Chumbawamba & The Soldiers

South Elmsall United Services  1  Swinton Athletic Reserves  2

Sheffield & Hallamshire County Senior League – Division Two

I have to admit to being 'reyt' excited like when I heard a team was going to be playing round the back of Frickley Athletic’s ground this season.

I mean, there can be no more iconic a non-league club in Yorkshire than Frickley Colliery (as they are historically known), the Miners, who in the mid-eighties during one particular season were officially the second best semi-professional club in the country!

They even got a mention in song, courtesy of Chumbawamba, while images of fans stood on the terraces in NCB donkey jackets, launching missiles at the southerners who had the audacity to taunt them over the Miners Strike, are still embedded on many a locals mind.

It might not be high on the list of desirable places to reside in the UK, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s brilliant, South Elmsall is God’s Country epitomised, the home of mining, humour, beer and football.

South Elmsall United Services moved from the Doncaster Senior League at the end of last season and took up a berth in the Sheffield County Senior League. Over the years numerous places have been called ‘home’, but after many years of trying, they were finally granted their wish of playing on Frickley Pit Top.

Anyone who went to Frickley in years gone by will remember the famous old slag heap that sat behind the terracing opposite the main stand. If you don’t remember it, just Google it, but in short, it was effectively a huge black mountain. As the area has changed and developed over the years, it’s been landscaped and now forms part of ‘Frickley Country Park’.

Within this peaceful area of undulating greenery is now a football pitch, and in typical South Elmsall fashion, you don’t play in the ‘Country Park’, you play on the ‘Pit Top’.

Now I’ve been trying all season to get to a game, but every time I had it pencilled in, it kept being postponed due to the weather we’ve had. In fact, a cup tie against Sheffield Reserves got postponed something like six times. The pitch sits on a plateau and while it’s a good surface, it does suffer somewhat from the wet weather.

The manager runs the clubs Facebook account and credit where it’s due, if you ever sent a message you typically got a reply within minutes. I found this extremely helpful as on a Saturday I could always find out by 10am at the latest if a game was going to be on, or not as the case has been pretty much all season! So, when I sent a message on the Friday night to test the water and got an affirmative about the second Saturday in January, I knew I would be safe to travel the following day.

I’ve been to Frickley Athletic several times over the years, but only ever once on a Saturday and that was in the mid-Nineties, so I’d not had the pleasure of South Elmsall in daylight hours for an awful long time.  The journey from blighty is around fifty minutes, and once into the centre of the village (or is it a small town?), and up Westfield Lane, it’s very noticeable just how much regeneration has been taking place.

Where once stood the old pit houses, many of which became derelict, are shiny new builds, many of which sit close to the football ground and the Country Park. The old lane down to the football grounds is as pot-holed and muddy as ever, while the back of the main stand with it’s whitewash and high brick walls, is like something out of the Seventies.

Behind the goal to the left though is a new building and a small car park. The building houses the changing rooms, which serve both the Frickley Athletic pitch, and also the Pit Top pitch. It also contains a cafeteria area that serves a variety of alcoholic options, and chocolate if you fancy something a bit sweeter.

It was in here that I met the lads who run the ‘Soldiers’, and what top fellas they are. Around here, they say it how it is, and it was good to hear how the club were progressing both on and off the pitch, it’s been a successful season so far and promotion is on the cards. Prior to the game they sat in third place.

While I was mid-Carling the referee walked in, he’d been on the pitch, bit heavy in places but fine, although the wind was probably not going to be helpful in terms of it being a good game.

To get to the pitch you walk round the back of the building and out of the confines of the ground down a slope. You then go back up a slope and round the back of some trees that line part of the pitch, where a gate sits that lets you into the playing area. The playing area is enclosed by a green fence, and with the trees lining two sides it does have an enclosed feel to it.

The ref was right, the wind was blowing down the pitch and you felt the side that took advantage of it would be the winners. The hosts had the wind in the first half and didn’t take advantage, with the score line goalless at the break.

However, the league leaders Swinton took the lead in the second half only for South Elmsall to fight back and force an equaliser. The game looked to be ending as a draw until the closing minutes when a sustained spell of pressure from the visitors saw them force home the winner.

South Elmsall will be disappointed, but I felt on the day, with a number of key players out to be fair, they didn’t quite do enough to win the game, although in the conditions it was far from easy to play football.

That was South Elmsall, Frickley, Chumbawamba, Soldiers, the Miners Strike, Pit Top and the Country Park. We cannot stop progress and change has never been as fast as it is today, but some things should never change, and if you could put a preservation order on a village and all that goes with it, then South Elmsall should be it.