THE GLASS, THE KETTLE & THE BACON. Visiting Hallam FC, 2009... NON-LEAGUE FOOTBALL. HALLAM. SHEFFIELD. WORKSOP.

 The Glass, The Kettle & The Bacon. 

It Just Wasn’t Cricket…

(A visit to Hallam FC in Yorkshire, pre-season, 2009…)

In the esteemed and venerated vicinity of England’s steel making centre, namely Sheffield, squatted the home of Hallam’s football and cricket clubs, Sandygate. 

The journey, from the M1 motorway, through Sheffield’s busy city centre reminded me of trying to access Paulton Rovers’ ground the previous season, after a dismally slow crawl through the city centre and outskirts of Bristol. It was raining. Persistently. 

The car parking facilities were inadequate and I was forced to turn out of the small area behind a shed of terracing to park in a side-road, necessitating the use of an umbrella for the short walk to the ground. Proudly displayed on a sign above the entrance, lettering proclaimed Hallam’s assertion to be the second oldest football club in the world and possessing the oldest ground… 

My rain affected picture bears witness to the above boast and I entered the stadium through a narrow gap, finding that the game certainly was to go ahead, despite a good number of heavy showers during the day. 

Taking photographs freely was impossible, due to the weather and the fact that one side of the playing area was the cricket ground and the boundary line intersected the football pitch’s markings to offer a confusing knot of lines, rather like the trails left by aircraft in the blue summer skies of July… 

Actually it WAS July, the 7^th but the skies were grey, the rain was sheeting down and I needed a cup of tea. 

A guy attempted to secure the starting line-ups for me, after he was pointed out to me in the bar by a barmaid who leaned casually on the counter and I strolled across to where guests were no doubt ‘entertained’ with sandwiches and pots of tea. The area was like a ‘snug’ in a pre-war pub but the chap in question was amenable and left me buying tea at a hatch outside, while he walked to the changing rooms to glean information, like a child with a worksheet in a museum. 

The tea-lady informed me that she didn’t recognise any of the Hallam players, so my hopes were low of getting a team list at all. However, the Worksop manager, Pete Rinkcavage greeted me and we chatted under a section of overhanging roof, discussing Steve Burr at Stalybridge, Retford United, Ben Pringle and Truro City among other things before he, surprisingly, gave me his cellphone number in case I saw any Unibond games during the season. He said he would respond with his email address and I could send anything relevant to him.

The scene which greeted my camera was pleasant, despite the weather. Sight-screens, a cricket pavilion, unusual buildings in the background and a view of moorland behind the goalmouth to my left, as I sat warm and dry in an acceptable grandstand, were all quaint enough and I snapped away with my camera.

A local hack, certainly retired, sat near me with a band-aid over his left ear; I had spoken to him outside oddly, but he was the one guest in the snug, when I had looked in earlier. He wrote nothing down, chatted to me but then left a considerable time before the end of the proceedings. He told me that he still wrote a column in the local newspaper but I wondered where his information came from if he had made no notes whatsoever…

The game was lost by Worksop’s poor finishing but their first-half play merited a victory that Hallam’s three goals denied them, courtesy, it seemed of some rather benevolent and indolent goalkeeping by Worksop’s soon to be rather portly goalkeeper. 

The skidding surface, especially later in the game, the heavy slope, so greasy that skiing was not out of the question, the dreadful rain and the virtual lack of foul tackles, anger and petulance, added up to a final score of- Hallam Few Chances 3 Worksop Waste Chances 1. And still it rained…

Team changes were not announced, typically. I managed to get information from a couple of guys at the front of the grandstand about Worksop’s replacements at half-time and the diminutive hack with a plaster on his ear went home for a mug of cocoa at around 9.20pm. 

Transparent was the dribbling ability of Glass, who was sharp. A pity he didn’t provide crosses for well known striker Tim Sills actually but his unfortunate marker on the night was putty in his hands. Glass had blown his chance, it was curtains for him and Kettle was subsequently introduced, as there was so much water on view. 

He failed to raise a head of steam however and Worksop’s victory march evaporated into the low cloud over the gazebo. Would Danny save the visitors’ Bacon? No. He was a little grizzled at the rind I guess, at this early stage of the new term. He played the ball back too often maybe and with such sparse service from Kettle and Frederenko, it only served to prove that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

The downpour at the final whistle meant that urinating would be a challenge, for the urinals were healthily uncovered, like the old Fellows Park, Walsall toilets, or the underground cells of Victorian prison-like stained walls at the Tilton Road end of 1960s St Andrews in Birmingham. 

Generally in those days though, you simply peed onto the calves of those who were standing in front of you on the terraces, after of course stubbing one’s butt-ends out on their leather jackets first. 

I tucked my brolly under one arm, held my bag in the other hand and shivered as I piddled. I recalled travelling home to Birmingham from college in Reading in a mate’s Ford Anglia to watch an important Aston Villa game and I stood after the game, passing water in Aston Park, under the shadow of the 17^th century Aston Hall. The wind howled, the rain sheeted, my pee made a ninety-degree turn to the left and my mate’s right leg warmed suddenly, for he stood next to me, warming the old stable wall himself…

I walked to my nearly clean car, for Birmingham’s seagulls were damned accurate you know (and yes, we had a beach there during that summer too) and I made my way through a nearly deserted Sheffield city centre to negotiate the vile weather on the M1 and a frustrating 15 mile, 50mph section. 

Frustration was my one weakness…