A Complex Beast

Hazel Grove  8  Beechfield United  2

Manchester Saturday Morning League – Division One

Admission / Programme – Free / None

The Manchester League is a complex beast.

With numerous divisions, plenty of new teams are welcomed each season, while the present incumbents are not unknown to move home at regular intervals. In short, if you want to stay on top of it you need to have your wits about you, and it helps to have a bit of local knowledge as well.

My mate Steve has been to all of the grounds in the league, he has a certificate and badge to prove it, but even he gets caught out. Moorside Rangers, now he missed that one when they moved to Agecroft Farm last season, I refrained from telling the Police but he is dutifully obliged to be stripped of his regalia until he’s been, but it matters not, because this season we’ve worked out he has eight new venues to visit, it could take a while……

I only bother with the top division, and to be fair I happily went into the current season feeling completely confident that I only had two to visit, one being Atherton Town (which readers will recall from pre-season), and the other being the infamous Moorside Rangers. I was wrong, it seems Walshaw Sports had moved to a school 4G in Elton Vale, while another one coming out of leftfield was Manchester Gregorians, one of the more nomadic clubs, who had moved to Rushford Park in the Levenshulme area of the City.

Using the guidance of he who should be stripped of his titles, he did advise me that Rushford Park is one that could be visited on a Saturday morning in the erstwhile Manchester Saturday Morning League (it kind of says it on the tin doesn’t it?). That in turn meant it could be combined with one in the afternoon, and guess what, it all fell nicely into place!

Hazel Grove are the dominant side in the MSML, and they had a home game against Beechfield United, a Salford based side who I also saw play on a Saturday morning at Salford Sports Village last season. Just on that, I had a plan that day, Beechfield in the morning and then Heyside in the afternoon, but it went completely pear shaped. Heavy overnight snow did for the North East side of Manchester where Heyside were based, and I only found out midway through the game at Beechfield, not to worry though, Wilmslow Albion put a tweet out to say it was game on down in the stockbroker belt.

Not so, I arrived just after the game was called off, so ended up hot footing it to Northwich for the game at Witton Albion between Northwich Victoria and Macclesfield. To be fair it was a belting game with a great atmosphere so no complaints from me on that one.  

I digress, so, Hazel Grove in the morning followed by the plastic pitch round in the Bury area in the afternoon for Walshaw Sports, one kicked off at 10.15am, the other at 2pm, so by my reckoning I could manage a quick pint in between and still be in good time for kick off.

Slight curve ball though. Brother in law has bought a new car, and he needed to be taken to collect it, now this is a job I’ve happily done a couple of times before. Firstly to Cardiff (when it was a Six Nations day), followed by a run over the Severn Bridge down to the edges of Southampton to watch Eastleigh. The second time came at the end of last season when an early morning run to Oxford meant I could get home just in time to walk to Duffield for an Inter Belper game, I won’t dwell on that one, an eight mile round trip walk after a long drive triggered a health issue that saw me undertake various tests over the coming weeks and months….all is ok by the way, I only walk to the fridge now!

Stone, now that wasn’t too bad, if we left at 8am, we could be in Stone for just before 9am, and then assuming the M6 and the M56 behaved themselves I worked out I could be at Rushford Park with fifteen minutes to spare. I was right, I pulled into the car park with fifteen minutes to spare, and with games like this, it comes with a huge sense of relief that you see two teams warming up on the pitch.

I have to say, I was impressed by what I saw in terms of Rushford Park, the San Siro it isn’t, but what we do have is a partially railed pitch, hard standing, and a dressing room block with a refreshment area, where a cup of coffee was most welcome after the morning drive.

The ground is tightly hemmed in though, it has a series of 3G pitches in cages down one side while behind them is the railway line that links Manchester and Stockport, but we had a train strike on didn’t we so no train spotting at this one. There is also another railway line that splits from the main line and runs over a bridge behind the North goal, which I seem to think heads down into leafy Cheshire and Macclesfield, but as we had a train strike on there was also no train spotting on this line either.

My old mate Dave rocked up just before kick off, somewhat unexpectedly it has to be said, only I knew he was going to a Saturday Morning League game elsewhere in the City, but it turned out nothing was happening when he arrived, so he decided to join me.

I tell you what though, Hazel Grove are a bloody good side and you can see why they have various league titles under their belts. They won the game 8-2 and probably could have got more. They are obviously a side that have played together now for a few years and as a result the players know each other’s game inside out. I genuinely think they would be more than capable of playing at a decent level on a Saturday afternoon, but the whole point of the MSML is to allow players to do other things on a Saturday afternoon, like go and watch football!!

One down, and at the final whistle it was time to punch in the post code and head towards Bury, the Holy Grail of the Manchester League top flight was getting ever closer!