Petanque

Leamington Hibernian  1  Wake Green Amateurs  2

Midland Football League – Division Three

Admission / Programme – No / No

Prior to this season I’ve seen Leamington Hibernian play home games at three different venues, and I know of at least one other that they’ve used.

I first saw them at Ajax Park in Warwick, then I saw them play at a ground in the village of Bishop’s Tachbrook, before finally watching them in action in another village close to Leamington called Cubbington.

Since Cubbington, they’ve been sharing the home of Hampton in the Solihull area of Birmingham, but a fire put the ground out of action, so now they’ve de-camped to Stockton Cricket Club on the outskirts of Southam.

So, along with Burntwood Town and Malvern Rangers (two clubs that I seem to think are no longer with us), they are the club that I’ve seen on the most grounds, and, they still soldier on in the Midland Football League, albeit nowadays they find themselves in the bottom tier and that would be notionally at Step 8 of the non-league pyramid.

I have always looked upon the Hibs with fondness, and that stems back to my first ever visit to Ajax Park when I visited on a May Bank Holiday in 2010. The club were playing Perrywood, and I was wearing a Derry GAA jacket. A chap came over to me and starting talking about the GAA and how he was a Cork man, that man was Jim Barry, the Irishman who formed Leamington Hibernian.

Jim and his wife Joy formed Hibs in 1974. Joy is no longer with us, having passed away in 2020, and at her funeral, the players of the club formed a guard of honour, but Jim is very much around and seemingly involved with the club he has been such a fundamental part of for 50 years.

Jim at pitch side though during the game, now that was a sight, players, officials, you name it, if they weren’t up to scratch, he let them know in no uncertain times in that unmistakable Irish accent!  

The Stockton move came about, as I say due to the unfortunate fire, but when Hampton moved back in, Hibs didn’t, and that got me wondering, maybe they quite liked the new home, maybe they planned to stay?

Well, on the basis that we are now at the end of the season and they are still wandering out to the edges of Southam to play games, I thought I’d go and have a look at what the place was all about.

The pitch at Stockton, like many others, has succumbed to the wet weather over the past few months, so I kept an eye on it, but with an affirmative regarding the game against Wake Green Amateurs, I chose to take a punt and head down the M1 and M69 before following the Rugby Road down to Stockton itself, a very pleasant looking Warwickshire village.

The cricket and football pitch is located on the edges of the village, right next to some new build housing, one assumes therefore that the builders do not want, or indeed are unable to get their grubby mitts on the sports facilities, because it does like prime for a bit of development!

Anyway, when I landed the place was busy, some kids teams were training and the car park was full, but spotting a little track that ran down to another car park right behind the goal of the football pitch at the very bottom end, I was soon parked up.

The clubhouse was tidy, and spacious, and indeed busy. A mixture of kids parents (and kids), locals having a drink and those who had come to watch the game meant seats were at a premium, so on that basis the visiting officials table did for me, I mean, they weren’t to know were they??

Another thing I spotted, which you don’t see very often, is that the facilities incorporated Stockton Petanque Club. I last saw that down at Larkhall Athletic on the outskirts of Bath, and with respect, you won’t find many grounds with Petanque clubs associated with them in the Sheffield County Senior League! What is Petanque you may ask? It’s a form of bowls apparently, French apparently, played by people with cash apparently, and it seems as hard as you look, you won’t find it on the Sky Sports…….

How did it transpire then? To be fair it was a fairly even first half with the hosts taking the lead on what was a very cold and blustery evening, but things turned around in the second period, with the visitors equalising from close range and then as the game moved into added time they broke the Hibs hearts with a winner. 

Will Hibs be playing at Stockton again next season? Who knows, but one thing is pretty much guaranteed no matter where they end up, the Petanque club are going nowhere!