MY FIRST VISIT TO THE BRILLIANT LYE TOWN FC...

Lye Down, There Is A Match This Time…

I managed to get through the gap this time which had been in total darkness two years before and at least I could see that there would be a match played on this March evening. There hadn’t been last time, despite the fact that a game was scheduled in some areas of the press… I had left with other foolish hopefuls, disappointed…

There was a bicycle shed. A notice informed me that all vehicles were left at their owners’ risk. My car wouldn’t have gone inside the shed, it appeared. The club room was open but the entrance gate was padlocked, next to a wooden half-door which would eventually drop down to reveal the cashier, who doubled as the programme seller. There was a rectangular hole in the blue-painted wood. It had a label. It read: ‘Post’. I liked that.

I had been chatting to a guy who reckoned that the Lye Town manager worked for him but it was 7.25pm when the entrance gate was unlocked. Sadly I was the first to pay, I bought a match programme which was bizarrely blessed with two blank pages and then was directed towards a guy (the Chairman, it turned out) because he had the team-sheets in his pocket. He was called Brian. I sat in the bar and copied out the names, some barely legible, naturally, then I entered the ground. And was intrigued.

There was a cricket pitch too and the pavilion looked sombre in the almost complete darkness. The Lye ‘keeper was complaining that he couldn’t see to warm up properly because the floodlights were not fully operational. I passed a blue hut, labelled ‘Board Room’ and then I saw the shed. Without the lowly cattle. Its curved, high, rusting corrugated roof covered, er, small goal-frames, park benches and picnic tables. A set of steps rose away from a corner flag to a wooden fence and gate. I didn’t know why.

The ‘grandstand’ should be a listed structure. Large letters, painted white were emblazoned on the back wall: ‘LYE TOWN’ and the blue and the white benches reminded me of sitting in a rowing boat. The refreshments hut looked like my dad’s old shed, although this structure appeared to be derelict. But then the shutter rose, to my sudden amazement and two men sold, er, refreshments. The meaning of the sign on the grandstand’s wall, which read ‘Stourbridge Rolling Mills’ is still beyond my knowledge but I began to realise that this ground hadn’t changed much for quite a while. I liked it though and I would come to love it…

Lye were decent, Wolverhampton Casuals weren’t. Lye won 5-2, the Casuals ‘keeper was lobbed three times, two of them counting as goals but the highlight of the evening, after he had netted an equalising penalty, was the Lye skipper’s rallying cry: 

“Keep f…..’ huntin'’’ 

I liked that. Tactics are invaluable. 

I’ll go there again, I thought. 

My next visit will be my 15th…

It’s what I do.