie lasted 2 seconds in a Sunday League game in 2000 before he was dismissed for complaining that the ref had blown his whistle too loudly.
What do Steeton AFC and Eccleshill United have in common, bearing in mind that Steeton play in the North West Counties League and Eccleshill in the Northern Counties League East? The answer is that they both play their home games in Keighley, where Steeton's ground is actually to the East of Eccleshill's.
Steeton is a village just outside Keighley, as is Silsden, whose team also used to play at Lawkholme Lane, Keighley, till floodlights were installed at their old ground and they were able to go home again. Steeton's ground didn't come up to scratch either, so after being accepted into the NWCL they moved into Lawkholme Lane, which is nowadays called Cougar Park after Keighley RLFC who were rebranded as Keighley Cougars in 1998. Steeton have now moved to Marley Park, but Cougar Park has a new tenant, Eccleshill United, who played in Bradford - though not in Eccleshill - before being bought by the Cougars' owners and moved 10 miles along the A650.
Also in Yorkshire, the latest Wakefield AFC are now installed at Trinity's Belle Vue ground after previously making their home at Post Office Road, the home of Featherstone Rovers. A previous Wakefield incarnation also played at Belle Vue after Emley's Welfare Ground was deemed unfit. The team became Wakefield-Emley, and their reserves still used Emley's old home. A group of enthusiasts started up a brand new Emley AFC, who flourished while Wakefield-Emley became Wakefield FC and then disappeared completely. Emley are now in the Northern Premier League while Wakefield are in the NCEL. Face it, folks. The round ball game is never going to catch on in Wakefield, Featherstone, Castleford, Batley or Dewsbury. Nor Keighley, and not St Helen's or Widnes either, though that's a story for another day.
Post Office Road currently has the ridiculous title of Millennium Stadium. Two stands there used to be at Scarborough FC's old Seamer Road ground. They were still quite new when Scarborough went bust so Featherstone Rovers had them carted down to West Yorkshire and reassembled. It's a very tidy ground now, and still retains its atmosphere while some brand new off-the-shelf stadia can't really reproduce the old magic. Meanwhile, Scarborough's new ground is presently considered unsafe meaning that the team has had to flit back to Bridlington, to Queensgate, where Brid Town and Brid Trinity used to share before a madman took over, closed Trinity down and moved Town to Doncaster, where they played in front of crowds in the region of 20. Happily, the madman went to prison after trying to burn Doncaster Rovers' stand down for the insurance money, even though the ground was owned by the Council, and Town were allowed to go back to Queensgate.
Bradford (Park Avenue) FC are, of course, a continuation of the former Bradford Football Club, who used to be a rugby league club and whose switch to footer was known in the city as The Great Betrayal. They can't use their old ground, Horton Park Avenue, because Yorkshire CCC built an indoor academy - now a private gym - on the pitch, but they've settled instead at the Horsforth Stadium, just outside the city boundary. Albion Sports also use Horsfall, having previously shared with Farsley Celtic at the Throstle's Nest, a ground currently lying empty with Farsley Celtic out of action. A plan to install a new pitch last season went awry and left Celtic playing their home games in Buxton, which isn't even close. Some Farsley fans successfully campaigned for the Nest to be designated a community asset, so it will be ready and waiting when there's a new team ready to come along and use it.
Meanwhile, just down the road, Liversedge FC don't play in Liversedge but on the border of Hightown and Cleckheaton, a town that boasts (!) of having the highest proportion of Elvis impersonators in Europe. Cleckheaton also provided the first 5 letters of the fictional Yorkshire town of Cleckhuddersfax, made famous in the 1970s and 80s by the Grumbleweeds.
Down in Sheffield, or rather in Derbyshire, the wandering Sheffield Football Club, almost universally accepted as the oldest in the world, are playing in Dronfield at the former home of Norton Woodseats FC. The Coach & Horses Ground is the back garden of a pub of the same name, although the football area has a different, daft name now that doesn't deserve to be repeated. Why NWFC played in Dronfield under their name is a mystery in itself, since both Norton and Woodseats are up the road in the city of Sheffield, so why the team wasn't called Dronfield I don't know, except that they did change their name to Dronfield United for a short time before becoming Norton Woodseats again and then going out of business.
Sheffield - usually known as Club - are planning a new ground just within the city boundary, to be shared with the Eagles Rugby League side. Fans in Dronfield can always follow Dronfield Town when that happens, and not even need to change the colour of their scarves since Town, like Club, play in red and black, only in stripes rather than quarters.
Having said that, when I passed the site of the new ground on 19 October the only change from last time I saw it was that the big sign telling everybody about the new development had disappeared. That doesn't bode well!
Not saying there's an excess of Towns in English non-league football but the 3 fixtures in the Northern Premier League's top division on 14 October were Ashton United v Hebburn Town, Morpeth Town v Cleethorpes Town and Whitby Town v Hednesford Town.
Uxbridge FC's promotion from the Isthmian League South Central Division to the Southern League Premier Division South has had the unwanted spin-off of increasing the price of admission by 60%. Part of Uxbridge's ethos is that watching football should be affordable, but the Southern League forced them to charge £8 per match, which is the minimum they allow, instead of £5, which the club intended.
There's no rule on the price of season tickets, though, so fans can pay £50 and see a whole season at the club's ground, Honeycroft. Naturally, Honeycroft isn't actually in Uxbridge, but never mind.