Strawberry Switchblade

Leeds Medics & Dentists  2  Alwoodley  1

Yorkshire Amateur League – Supreme Division

Admission / Programme – No / No

Frosticles, the Midlands and the North were riddled with them on Saturday morning!

It was going to be a messy weekend according to the forecast, sub-zero temperatures, fog and snow, all the things needed to wreck football plans, and unless you were planning on heading down the South coast, you were going to struggle to avoid it, so 'they' said.

My original plan was Frome Town, and although they did manage to play, I was not prepared to risk that journey, not one bit, especially given the remoteness of the location and the lack of a back up plan should it be called off late on in an Alfreton Town v Walsall style!

So I needed a re-think, and that thinking time started on the Friday night, I was looking at places like Basford United, Leek Town, Sporting Khalsa, Redditch United, and even Ilkley Town! All plastics, all places I’d been to before, but it looked as though it was going to be a needs must scenario.

But then on Saturday morning I had a thought, and it was a thought prompted by the Futbology App, my new favourite thing! I’ve now got every game I’ve ever been to logged, but according to it, I’d yet to complete the top flight of the Yorkshire Amateur League?

Surely that was a mistake, but no, it seemed that Leeds Medics & Dentists, who play at Weetwood Sports Park in Leeds, had not been visited. It had been visited, definitely, a grass pitch right at the far end of the complex to watch Headingley play, but it seems, the app has got more than one pitch logged for the venue, and the aforementioned medical boys were on the 3G up near to the main entrance. The result, an annoying gap on the app!

I had a look, they were at home, and according to Full Time, it was game on. I did a bit of research, sent a couple of texts, and it was all affirmative, it was 2pm, on the 3G, and they were going to turn up and play it!

So that made my mind up, a sort of new ground, in fact no, it was a new ground, the other one I went to was about 400 yards away, the bloody grounds in Dundee are closer! The only downside being the fun and games of getting through Leeds, especially with Middlesbrough the visitors to a sell out Elland Road.

It took ages to get to, the M1 was stop start up towards Sheffield, and then the M621 wasn’t that great in the vicinity of LUFC, but none of that was a patch on trying to get out of Leeds and up through Headingley, especially on a day when the students had decided to have an en-masse fancy dress pub crawl!

I eventually parked up at Weetwood a mere twenty minutes before kick off, and thankfully, once I’d located the pitch amongst the plethora of sporting facilities, I could see two teams warming up, we had a game.

Weetwood Sports Park sits on the far North side of Leeds, just off the roundabout where Otley Road meets the Ring Road. In the past I have gone all the way up the M1 to Thorpe Arch and then gone across the ring road, but today I made life more difficult for myself! The venue is Leeds University’s sports complex, and not to be confused with Boddington which sits over the road, and was indeed the place I went to just over a year ago to watch Leeds University beat Alwoodley 10-3 (which I alluded to in the recent SESKU Miners blog).

Weetwood is made up of a rugby league venue (used by Leeds Gryphons), two hockey pitches, the 3G football pitch, a couple of cricket pitches and numerous grass football pitches. They also have a number of smaller 3G areas for other sports, but I couldn’t be that arsed to walk and have a look at what they were used for, besides, they were probably covered in snow anyway!

Weetwood also has a pub onsite called the Stables, plus it has a Hotel called the Weetwood Park Estate, so it is a pretty plush all round venue. Clearly once the home of some landed gentry, I suspect it was bequeathed to the University and they have now got custody of a veritable goldmine!

Between the rugby pitch and the 3G football pitch is a building that houses both a covered area for viewing the rugby, and a bar / café area raised up and cut into the grass banking upon which it sits, and this allows viewing of the game if you wished to do so in the warmth. I nipped in for a coffee, Strawberry Switchblade were playing on the radio, ’Since Yesterday’, one of the finest poptastic tunes ever, that made my day, the football mattered not anymore…..  

The game pitched a Medics side who were sat in a mid-table space, against a visiting outfit who had only taken four points from their opening 13 games, conceding 66 goals in the process. Choosing to view the game from the top of the grass bank behind the goal (you weren’t allowed inside the cage), it was the hosts who took a very early lead, literally straight from the kick off, but on the ten minute mark Alwoodley found a way back into the game thanks to a well taken equaliser.

The Medics made it 2-1 before half time, but thereafter the second half was a pretty close affair, producing little in the way of clear cut chances for either side, but it wasn’t without plenty of effort and endeavour.

So that was it, back in the car, back through Leeds the same way I came (why did I do that??), and eventually onto the motorway network, giving me the opportunity to take in the second half updates across the country via 5 Live, one of the benefits of a 2pm kick off and certainly a way of making the journeys feel like they are going that bit quicker.

Once home, it was interesting to see what actually took place on the football front, and it was very much a North / South divide. The North was obliterated, the South not so much. The following midweek didn’t look too promising either. Looks like plastics for the foreseeable, and some would say were mad, venturing out in the conditions we do, but we keep doing it don’t we, not wanting to miss a moments opportunity to watch some togger? Which nicely take me back to the profound lyrics of Strawberry Switchblade…

“When tomorrow comes, you’ll wish you had today…”