Hammer Time

Hemington Hammers  2  Tollerton  0

East Midlands Public Authorities League – Premier Division

Admission / Programme – No / No

Hemington Hammers is a simply wonderful name for a football club!

Whoever came up for it deserves some kind of award in the King’s Honours List…I mean, what brilliance to avoid the likes of ‘Town’ ‘United’ ‘Rangers’ and ‘Rovers’ and just throw in ‘Hammers’ instead.

Now then, you probably would get questioned in you used the suffix ‘Screwdrivers’ or ‘Monkey Wrenches’, that might be a stretch too far, but the name Hammers is brilliant, I liked them before I even paid them a visit!

Paying them a visit, now that wasn’t all that simple it seemed.

They joined the Midlands Regional Alliance at the start of last season, and having never played in Saturday football before I was all excited about the fact that they would be playing games at Hemington Lane, only to find that they were going to be spending the season in Castle Donington.

I’ve been to the two grounds that are commonly used in Castle Donington, namely Moira Dale and Spital Park, so they went off the radar, but then at the start of the current campaign it was announced that they would be moving back into Hemington Lane.

Not strictly true, well not imminently that is. They had work to do at the ground in terms of building a clubhouse / dressing room complex, and until that was ready (around Christmas it seems), they would remain holed up at a school in Castle Donington.

However, I did notice that they had a Sunday side playing in the East Midlands Public Authorities League (yep, never heard of that have ya!), and it looked like they were actually using Hemington Lane even though it wasn’t yet ready for Saturday football.

A game was pencilled in, my only concern being that the venue on Full Time (Hemington Lane) was indeed correct, but the week before a ‘friend’ of mine on Futbology sent a picture of a game he attended on a Sunday, and yes, it was indeed played at Hemington Lane. All systems go, boom, and all that!

So, I’ve said the name Hemington enough so far, but where is it? Well it’s a tiny village, just off the A50 before it joins the M1, North of East Midlands Airport. When I say tiny, it’s proper tiny, a couple of roads in fact, but, they are now members of the Central Midlands Alliance League, and while the village may be tiny, the football club is very much on the radar, well, not a big radar, but a radar all the same….

I arrived at Hemington Lane about twenty minutes before the scheduled kick off, I don’t do early arrivals for morning games if I’m honest, and upon arrival I was gladdened by the sight of many cars parked up, which suggested we were good for a game. I parked on the road and asked someone who looked like they might be a footballer, if they were indeed a footballer, and they were, indeed, a footballer playing in the Hemington Hammers v Tollerton game!

You know what, it’s a bloody lovely place to watch a football match. It’s very rural, with the silence and solitude only broken by the sounds of planes taking off and landing at the airport, and especially on the day I went, motorbikes in the distance racing round Donington Park.

You enter via a small car park, and immediately in front of you is large, and presumably far from cheap, new building that I’ve already mentioned. Once complete, it’ll be a very impressive facility that looks like it will be very much a community hub.

Directly in front of this is a small sized pitch, but down to the right is the full sized pitch that the Hammers play on. Lined by trees and hedgerow on the three sides, from an aesthetic point of view it’s lovely, with the only furniture being two dugouts on the far side, and a portakabin that currently serves as changing facilities and a store room.

The pitch was in superb condition, but overall the feel was one of positivity and pride, you sense Hemington Hammers are really trying to build something for the village and the local community, and on that basis alone, I really hope they succeed.

Having never seen a game in this league, I was a little curious as to what the standard might be like, and I have to say it was very good, in fact much better than I anticipated.

It was all about the Cabbage when it came to the outcome.

Matthew ‘Cabbage’ Brian, a man very well known in local football circles, notably for his spell at Hucknall Town, scored twice for the hosts in a game of few chances, his second though was something of a ‘Worldy’ when his quick feet and agility saw him weave past a number of defenders and score. Cabbage has made no secret of his struggles via social media over the recent past and hopefully two things have happened as a result of that, firstly that he’s raised awareness, and secondly, more importantly, he’s in a better place right now.

You know what, I bloody loved my run out to the Hammers, and I would urge anyone with the opportunity to do the same.

This is a club on the up, going places, they might not go ‘big time’ but they will serve a really good purpose for all concerned.

That, should be roundly applauded.