Darkness

Rossington Main  0  Selby Town  1 (match abandoned)

Northern Counties East League – Division One

Did you realise that Dagenham & Redbridge Football Club is actually the end result of a series of mergers and name changes of six separate clubs?

Without going into the detail, those clubs are Dagenham, Redbridge Forest, Walthamstow Avenue, Leytonstone & Ilford, Leytonstone and Ilford!

The relevance with a very brief evening at Rossington Main is what, you might wonder?

Well, the story in Rossington is not a million miles away from that, maybe several hundred thousand miles, but certainly not a million! Rossington Main have been around a good while, but for a time, they were joined in the mid-Eighties by a team called Station, who then became Rossington Haslam, and then they ultimately became Rossington FC.

I’m not 100% sure what happened to plain old Rossington when they left the Central Midlands League in 1998, but something tells me at the back of my mind that the merged with Main? I could be wrong, but anyway, for what is essentially a former mining village on the South side of Doncaster, to have had so many clubs / names in senior football is quite impressive.

Rossington Main are a very steady club, they joined the Central Midlands League as founder members in 1983 and when the Supreme Division was formed in 1986 they were the only current member to gain entry to the new ‘Midlands Super League’ as it had been billed. The fact Main had an impressive ground, and had won the league a couple of years previously no doubt had an influence on that particular decision.

They plied their trade in that particular division for five seasons before a move into the First Division of the Northern Counties League, where they have remained uninterrupted since 1991. They’ve never finished higher than seventh, but they have flirted with the relegation zone on more than one occasion, but their Step 6 status has always remained.

While they may not provide the loyal faithful with the ups and downs like some clubs do, what they do manage to do very well is provide some excellent facilities at their Oxford Road ground. The clubhouse is excellent, as is the tea bar, while pitch side there is a seated stand on either side of the pitch, with an additional area of covered terracing.

The pitch itself looks in very good nick, while the floodlights, with the pylons straight from the old pit yard, are more than adequate.

I first went to Main in 2003, to watch a pre-season friendly against Coalville Town. Quite how Coalville ended up in Rossington is anyone’s guess, but on a baking hot day the lads from Leicestershire recorded a 1-0 victory. I never went again until a few seasons ago, 2014-15 to be precise, when I saw them beat Penistone Church 3-1.

I like the ground, and I like the club, so why have I not been more often? Simple, until the new link road was built from junction 3 of the M18, getting to Rossington was a ball ache that meant either a trip through Doncaster, or a cross country route via Maltby and Tickhill.

That’s changed now though, and what makes it even better is that the road from the M18 brings you into Rossington from the right direction to get to the ground easier. I should imagine manager Ryan ‘Massive’ Hindley finds it a darn sight easier now to attract players to the club now the logistics have improved!

So, the game?

Well, Main sat in the bottom six while visitors Selby were mid-table, and after just two minutes it was the visitors who took the lead with a well taken Liam Flanagan goal. The game ebbed and flowed until the half hour mark when suddenly we were plunged into darkness.

With the floodlights out, Main officials frantically tried to get them back on, but it became apparent the issue was much bigger than the football club. The houses in the surrounding streets and indeed the street lights were out, so the situation was very much out of the clubs control.

It became more and more apparent that the lights were not going to come back on, so the match was abandoned, and is now rescheduled for the 9^th of April.

Mrs H was a tad surprised to see me back home so early, 123 games this season and the first abandonment. I’m normally good for one or two a season so I was definitely due one. I can’t make the re-arranged game, but it’s not put me off future trips to RMFC, the hotbed of all things non-league football South of Donny, even if it took a few clubs before they got it together!