Strawberry Fields Forever

Bramshall  8  Vaults  1

Derbyshire Summer League

Admission / Programme – No / No

The Ashbourne Summer League, once referred to as the Derby Summer League, but in reality, just called ‘The Summer League’, has rebranded this season.

The Derbyshire Summer League, which to be fair, is probably as good a name as you could come up with, because while the league has never been Derby based, it isn’t solely Ashbourne based either. But then again, it doesn’t cover the whole of Derbyshire either, unless of course that is the plan for expansion!

I can’t say as I follow it that closely, in fact up until about twelve years ago I never went anywhere near it, until I got to a point where I decided to have a crack at visiting all of the grounds, which took a couple of months across May and June. Since then I’ve simply tried to keep on top of it, and up until this season I’ve only had two new venues come into the league that I’ve not visited, one being the new ground in Brassington, and the other being in Church Broughton.

But, we got another new one for the 2024 campaign, in Bramshall, a small village in the Western edges of Uttoxeter, so in theory in Staffordshire, but let’s not go down that route!

I have to say though, John Brailsford who is, I think, the General Secretary of the league, does a fine job in keeping the mailing list posted about what’s happening in the league. Prior to the season starting we found out who was in, who was out and where they would all be playing, and then usually twice weekly we get a fixtures and results update.

On that basis, it was how I found out about the location of the pitch at Bramshall, according to John it was going to be adjacent to Bramshall Strawberry Farm, which, in actual fact is a garden centre on the road that enters the village from Uttoxeter.

Fixtures wise, opening game of the season at home to Vaults from Ashbourne, 7pm kick off on a Thursday night, that ticked the boxes, I was on my way, but it wasn’t straightforward. I left Rotherham in good time but then once I got on the M1 we ground to a halt. We’ve all been in the place where the estimated time of arrival on the Sat Nav starts to go backwards, and it wasn’t long before it went beyond 7pm.

The emergency services were racing past us, and from what I could see the incident was only just in the distance, but nothing was moving, and I started to think of a Plan B, getting to Uttoxeter was looking difficult, and depending on the situation, making somewhere near Junction 28 was far from guaranteed.

Thankfully though, not least for those involved in the incident, the emergency services moved everything into the roadworks and we could begin to move, the Sat Nav recalibrated and as long as we didn’t encounter any more hold ups, I could make it with ten minutes to spare.

And that was exactly what happened, at ten to seven I turned into the gateway that lead into the field where the Bramshall pitch was located. You always have that moment of apprehension, in the sense that, will I find two teams on the pitch warming up as planned, or, will it be deserted? The good news was, we had two teams, a referee and on a real positive, a lovely warm evening.

Description wise, the pitch is exactly that, within a field, with a wooden dressing room building on the far side. The pitch is also used by the Bramshall Sunday side who compete in the Uttoxeter Sunday League. You can park along the perimeter of the field, as many chose to do, while if you wanted to you could also park on the opposite side, but, not wanting to take any players or spectators with me, I chose not to take a detour over the field!

You know what though, Bramshall are a very decent outfit, and once they got into their stride, especially in the second half, the young side really put Vaults to the sword and ran out 8-1 winners. Again, without seeing what the rest of the competition is like, it’s hard to say how they might fare over the course of the season, but on first impressions, they look like they’ll be more than a match for most.

So that’s the newly named Derbyshire Summer League boxed off again, visits are quite rare these days as I said, and being the kind of person who likes to draw a line under the football season in May, and not touch it until July, I won’t be making any more games.

That’s not to say though, if you are at a loose end, and happen to be in the area, there are worse ways to spend your Monday and Thursday nights…