Coven Athletic 1 Cannock United 3
Staffordshire County Senior League – Division Two
Being raised in a small village, I spent many of my
formative years sheltered from the real World!
No sooner had I turned up for my first day at the
semi-borstal that was Mortimer Wilson Comprehensive School, did I start to
realise just how lucky, and possibly even how naïve I’d been.
These kids were different, for a start, they seemed to be
let out after dark and they understood the basic concepts of survival in a
working class town. Arguing, fighting, haranguing the opposite sex, loitering,
even minor criminal acts were part and parcel of daily life.
But, they couldn’t recite their twelve times table, and I
could, so it gave me comfort that I might just have enough to survive the five
year rat-race, and assuming I got out of the other end, I stood half a chance
of a life without penal incarceration.
You see, living in a small village was great, you knew
everyone, everyone knew you. You could walk everywhere, you could get home nice
and easily, before it got dark. You also couldn’t get into trouble, because
everyone knew you, and unquestionably your parents WOULD find out everything
you’d been up to.
We played football, we rode bikes, we played on our Sinclair
ZX Spectrum’s and in the Summer we’d go down the woods and make dens. How
Famous Five it all was, ‘Woof’ said Timmy. Lashings of Ginger Beer all round,
with cream cakes for dessert!
There are some villages through the passage of time, that actually
end up becoming small towns, rather sadly in my view. The price of progress and
housing demands has seen the large developer win the battle of wills with the
authorities, and green land subsequently turns to homes. I’ve seen this locally
with places like South Normanton and Hilton, and what were once small village
communities have become almost unrecognisable.
However, I don’t ever recall a town being ‘downgraded’ to a
village before, but when I did my research on Coven Athletic, who were new to
the Staffordshire County Senior League, I came across something very unusual.
My first discovery was that they played in a place called
Brewood, which was located in South Staffordshire, not far from the Shropshire
border, effectively to the North West of Wolverhampton.
That rang a bell
because I could recall a team playing in the West Midlands Regional League in
the Eighties called Brewood, and so it transpires, Coven were going to be
playing at the same ground.
But Brewood itself is unusual because it was once a town, but
not anymore it transpires. It was reconstituted as a village in the early
twentieth century as the population fell due to a migration to the major
centres such as Wolverhampton and Stafford. But, soon after its status changed,
the village grew again, and now with its population at almost 8,000, the
highest it’s ever been, it remains a village.
Having had some very helpful Twitter chatter with Coven on
the day of the game, I made my way to the ground and parked up, while having
taken the advice as to suitable hostelries, I was soon at home in the ‘village’
centre with pint in hand.
Brewood is a nice place, much bigger than the village I grew
up in, but a very welcoming and attractive place all the same. The ground
itself sat right on the outskirts of the village and after driving down a short
track you find a car park with a dressing room building to the side. Two
pitches adorn the complex, with a further cricket field and pavilion in the
distance.
It had a lovely rural feel about, and other than the two
dugouts, the lack of any football furniture seemed to suit the location. Stands
and floodlights might appease the ground graders, but from an aesthetic point
of view, it’s not what Brewood needs or indeed wants.
As for the game, well Coven lost 3-1 to neighbours Cannock
United, but to be fair, and I did make the comment to them afterwards, they did
deserve at least a point, and probably more. Cannock took the lead early in the
game but the hosts saw plenty of the ball, and indeed hit the woodwork on at
least two occasions.
A second goal followed but then Coven scored with a header
to get themselves back into the game. Despite more pressure and more chances,
the decisive fourth goal in the game went to Cannock and this deflated Coven
who in my opinion deserved more from the encounter.
The result saw Cannock maintain second position in the
table, while Coven sit just below the half way mark, with two wins from their
five games.
The journey back took just around an hour, down the A5, up the A38, and as always, it gave me a bit of reflection time. I got thinking
about the village where I grew up and the fact that I could look out of my
bedroom window across the valley, and in the distance on the horizon was that
town that came as such a culture shock to me.
The irony now is, if you look out of the very same window,
you can’t see the town any more, you can see an estate of new houses that have
been erected over the past eighteen months, despite loud protests from local
residents.
Village life is evolving everywhere you look, the local
shop, the local pub, the post office, are all disappearing as the urban centres
draw us ever closer. Villages like Brewood, with clubs like Coven Athletic, the
pubs and the café’s, are getting fewer, and that’s a real shame, the price of
progress is a heavy one in my opinion.
Town's becoming villages, that's not a trend I expect to see happening readily, Brewood clearly bucked that trend several generations ago. They may well one day have a fight on their hands from stopping it going back the other way.
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