A Very Nice Man

MA Sherwood  3  Poets Young Boys  1

Nottinghamshire Sunday Cup - Group Stage

Admission / Programme – Free / None

Simple things can often prove to be somewhat problematic.

I mean, you find out a side in the Nottinghamshire Senior League (FC Mansfield in this instance) are plying their craft this season at the Queensway Recreation Ground in Forest Town, and then when you do your homework you find out not one, but two Sunday teams play at the same venue. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, it could not be easier, in fact it’s almost so easy, why not simply leave it and don’t bother because the sense of underachievement when you finally arrive will be so palpable that you’ll wish you’d stopped at home and watched paint dry.

No disrespect to FC Mansfield, Sherwood Colliery or MA Sherwood, but this had a sense of ‘meh’ about it, motivation was non-existent to begin with, I could pretty much go on any alternate Saturday or any given Sunday. But at the same time, get it done, get it over with, go home, put a tick in the book and forget about it. Besides, clubs in the NSL are typically nomadic anyway so by the end of the season FC Mansfield will probably be moving somewhere else anyway!

Right then, this is where karma bites you on the backside. This was absolutely going to be a Sunday visit, no way was it going to be a Saturday, so I’d got it all lined up, and then guess what, the morning before I was stood on Belper Railway Station waiting for my train to Wake Green Amateur when I spotted it was off, not to worry, we can go the week after, two teams play at the venue, one of them will be at home…..

Nope, inexplicably no one was at home, and then having made plans for the following Sunday to do something completely different, it meant a further delay, but not to worry, the following week was looking good!

I say looking good, it was looking very good until I got to the A38 / M1 junction and heard a strange noise coming from my front wheel. The strange noise continued, but I had an idea that the problem might well be that something had got entangled in my wheel, so I decided to pull off the main road about a mile and a half from the ground and take a look. Nothing could be seen, but then when I tried to reverse to turn the car round, nothing happened, it was stuck! I managed to pull forward, and this time the noise sounded like someone had wedged a file between the brake pad and disc, this wasn’t good at all!

Feeling like traveling any further might do more damage (albeit to a car that isn’t mine), or I might end up stopping and not being able to move again, I had to call the breakdown hotline. To cut a long story short, I never did make it to Queensway, but the nice man from the RAC (or was he a very nice man – have I got my adverts mixed up here?) managed to remove the wheel, loosen the brake mechanism and remove a lump of metal that had got wedged behind the disc and was tearing lumps away from it! Being very nice, he followed me home and suggested I get it in to Kwik Fit for repair..

So, we had a further opportunity, and now I was beginning to think that my arrogant complacency was to blame for the footballing Gods deciding to take revenge on me, was I destined to never get to this place?

MA Sherwood v Poets Young Boys in the Notts Sunday Cup, I had a restless night prior, thoughts of minor disasters were implanted on my brain, I even did a routine inspection of my car before setting off and I don’t even do that when we go on holiday to Cornwall! The phrase ‘more in hope than in expectation’ has never been more at the forefront of my mind….this was now a personal battle.

When I finally did arrive and grabbed a parking space on Queensway itself, part one was complete, part two was to establish if we actually had a game. The nets were being put up and players from both sides were milling about, all looked to be good, I went back to my car and excitedly phoned Mrs H…she was somewhat less excited than I was, making some comment about having to cook the Sunday dinner.

Anyway, what’s it like? Well to be honest it’s your typical local authority parks pitch, with grass banks down one side and behind one goal, while behind the other goal is a changing room block. For those not familiar with locality in Mansfield, Queensway is only a couple of hundred yards further on than Forest Town Welfare which is the home of AFC Mansfield. With the sun coming out and a nice day on the cards, the grass bank looked the ideal viewing platform, but what of the game?

It pitched a Mansfield Sunday League side with what I think is a Nottingham Sunday League side who originate from the Meadows area of Nottingham. There used to be a team called Poets Corner some years ago in Nottingham and they were a very good Sunday side, I saw them play in a Midland Sunday Cup Final at Belper Town once, and one or two players on show that day (they were all well known names in local football), shared the same surnames to those playing today, so maybe the Poets Young Boys are indeed the offspring and / or younger relatives of some of that said side!

I don’t know what the MA prefix of Sherwood stands for, maybe a sponsorship arrangement, but anyway, also with some familiar faces playing, they looked a good outfit, and midway through the second period they found themselves 2-0 up, but a goal from the visitors put the game on something of a knife edge as we moved into the closing stages, although in the end Sherwood got a third and gained a win in what is the group stages of the competition. The standard was good, the result was about right, and the game was managed by three officials which is something you very rarely see in Sunday football.

It didn’t take long to get home, and this time, it was without the help of a very nice man….plus, maybe in future I won’t be quite so disparaging about a venue, you never know quite what will bite you on the arse next!