“Come to the football, son,” he said. “All the glamour and excitement of FC Halifax Town v Dover Athletic, playing out before your eyes. That’ll be better than a night on those silly video games, won’t it?”
I hope they both stayed until the end, anyway. 0-0 after 86 minutes: final score 2-1 to Dover. Enjoyable in the end but perhaps not for Halifax Town fans.
The FA Cup — the world’s oldest and still one of its largest football competitions. 737 teams this season, these take a lot of winnowing down so things start early in the season, namely this weekend, with 185 games in the Extra Preliminary round including this one — Wellingborough Whitworth (in that salmon-pink gear) v. Desborough Town. Yes, I picked the game to go to because of the name of the club, but hey, surely all Whitworths should feel obliged to give them some support. They needed it today anyway — losing 4-0. Desborough win thirteen more Cup ties this season they will be at Wembley…
My 2017-18 football season opened at Salford City FC and a pre-season warm-up game against local rivals FC United of Manchester. The hosts won 2-1. You can read what I thought about the game, and see photographs of the day taken by someone much better at that kind of thing than me, if you purchase the next issue of When Saturday Comes (advt.). Salford City have big plans but their stadium, for all its recent renovations, is still pleasingly non-league in many ways. I like this catering van, its garish and gratuitously sexist decoration, and the worshipful posture of the customer.
Not an exciting day today I can assure you, but it was never going to be. Except at the end of the match at Hampden, which I guess was pretty exciting, although it’s been a while since I could really raise it for England F. C.
After last weekend’s semi-final victory over Salford, Halifax Town duly beat Chorley 2-1 (after extra time) to get promoted back to the fifth tier of English professional football. 7,920 people were there to see it, an amazing crowd for the level of football (and a record for the National League North apparently). Sam Johnson, Halifax keeper, here clears a flare off the pitch. I’m telling you it was all happening at The Shay this afternoon….
A benign one I can assure you. FC Halifax Town fans express their feelings about the scoring of the winning penalty in the shoot out in the (take a deep breath) National League North Play-off Semi-Final 2nd leg at home to Salford City (whose players really should practice penalties more). Second trip to the Shay stadium this season, after New Year’s Day, and there’ll probably be another one next Saturday seeing as we might as well go to the play-off final now they’ve made it.
In my own way I am a collector, mainly of places, and this football season have made more of an effort to get around some of the nooks and crannies of the game around England and (once) Scotland. Today saw a visit to King’s Lynn Town FC of the Evo-Stik Premier League, the seventh tier of English football. The thirteenth game of my season sees its seventh different competition, which is a decent return, though one I can better next year with some effort. The thing worth noticing about English football is just how deep down it goes. 554 people came along today to this game: in almost any other country this level of the game would hardly exist. I like this shot of the home fans behind the goal their team were attacking in the first half — after half-time they go to the other end. The last game of their season ended well for King’s Lynn as they beat Chesham 3-1.
Molineux is the stadium of Wolverhampton Wanderers who became the latest side that the mighty Brighton & Hove Albion batted aside on their way to the Championship title this season. Well, OK… promotion at least. We’re not there yet but we could be, as early as Monday. I have given up trying to take decent action shots of games, which is impossible a) from the crowd b) with an everyday camera and c) when you care about the result. So here is one taken just before things got started with the 5pm kick off (thank you, Sky Sports). Of course it would be better if all the lines were straight, but as with other elements of sports photography — it really doesn’t help if you’re confined to one particular seat all evening.
Jamie Murphy has just scored the second goal for Brighton & Hove Albion against Reading at the Amex stadium, and you could say we’re all rather happy about it. 3-0 final score — bring on Newcastle…
Evening game at the John Smith’s stadium, Huddersfield — but let’s not talk about it past this point. Suffice to say that only here, when the teams were coming out, did we Brighton fans feel particularly optimistic.
Being 42 