<endnote><head> <meta> <title> shirebrook There's a quiz at the end of this, so stick with it.

Due to the unique way the Unibond football league is managed, I found myself with a free weekend, as Retford were made to feel as welcome at the opening round of fixtures as a referee at Warnock family barbeque. Still, never one to let the suits win, I manfully scoured the press for a suitable wet nurse. It being the first round of the FA Cup, I was fairly spoilt for choice. But being the fairly intrepid adventurer, I declined the relative glamour of Radford and the like, plumping instead for the down-at-heel charms of Langwith Road, Shirebrook.



If you discount Welbeck MW and Church Warsop MW, Shirebrook are actually my local team. Yet every trip there feels like a journey into another land. It may only take the BoneShaker five minutes to get there, but I may as well be stepping out of the TARDIS. Like so many villages in the area, Shirebrook has been decimated by the collapse of the minign industry (for how many years will we have to write that sentence?) As a result, it is more likely to feature on an ITV / Daily Mail expose of the "ills of our society" than it is on a C4 "escape to the country" programme. In another towering example of his business acumen, Mike "Cockney Mafia" Ashley has decided to base his SportsDirect empire here. The logic being, one assumes, that the town can keep the company afloat thru sales of sports casual gear alone.

As an outsider, it continues to baffle me as to why the club have not managed to tap into this. You'd have thought a sponsorship package, including ground, kit and/or clubhouse would have been a fairly simple thing to bring about. One can only assume that the two images just do not sit too readily side by side, and those who hold the purse strings at SportsWorld have hung their neighbours out to dry. On the on ehand you can understand this. After all, a run down, semi-professional football team is hardly the ideal bedfellow for a dynamic, youthful sports leisure wear company. The NCEL may be many things, but aspirational is not one of them. But then again, what better way to appeal to the grassroots of the sport than by being directly involved at those grassroots. Maybe that's why I am not involved in anything commercial at Retford tho!

And so, to the game. The ref blew his whistle as I walked into the ground, so I can't tell you if anyone looked like they didn't fancy it in the pre-match line-up. But it was evident almost immediately that Shirebrook are in for a long hard season. Their NCEL season can only be a couple of games old, and yet already there were enough sulking players to indicate that manager Darren Prince may well be looking for a new job long before he is looking for Xmas presents. The defence seemed barely equated with each other, and the forwards must have done something disgusting to the families of all the midfield, as they steadfastly refused to offer anything more than the most basic of assistance when the ball ventured out of the Town half.

It would perhaps be prudent at this point to mention this afternoon's opponents., Holbeach Town. However, this being the Oops blog, I can't be arsed. Here are some links to what I found, if you are so inclined.

http://www.htucfl.com/teamdirectory.pl
http://www.holbeachtoday.net/hufc.htm

It wasn't any surprise that Holbeach took the lead. And it was even less of a surprise that it came about because of a defensive cock up between the keeper and one of his defensive titans. This served to make the rest of the side realise that they couldn't rely on their back line to keep them in the game, and instead would have to put in some graft themselves. However, the flaw in this plan would appear to be the overall lack of willingness to do anything that one might otherwise term "dirty work". It seems odd that a team playing in Shirebrook could be so lightweight, but the number of tackles that went unmade, the runs that went untracked, and the rallying calls that went unheeded was impressive. Instead, there was an over-reliance on "showboat" balls, crossing the pitch but failing ot find the right man. When the ball was on the pitch, it was a scrappy affair, but Holbeach certainly looked the more composed. As evidenced by the fact that Shirebrook equalised on the half hour. I am nothing if not a footballing prophet. Honestly, I haven't got a clue what happened for this goal. I've a memory of someone depserately trying to keep the ball in, but that may be confused with something I saw on MOTD.

With the onset of halftime, I was pleased to hear that whoever works the tannoy at Langwith Road had retuned their radio since my last visit. No more white noise with snippets of Mansfield 103.2 thrown in. Instead, crystal clear Radio 2 floated through the ether . I believe it was Dermot O Leary, to provide uneccesary detail.

The second half proceeded as the first, with Holbeach playing football, and Shirebrook moaning at each other. The visitors took the lead again shortly after the restart, only for their hosts to get a not-all-together deserved equaliser as the clock began to wind down*

* this is the abridged version of the second half. Apologies. I have long since forgotten what really went off. Fortunately tho, this guy is a professional, and therefore I would trust what he says.

And so, the quiz: guess the age of the owners of the following two pairs of shoes.



I never promised it would be a fun or interesting quiz. But the answer will be revealed in my next post. Whenever the chuff that happens to be.