Stags Hunted Down By Forestmen
I had been told to look for an antiques shop on the road into Kimberley village and squeeze through a narrow passage to access the car-park of Kimberley Town FC. There was a children’s playground on my immediate left, totally and typically deserted, the second one I’d seen near a football ground in a week, after the one on a hill at Radcliffe-on-Trent the previous Saturday. Same opposition too, oddly… Daisies grew not trodden, where children should have been exercising and after purchasing a programme, full of pages of match reports, advertisements, blank pages and unnecessary information, I kicked a ball about with a groundhopper and his son in the play-area. And trod down the daisies.
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| Er, a fence... |
There was a clubhouse, rather like a shack with a wide-screen television; the tea was brown, my chocolate bar cold and the toilets came with a ‘Tea-lady Health Warning’. I was told to “…use the Ladies…” and so I did at half-time, whereas others braved the Gents, which a laughing local confirmed I should avoid at all costs because I would be “…walking in it…”
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| Scary... |
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| Would have liked this in my garden... |
The pitch gave the impression that someone had prised one corner away from the earth and fly-tipped beneath it. It was surely like having to be a fell-runner to take a right-wing corner at the far end but the dug-outs were isolated like tortoises deposited on the edges of a farmer’s fallow field.
I was impressed by a wrecked hut, surrounding trees, the grassy terrace and the one shed, beneath which the umbrella-challenged supporter could shelter near the clubhouse, at one end of the Stags’ stadium.
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| Scarier still... |
The lady in the electric wheelchair from Forest Town was unsure about the angle of the bank but her male companion rode the wall of death with some success, after her haranguing comments to him, although I was rather surprised when she strolled past me some time later and disappeared towards the amenities. Hmm, life is full of surprises.
The blackboard, attached to a side of the shed was a real benefit to sad statisticians and I duly copied down the names of local lads, such as Brianto, Passo, Owusu and the rural Oxborrow.
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| Back to school, then... |
I stood with a scout from Sheffield United, who gave me a Bolton Wanderers business card, who seemed to support Hull and yet was a representative of Westella Willerby. I think. Well, I supported Truro, followed Retford too, admired Ilkeston and had a soft spot for Coalville, so we quite obviously got on well, I thought. We marvelled at the referee’s insistence on investigating whether Forest Town could slot three penalties into the same bottom corner of the Kimberley net for his thesis, if Kimberley could dampen the Forest fire by alternating their defencemen ad hoc and weighing up the extremes of goalkeeping stones and pounds. Answers to the questions were yes, no, and on balance, the heavier the carcass, the louder the mouth, the harder they fall. Maybe the visiting ‘keeper should have warmed up in the curled-up corner? Recycling the heavy roller seemed a fine ruse.
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| Shed End... |
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| OMG... Is that Colin from Ravenstone? He's even looking at my camera, whilst teetering on the grassy bank... |
People barracked the official. Well, one man was bored with the penalty awards but generally, the groundhoppers were excited because there was a programme, some refreshments, somewhere to urinate and ten goals. The Kimberley players were already looking forward to shedding their pre-summer pounds and to my pleasant surprise, the Forest players were awarded their runners-up gifts, which looked like shredded Lonsdale belts. The league official made no fuss, the successful combatants smiled a lot, I took a few photos, an odd chap bent sideways to read the inscriptions just seconds before the mementoes were actually handed out, the Hull fan watched the television, learning that the Tigers had secured a point at Bolton’s ‘spaceship landed in the dull Lancashire countryside’ and we all drove home for tea and cakes.
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| The teams emerge... |
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| Not ANOTHER penalty... |
Except one groundhopper, who was faced with a long, long walk to an obscure railway station and then, judging by his accent, a long train journey to the south-east.
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| Man blesses trinkets... |
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| Forest Town RECEIVE trinkets... |
Ah, grass-roots: my one weakness…
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