Pub Team Heaven

Plough & Harrow   7   Carlton Top Spot ‘A’   3

Nottinghamshire Sunday League – Division Three

As recently as three years ago, if someone had said to me that I’d be trotting off on a Sunday morning to watch football, I would have laughed, and in turn given them the loaded gun to shoot me with should I ever so much as entertain the prospect.

But then a few things changed.

The trouble with this groundhopping caper is that you have two choices, travel further afield, or drop lower standard wise, and in all honesty I kind of found myself doing both. But the reality was, each season as I was being tested by those who diagnose whether we sit on the spectrum or not, the list of those clubs and grounds that fell into the ‘lower’ bracket has got bigger and bigger.

It’s got bigger because over the years I’ve accumulated more leagues to add to my ‘must complete’ list, whereas the leagues themselves have often merged with others so have become suddenly much larger, and then add in the fact that nowadays clubs have a habit of moving grounds at the drop of a rental demand, it’s getting quite a task. This season, the list is sat in the mid-forties, and to be fair, just to get them all in on Saturday’s alone is a tall order, albeit one or two, but no more than a handful, could be got to in midweek.

Add to the fact that I do like to go off piste from time to time to places farther afield, and indeed places that are either abroad or initially off the radar, I do like to get to say March, and be in a position to be able to get a bit adventurous.

SDS (Socially Distanced Steve) got me onto it, bearing in mind that a few years ago he wouldn’t even entertain a pre-season game, let alone a Sunday game. He went to one or two and actually convinced me that in many cases the standard on a Sunday was actually as good as, if not better than the football you might see at the same venue on a Saturday, the difference being that the teams playing were quite often named after pubs!

I tried it, it wasn’t bad at all, in fact I found some of the games to be very good. And with so much uncertainty in the air right now, I thought it might be an idea to get the games in early at this stage of the current campaign while I can because something tells me we will grind to a halt at some point.

The Nottinghamshire Sunday League was always going to be a winner, especially with so many new venues in an expanded Notts Senior League, and having managed to marry up a few locations when the fixtures and venues were announced, I reckoned one or two Sunday mornings could be had on the wrong side of the M1.

Plan A was to go to Bulwell Hall Park for the game between Bulwell City and Premium, and in that specific case it was because the venue was also the home of PMG Academy. However, upon arriving, not long after SDS, and having wandered around what we found to be the football pitches it became clear that nothing was doing. Welcome to occupational hazard number one of Sunday football, from time to time you end up arriving and finding nothing!

It wasn’t a problem though because just three miles up the road in Hucknall, at the Nabbs Lane Recreation Ground, Plough & Harrow were playing Carlton Top Spot ‘A’, and before you could say ‘what time did you get in the this morning’, we were parking up as the players were just entering the field.

Nabbs Lane is also the home of United Greys Community in the NSL this season, and for those not familiar with the area, it is literally right next door to Hucknall Town’s home on Watnall Road, where a Sunday game was also taking place.

It is a recreation ground with a changing block on the road side, while behind one goal is a BMX track, and at the other end is a basketball court and kids play area. It’s quite a good place to watch football to be fair, and also, a decent sized crowd had turned up to watch it, probably largely mates of the players and such like, but all the same, far more than had been watching the game I saw in what is supposedly more senior football the day before.

What a fantastic game it was too. The early exchanges were end to end and both sides had plenty of chances, but it was the hosts who found their shooting boots and by half time they had raced into a 4-1 lead.

To be fair to Carlton Top Spot, they started the second half strongly and quickly reduced the deficit, but some excellent finishing by Plough & Harrow, most notably from five goal hero Daniel Taylor, saw then add three further goals while the visitors grabbed another brace to leave the final score 7-3.

Both sides tired in the latter stages, understandably with it being the first game of the season, and having had such a long lay-off, but overall a super mornings entertainment.

More of the same please, let’s see what the Worksop Sunday League has to offer next weekend, I could get very used to this!