Tuesday 2 October 2007

Careless Wispa - Cadbury Athletic 1 Brocton 1 - Midland Combination Premier Division 02/10/07

Just before I left the house I told myself that the last thing I should do is forget my camera, and sure enough, the last thing I did as I left the house was to forget my camera! I really am a complete amateur at this blogging lark!
This is why this report is accompanied by a picture lifted from their website (I have asked permission and will remove it if asked Internet Police) which is a photo of a ground they don't even play at! It's a shame that the actual Cadbury Sports Ground isn't good enough for this level because it's a cracker, although being in the totally dry Quaker village of Bourneville you can't get a pint. Cadbury Athletic meanwhile are groundsharing at the Triplex Sports Ground in Kings Norton, itself a fairly dry place if your poison of choice is real ale, but I digress (as usual).

I tell you what, if you want pictures you could do a lot worse than to take a look at one of the finest non-league websites in existence, Pyramid Passion specifically the section on Pilkington XXX. they are much better photos than the rubbish I'd have taken with my box brownie anyway.

Cameron got a rare treat(?) tonight and was allowed to accompany me on a school night, he was dissapointed to have missed the (Turkish?) Delights of Greenhill so was loath to miss this one. We arrived just before kick-off in a very light drizzle which was just enough to give your kids a treat, no sorry, to make the grass a bit slippy and the ball skid through. The Triplex Sports Ground has quite a sizeable slope down into one corner, but the grass was immaculate. It's a tidy little ground which appears to have been cut into a grass bank, there's one small stand one the far touchline (the railway side) with the dugouts next to it, it's surrounded by factories, was it perhaps an old Birmingham Works League ground? Dunno, I'm no expert!

Both these teams are mid-table in a tight looking league, one point and three places separating them so I expected a tight game and that is what we got. A cagey opening meant the game was looking for some Heroes, unfortunately nobody had a box so we carried on watching a fairly dull
game instead.

Brocton looked the more likely to open the scoring, and after testing the Flakey looking defence with a couple of early high balls they opened the scoring in exactly that fashion, the ball was launched into the Aero, the Cadbury defence went missing and allowed the Brocton forward a free header which he steered into the bottom corner. It was no more than Brocton deserved at the time but it seemed to wake Cadbury up a bit.

I don't remember too many actual goalscoring chances for either side, the game was compacted into midfield and no player seemed to possess the skill or Twix to open up the defences. (That was a really poor pun, sorry!)

With about five minutes to the half-time Time Out Cadbury got a Boost and scored their equaliser, a speculative shot from outside the area seemed to pick up pace off the greasy surface and just eluded the outstretched Fingers of the Brocton keeper before Nestleing into the bottom corner.

Half-time was spent pretending to be interested in the Champions League scores in the bar, part of a nice looking Club attached to the ground. This is where I found the rest of the alleged 41 spectators that the Midland Combination website said attended the match, I counted 22! Mind you, I never count obvious club officials and any glum looking blokes in tracksuits who are obviously the players who didn't make the team this time!

The second half was pretty woeful, what chances there were fell to Brocton and the Cadbury keeper made a couple of fine low saves to keep them in it. I can't see either of these two teams being anywhere near the promotion shake-up at the end of the season to be honest, they worked hard but there was very little Quality (Street).

I may be back here on Saturday, currently the Midland Combination website has both Cadbury Athletic AND Pilkington XXX at home in the FA Vase, that could be interesting! Most likely one has been switched to Sunday but I don't know which one, and no one I spoke to had a clue either.

Attendance - 41
Price - £3 (Cameron was free)
Programme - £1
Potential for crap chocolate puns - Endless
Quality of chocolate puns - Very, very poor indeed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funniest Blog I've had the pleasure of reading.

I'm in tears.

Anonymous said...

Oh dear oh dear oh dear, Dave. Quality stuff! :)

Dave Cooper said...

Thanks both.

I do apologise for the quality of the puns, but it was an open goal!