Hello there, Hope you're feeling well today.
Well work had turned out to be unexpectedly fraught yesterday. Needed something that would wash it out of my hair. Happily for me. Football was back.
I live near the ground of the Welsh football league club Penybont FC (which is Welsh for Bridgend) and they were playing a preseason friendly against a Welsh team that plays in the English football league Newport County AFC. Neither wife nor daughter had plans for the day so at 2pm this Saturday afternoon off I went.
It's about a twenty minute walk from where I live,in the Bridgend suburb of Bryntirion. Indeed Penybont FC used to be Bryntirion FC until it merged with Bridgend Town FC. Making it then the first time a town moved to the suburbs.
The weather barring a cool breeze was warm enough but there was a dark cloud on the horizon.
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| Literally |
So I took an umbrella and one other item, which I'll explain later.
A slight digression. never understood how Welsh street names are used. Not the principle you understand, just the application. They seem to be picked for no obvious reason.
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| Makes no sense |
But back to the football and the first real surprise. For it appears that it's not just Olympic stadiums that can have brand naming rights but also the second tier of Welsh league football as well.
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| Progress.....apparently |
I went in. Paid £5. Was disappointed there wasn't a programme and went straight for the stand.
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| The Stand |
Easy to laugh at it but remember this isn't the English Premier league but a league most people could afford to go to regularly.And of course if the football was dull there was always the view.
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| Gaze at that |
Now look at the building on the right, In a seemingly small space it contains a sports bar with large screen TV, a function room. somewhere to get hot food (got chips and a cola at half time), the changing rooms for the teams and the match officials as well as some office space for club business. Clearly for the designer this was a sideline from building the TARDIS.
Outside of the bar there were chairs and tables people could chat and watch the match with behind the goal.
I noticed almost immediately that,programme or no programme, this was not the first team for Newport County. They were too young and fresh faced. Teenagers who probably only saw a razor from TV ads. This was the academy side. In contrast Penybont were a team of physically imposing first team adults complete in some cases with beards,baldness and in one case a combination of the two.
This match was,quite nearly, men versus boys,
And so it began....
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| The Match |
In the beginning you could see why these "boys" were picked. They had skill. They had youthful enthusiasm (ah youthful enthusiasm I remember it well). Anyway in about the eleventh minute there was a cross field cross which which was taken by a Newport player who made an expert shot to beat the Penybont goalkeeper. 1-0 then to Newport. It was the score that stood for the remainder of the half.
If the match had ended after 45 minutes you would have said that Newport were the more skillful side and that Penybont had only kept the loss to a single goal by imposing their obvious physical superiority over their opponents. But of course as the cliche goes football is a game of two halves and after the break the home team showed the thing that was absent in the first half which was skill.
Attack after attack began. Near misses and stout defending were frustrating Penybont but they kept on going. Penybont were also getting inventive. At a corner they piled as a group to receive it the same way as the national team did against Belgium in Euro 2016. Or as I overheard someone call it "the Welsh Thing".
One of the best things about going to a football game is learning by just listening to the people around you.
"That's Ellis Bellamy"
"He plays for us now?"
"Yes."
"Is Craig here?"
So on learning that a son of a famous retired Welsh player is playing for his team the first instinct of the recipient of that news is to look for his famous father (who wasn't there incidentally). Such is life.
There was more:
"There are two number threes (for Penybont) on the pitch" He was right.
"Does it matter?"
"Well yes. Say if there was a booking"
At that moment I had to turn round. There was I informed them two number twelves as well. One was bald and bearded the other was bearded with hair up top. Fortunately the first was one was substituted soon after that conversation. I didn't mention afterwards that I'd noticed there were also two number sixteens.
It was a good thing that the bald bearded number twelve had been substituted because it was the other number twelve who scored the Penybont equaliser. A delightful goal which was what they deserved after their relentless efforts in the half. Soon after Penybont scored two more. Both from headers. The second, in the way the ball was caught from the corner was positively Vogtsian.
3-1 then was the final score. I'm not sure what Newport County learnt from all of this other than giving the players experience. As for Penybont they would have the satisfaction of not just winning but coming from behind to do so.
I did notice that in this game was there were three times where Newport players had to go off the field because of injury. Being very young men there were no Oscar winning performances. It was real agonising pain. Let me stress I'm no expert, but I couldn't but wonder whether putting two sides so obviously physically different against each other was really a good idea.
And the other item I brought with me? Well I hereby claim to be the first man ever to have read an H E Bates novel during the breaks of a Welsh football league match.
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| Fame at last |
Until the next time
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