Alehouse (Part Two)

Sleetmoor United  6  Lockton  2

Alfreton Sunday League – Second Division

And so ‘Super Sunday – in association with Chieftain Lager’ moved onto it’s second game of the day.

A pit stop for lunch at Casa Hatt saw me set off the very short distance up the A38 to Sleetmoor Lane on the edges of Swanwick, to watch an Alfreton Sunday League game.

Now, I know the football pitches at Sleetmoor Lane quite well, because as a youngster I played Rowsley & District League football and one of the teams we played and got heavily beaten by on a regular basis was ADASC.

ADASC is an acronym, and if memory serves it stands for Alfreton & District Amateur Sports Club, and they had their base at the said Sleetmoor Lane. ADASC had a proud record of lads going on to do well in the game, examples include goalkeeper Kevin Pilkington who has had a lengthy professional career after starting out at Manchester United. There was Andy White who played for Mansfield Town and Crewe Alexandra, and from my age group they had Jamie Hillyer was an outstanding player who played in the reserves at Derby County before injury cut his career short, Andy Hayward who played locally at Ashfield United and Martin Drury who turned out for Eastwood Town.

We got battered regularly, Hillyer was always good for a double hat-trick, it was quite depressing really, because the RJN Juniors side I played for were rubbish, we only ever used to beat two sides, one of them being Baslow, and the other Clay Cross Rangers. ADASC used to fight with South Normanton Colts, Northwood and Hillstown from the honours, we were a million miles from that level.

Anyway, Sleetmoor Lane is now the home of Sleetmoor United, who’ve popped up on Saturday’s this season in the Midlands Regional Alliance, but they still have a Sunday side, called Sleetmoor United Cobras. This was intriguing me a little as I’ve not been up Sleetmoor lane since I was 15, and that was over 30 years ago.  Memories are a bit sketchy, so I was interested to see what the place looked like.

It’s very impressive. They have a large car park and a changing room block by the entrance, but out beyond that are a multitude of pitches, all different sizes, and all in seemingly top class condition. The pitch the game was taking place on looked to be the main pitch used by the senior teams, and that sat on top of a bank, and was flanked to the rear by dense trees.

The Alfreton Sunday League has changed a bit in recent years. It was always very much an Alfreton area league, but unusually for Sunday football it took place in the afternoon. In more recent seasons due to the demise of the Derby Sunday League, a number of Derby based clubs have joined the league, so the geographical spread is bigger than before. Maybe as well this was necessary to ensure they league could maintain two divisions. But it continues and it appears to thrive, so what was it like?

Better than the morning game by some distance. I got the feeling, certainly looking at Sleetmoor, that they were also the Saturday side and they’ve had a proper pre-season. Heanor based Lockton also looked like a proper side, but as the game wore on they were starting to blow from all orifices, and the final score of 6-2 came as no real shock.

Mitchell Hehir scored four for the hosts, while Macaulay Pass netted a brace. The Lockton goals came from Farren Packard and Tyler Wright.

I have to admit I was impressed, by the facilities and the football. This game was a bit more feisty and Lockton finished with ten men, but in fairness we didn’t see any major dissent or haranguing of the referee.

I’m going to be honest though, I won’t be taking up watching Sunday football regularly, firstly Mrs H would not be best pleased if I spent the entire weekend away from garage tidying and toilet cleaning duties, and secondly, I won’t always get this lucky.

Got one more lined up though in the middle of the month in the Worksop League, and reports suggest that’s one notch up from prison football, but I’ll not allow my judgement to be clouded.

Besides, I was at Mickleover Sports in midweek and they had a very famous former prison footballer on display…….