Sunday 12 July 2009

Less is More - Tamworth 1-1 Leicester City - Pre-season friendly - 11th July 2009.


My first foray into the season was going to be Castle Vale JKS v Lea Hall last Sunday, but once again the missus scuppered it by handing me a beer, a serious team-hopper wouldn't keep falling for that trick would they? So my first game was to be Tamworth's first friendly against a Leicester team expected to send a fair few first teamers even though they were splitting their team to play another game at Loughborough (or somewhere like that anyway!). I did recognise a couple of their players, Matt Oakley being one, and chatting to some of their fans it was indeed a decent side that turned out.

Tamuff meanwhile don't have the luxury of being able to split their squad, we barely have enough players to field 11 plus 7 subs, still it's better to be a bit short squad wise than to overstretch the budget, we want to be right up there when the annual AGM Cup is played out and the "staying up by default" teams are read out.

Rain had been forecast so I packed the waterproofs and of course it was a lovely day. First pint was supped at The Tweeddale Arms, not a bad pint of Bass and then it was onto The White Lion where the Blythe Brewery Staffie was very nice indeed, so nice in fact that I had to have three. Beat Cameron at pool - no mercy son, sorry, and then off to The Lamb.
The clubhouse had some new rather 'arty' pictures on the walls, sorry to whoever did this but I prefer a clubhouse to have memorabilia, old shirts, pictures of teams from the past and stuff like that, where's the mention of our Vase win, our Trophy and FA Cup runs, our dramatic battles against Netherfield to see who could finish second bottom of the Northern Premier League? If I want pictures of our stand taken at a very odd angle I'll get our Cameron to take the photos!

The Leicester fans were very polite though, whoever heard of queueing to get to a bar? They showed admirable restraint too when half of the regulars ignored the queue and just went to the other end of the bar! Not me though, heaven forfend!

The game? Well it was a friendly, hardly a poor tackle all game, everyone was being very nice. Tamworth showed in patches that we are again looking to play the ball about on the floor, several times we strung a few passes together, not much cutting edge though, I'm not sure how successful this passing game will be against the Conference hoofers but then again I doubted this tactic at the beginning of last season too and it seemed to work out okay in the end.

In the first half Leicester looked the better team but we defended stoutly and also came closest to scoring when a Tom Shaw shot clipped the bar. Second half was similar, the class of the Leicester midfield meant they had more possession but they hardly troubled Alcock in the Tamuff goal. Then a long ball over the top fell in between two Tamworth defenders and Bruno Berner reacted quickest to roll the ball past Alcock for 0-1.

That looked like being it as Tamworth couldn't seem to get a decent shot away until three minutes from time when Nick Wright turned his man on the edge of the box and struck a sweet shot over the keepers head for the equaliser. I even saw the goal but Cameron somehow missed it as he was pretting about on the floor. Maybe it's his turn to be goal-misser extraordinaire this season?

Admission - £10 & £5
Attendance - 1035 (looked about right to me although some on the forum have questioned this thinking there were more in the ground.)
Programme - Yes, small folded sheet thingie for just 20p.
Beer - Bass in Tweeddale - 6/10
Blythe Staffie in White Lion - 8/10
Black Sheep in Clubhouse - 5/10 (always -1 for the plastic 'glass'.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

June? Anyway, about bastard time!!

Dave Cooper said...

June? What do you mean *whistly emoticon*

Anonymous said...

Dave cooper fan club- nice report but let him win at pool once in a while!!!

Dave Cooper said...

No, never, I will win every game.
Ha ha ha ha!!!

Anonymous said...

"Competetive Dad" lol lol lol lolllllllllllllllllllllol!