Gregs

Manchester Gregorians  0  Elton Vale  4

Manchester Football League – Premier Division

Admission / Programme – No / No

I’m sat looking at Futbology, marvelling at all the Step 7 leagues appearing on the app, and furthermore, feeling quite smug about all the leagues that I’ve completed!

Up pops the Manchester Football League and all of a sudden I’m in a quandary, where the hell is Ashton on Mersey School & Leisure Centre, and, is that some kind of mistake as far as Manchester Gregorians go?

I know the Gregs have been a bit nomadic over the years, but they only moved to Rushford Park last year, which I thought was a fine little venue, so surely not another move? Nope, they’ve moved again it seems, and I can’t recall if it’s the third or possibly the fourth place they’ve played at since I’ve been following the Manc League, but anyway, as a result, a trip to South Manchester (or Cheshire is you prefer) beckoned.

We had some Dutch friends over the other week, and I was telling them about the logistical tribulations of getting from our place to Manchester. Clearly no motorway, unless you tunnelled through a mountain, and no matter what route you take, either A6 direct, Via Gellia, the new airport link road, Glossop and Hyde, you name it, it makes no difference, the 50 or so miles is going to take anything between an hour and three quarters to two hours in a car. Not an unpleasant journey from a scenery perspective, but crikey, it can’t half drag, especially the final twenty miles or so.

I chose to go up to Disley picking the Via Gellia road and then the A6, before taking a left on to the A555 which is more commonly referred to as the ‘new airport road’. All was good until I tried to get off of it and onto the A34, I must have spent fifteen minutes trying to get round a frigging roundabout, before finally escaping and trundling along to the M60.

The M60 was only a short run before dropping South again into Sale, I place I have visited twice in the past, once for a work meeting when I think I set off the night before to arrive for 9am, and the other time for a Swinton Lions Rugby League game, as they play their home fixtures at the Sale (Sharks) Rugby Club, a smart ground on Heywood Road that the club left when they got into the Premiership, choosing to play at the more modern and spacious facilities in the vicinity, namely Edgeley Park, and then the Salford Community Stadium.

Sale, now that’s a place where you need a few quid to reside, and over 50,000 punters do just that. Having done my homework on the place, you will be fascinated to know that the population of Sale has a much lower percentage than the national average when it comes to the number of adults with no academic qualifications, whereas the percentage of adults with a University degree is much higher in Sale than it is in Manchester as a whole. 

Originally a working class town, Sale has seen a significant influx of middle class residents. So much so that the percentage of working class residents in the town sits at 15%, while it’s 26% nationwide. Finally, thanks to Wikipedia who so far has provided me with lots of info, Sale has really good schools, better than most places, and one of them in particular, serves as the new home of Manchester Gregorians!

You won’t be surprised to know that the area where the school / ground is located, is very nice, in fact, as the name of the school would suggest, it’s an area of Sale known as Ashton on Mersey. The school sits on Cecil Avenue and once in the car park, you have to enter through the doors of the sports centre, before heading out to the back where the numerous sports pitches sit. The football pitch the club use sits in the very Northern corner of the grassed area, which in effect is pyramid shaped if you look at a map. I’ll be honest, I was expecting a 4G / 3G surface as is often the case these days with schools and leisure centres, so to find a grass pitch with no restrictive perimeter fencing came as a pleasant surprise.

The rains did fall quite heavily at times, the pitch itself was fine, but with no cover at the school, the best option was the trees behind the goal, which given their size, provided some much needed shelter for those of us of the forgetting the umbrella mind set!

Gregs had not had the best of seasons up until that point, sitting bottom of the table having lost seven of their nine games, and with Elton Vale only having lost one of their six games, you did feel an away win was on the cards, and that proved to be the case as the Bury based visitors had a reasonably comfortable day.

Bailey Dawes opened the scoring in the tenth minute, before Joshua Stansfield made it two and Dawes again bagged the third just before the break. Gregs shored things up in the second period but the fourth goal came in the 83^rd minute when Oliver Scott scored. A decent sprinkling of spectators rocked up to watch, with a fair few having travelled anti-clockwise round the M60.

Sale was escaped in quick time and the journey outbound did pass more smoothly than the inbound variant. Before the full times had blown in the 3pm games (Gregs had been 2pm) I was well on the way down the A6 and in the vicinity of Buxton.

Something tells me though, at some point relatively soon, I’ll be back treading the well worn paths to Manchester, somebody, somewhere will get itchy feet, and those 50 miles will once again seem like 100!!