The Horse Has Bolted

Grey Horse  4  Cudworth Star  2

Barnsley & District Sunday League – Division One

It was a calculated gamble on my part if I’m being brutally honest.

The scenario was a relatively simple one, I have three new grounds to conquer in the Sheffield County Senior League, one of which is the Barnsley Academy home of Bank End, and another is the Kendray Recreation Ground home of Ardsley Athletico.

The two grounds are basically next door to each other, and it came to my notice that on this particular Sunday, both were in use, simultaneously, for Grey Horse and Mount respectively, in the Barnsley Sunday League. I worked out that if I was to travel, I could take my pick, and if the weather wasn’t great then I was increasing my chances of finding a game on.

It banged it down with rain overnight, and into the morning, and if I’m being completely truthful, as much as I would contact a club secretary over a Saturday game irrespective of the level, I would not set about contacting a Sunday league secretary to see if a game were on. That would just open a can of worms so vast it doesn’t bear thinking about, and of course, a likely arrest!

No, I decided to take a punt at it, and with it being 11am kick offs at both venues, I wasn’t planning  on arriving in the general vicinity much earlier than the scheduled kick offs.

My hopes on seeing a game did start to dwindle as I made my way up the M1, it was torrential, but to be fair, once off the motorway and down through Birdwell and Worsbrough Bridge, from a weather perspective things were looking up.

I did have a favourite game though, I wanted to go to Grey Horse, largely because Mount were at home again in a couple of weeks time. So, when the sat nav eventually took me to the entrance of the large Barnsley Academy, I drove around the site and found nothing. I did spot some cars in a car park, and some goal nets up on an adjacent pitch, but from looking at Google Maps, that was the venue next door. The Plan B was on, but what about Plan A?

As luck would have it, I saw a car pull into the entrance and the driver was wearing a referee’s kit, so I did the sensible thing and elected to follow him. This turned out to be a smart move as he took a sharp right through a gate that I’d not previously noticed, and before you could cry ‘pub football’, we were in a car park and in the distance up a steep bank was a football pitch with players warming up on it.

It was raining again, but undeterred I made my way up the bank to the pitch, which pre-match looked like a decent surface that drained well, especially when you consider that Bank End had played on it the day before.

From a description point of view, lets not try and dress it up, it was a school playing field, but it was on something of a plateau. From one end you could see the Mount game taking place, but it was way too far away to pull a stunt like the one Jamesie and I pulled many years back at Stone Dominoes. A stunt that we received tremendous ridicule for from the purists, and indeed those who believe it isn’t possible to watch two games at the same time!

I elected to take a perch at the top of a bank behind one of the goals, with umbrella in hand, it was certainly not showing any signs of abating.

I guess I’d better talk about the game hadn’t I?

Ok, not that simple, firstly I’m on a train back from Scotland as I write this and my brain is not just fried, it’s deep fried after two days of Assessments, Accreditations and Role Plays. But also, to be brutally honest, as much as I know the game ended 4-2 to the hosts, I’m really struggling to recall how the scoring went!

I do remember the hosts scored twice late in the second period to take the lead and give themselves some breathing space, but how the game got to 2-2, nope, not a clue! I do recall it was something of an end to end encounter and the pitch got progressively more boggy as the game went on. I was quite engaged by the action, but at the same time, it was wet and it was muddy and I was stood in a field in the middle of Barnsley on a Sunday lunchtime.

Anyway, it now transpires that the game I was looking to go to on the pitch over the way in a couple of weeks time has now been postponed, so it might be November now before I get to see Mount play at Kendray Rec. Next time, I’ll either take a notepad or pay more attention, but, maybe this is telling me that Sunday football, from my perspective, is running it’s course?